No more waiting for books to be reprinted... Death from the Skies is going to be available as a digital download.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/wnt/blog.jsp?pid=8800020

But as a side note... The book has actually been put back up for sale some time ago (In the USA, they were sold out for some time).

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440162a&prodId=prod1950012a

Whoo, a digital download version.


Too bad they only cater to Apple users.

So much for a "limited" release...

 Superscope wrote:
So much for a "limited" release...

It wasn't a limited release.
It was a limited first run, but more were printed afterwards.

 Platuan4th wrote:
Whoo, a digital download version.


Too bad they only cater to Apple users.

This. I have an Asus tablet running some manner of dessert named OS. Sell me PDF's dammit.

Also, ebooks are not worth print prices. Either sweeten the deal or lower the price.

 Aerethan wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:
Whoo, a digital download version.


Too bad they only cater to Apple users.

This. I have an Asus tablet running some manner of dessert named OS. Sell me PDF's dammit.

Also, ebooks are not worth print prices. Either sweeten the deal or lower the price.

You do realize this is GW your asking to lower a price too? They will lower it this summer, but will charge extra per download due to manpower needed to handle the demand.

I still can't get over the ridiculous digital prices. Pass.

Theophony wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:
Whoo, a digital download version.


Too bad they only cater to Apple users.

This. I have an Asus tablet running some manner of dessert named OS. Sell me PDF's dammit.

Also, ebooks are not worth print prices. Either sweeten the deal or lower the price.

You do realize this is GW your asking to lower a price too? They will lower it this summer, but will charge extra per download due to manpower needed to handle the demand.

I understand asking them to lower a price they have already released is pointless, as they have never done that(to my memory).

Digital content is still not worth physical content. The overhead alone should be reflected in the discounted price. The cost of paper, printing, shipping etc.

Digital goods have really a single cost: development. 3d files don't cost a damn thing to distribute, and for the few places that do charge fees(like iTunes) those fees are quite small.

Remember how Disney and a ton of other movie companies started including digital copies with the physical product? And how much extra did they charge? It sure as gak wasn't 100%. In most cases the digital copy is free, in some cases it's all of a 5% charge. And with my kids using the tablet for movies as they do, I'll gladly buy the product knowing that I'll have a physical copy at home, and a digital copy to take with me all over the place without having to lug around a dvd player on top of the tablet I already have.

Now if GW wants to sell me a codex for $55 and include a digital copy, fine. But charging for both is pointless. GW might want to pretend that piracy of their printed works doesn't exist, but it very much does, and them price gouging on digital products won't curb that.

Tau codex was online in PDF within 2 days of it's release. Not everyone is going to pirate, but for many people the decision to buy a book for an army they don't play is pretty much a matter of cost. If it was cheaper, they might buy it just to complete their collection. I used to do that when books were $22ea. Now I find myself hard pressed to buy books for armies I do play, because the price is so steep, and my morals hold no guilt over me for petty piracy.

Didn't they update the storm raven and storm talon into the digital space marine book?

Most digital ibooks have more content than the printed book. Whether that's worth it to some people is a different matter entirely.

Can I get the ork flyer rules for free? As I:

Bought the codex.
Bought the rulebook.
Bought the ork flyer.

??

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Can I get the ork flyer rules for free? As I:

Bought the codex.
Bought the rulebook.
Bought the ork flyer.

??

I'd be all for having a little unit sheet included in any supplemental units that were not released in the army's codex.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Can I get the ork flyer rules for free? As I:

Bought the codex.
Bought the rulebook.
Bought the ork flyer.

??

Yeah but then how would GW make MOAR MONIES!

 Aerethan wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:
Whoo, a digital download version.


Too bad they only cater to Apple users.

This. I have an Asus tablet running some manner of dessert named OS. Sell me PDF's dammit.

Also, ebooks are not worth print prices. Either sweeten the deal or lower the price.

I'm going to avoid the issue of iOS only to focus on your second comment.

For me, the ebooks, while expensive, are a better deal than a paper codex. I have multiple iPads in my house and multiple 40K players (my three teenaged sons all play). Buying the ebook version once gets me that version viewable on all three tablets at the same time. When I'm reading the codex, I don't have to flip through pages to find out what a piece of wargear does, I can just touch the name and get all the details I need from a pop-up window. The ebook version cannot be misplaced, which happened a few times to me or my sons with older, paper books.

These are just some of the more obvious reasons to get the digital codex. I really can't think of any reason to ever purchase a paper codex again. Just sticking all the data in a PDF would get you some of these benefits, but no where near all of them.

I'd be all for having a little unit sheet included in any supplemental units that were not released in the army's codex.

Agreed. They did it before...I don't see why they don't do it now. Meh.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

For me, the ebooks, while expensive, are a better deal than a paper codex. I have multiple iPads in my house and multiple 40K players (my three teenaged sons all play). Buying the ebook version once gets me that version viewable on all three tablets at the same time. When I'm reading the codex, I don't have to flip through pages to find out what a piece of wargear does, I can just touch the name and get all the details I need from a pop-up window. The ebook version cannot be misplaced, which happened a few times to me or my sons with older, paper books.

These are just some of the more obvious reasons to get the digital codex. I really can't think of any reason to ever purchase a paper codex again. Just sticking all the data in a PDF would get you some of these benefits, but no where near all of them.

Agreed. Most of them also have bonus content that's not available in the print version either.

 Aerethan wrote:
Digital content is still not worth physical content. The overhead alone should be reflected in the discounted price. The cost of paper, printing, shipping etc.

Digital goods have really a single cost: development. 3d files don't cost a damn thing to distribute, and for the few places that do charge fees(like iTunes) those fees are quite small.

Actually, apple takes a 30% cut of everything they sell in the iTunes store. I wouldn't call that 'quite small'.

 undertow wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:
Digital content is still not worth physical content. The overhead alone should be reflected in the discounted price. The cost of paper, printing, shipping etc.

Digital goods have really a single cost: development. 3d files don't cost a damn thing to distribute, and for the few places that do charge fees(like iTunes) those fees are quite small.

Actually, apple takes a 30% cut of everything they sell in the iTunes store. I wouldn't call that 'quite small'.

So 30%, and you can piece meal out your album which increases your total available sales. Then you also don't have to pay for media printing, shipping, any taxes on those processes, customs fees etc. Then you have to compete for shelf space, you have to maintain distribution channels to retailers...

And iTunes is open 24/7. And once you buy a product there, you can download it again should you lose the original copy(which with replacing computers and devices comes in quite handy).

And that is only if you go the Apple route. I doubt B&N is charging 30% to sell ebooks.

The benefits of digital media far outweigh their old physical counterparts, for both the producer and the consumer. But with that, the prices should accurately reflect savings, otherwise perceived value will drop and sales will follow.

 CaptKaruthors wrote:
Agreed. Most of them also have bonus content that's not available in the print version either.

Sure. Bonus content that doesn't actually need to be in the codex, and just makes it a bigger and more sluggish file. And that used to be available for free through the articles section on the GW website.

 insaniak wrote:

 CaptKaruthors wrote:
Agreed. Most of them also have bonus content that's not available in the print version either.

Sure. Bonus content that doesn't actually need to be in the codex, and just makes it a bigger and more sluggish file. And that used to be available for free through the articles section on the GW website.

One could also argue that any given codex could have a single page printed with weapon specs and rules on it for that army. Army Builder files often have them included, at least for the stats.

 Aerethan wrote:


Digital content is still not worth physical content. The overhead alone should be reflected in the discounted price. The cost of paper, printing, shipping etc.

Digital goods have really a single cost: development. 3d files don't cost a damn thing to distribute, and for the few places that do charge fees(like iTunes) those fees are quite small.

I disagree.

Digital is better in several ways. Multiple codexs, that don't fall apart with use, get transported in one place with far less weight. They come with extra content. They also get updated, so I don't have to lug around the errata or have to try and convince someone that the errata exists to begin with, which has happened too many times for my liking.

So, yes, they are worth the cost. And there are upkeep costs for GW, be they corrections or the additions of new units. When GW comes up with it's own army builder that gets it right, and allows for plug and play information from the content you already own, digital codexs will become even more helpful to the player. For me this is not a matter of if, but when, since they've really gotten on the ball in releasing quality digital products.

And there I was, so naive, thinking this was a pdf with rules in the FAQs section. What was I thinking in?

 undertow wrote:

I'm going to avoid the issue of iOS only to focus on your second comment.

Okay, as important a point as it is, let's ignore anything that is os specific.

I have multiple iPads in my house and multiple 40K players (my three teenaged sons all play). Buying the ebook version once...

Wait... but... you said... Fine, let's not avoid the issue of iOS only. We are all very aware of how great the digital version is, but it's iOS specific!

And it should be included at a greatly discounted price when you buy the hard copy.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Can I get the ork flyer rules for free? As I:

Bought the codex.
Bought the rulebook.
Bought the ork flyer.

??

You are a funny guy, for free? from GW ?

I'm a really big fan of all the digital content. Ill never buy a hardcover codex again.

Active updates? Check.
Multiple codeces in one tablet? Check.
Rule quick links ? Check.

Love it.

Real is always better than virtual.

 EYEofTERROR wrote:
Real is always better than virtual.

Well Virtual Death rather the real dead.

Indeed, Virtual Death is one of my favorite things...

A PDF at the same cost as a printed book? And that printed book is already far too expensive for what it is just due to it being "niche"? And I have to buy an Ipad just to look at it?

Eh, no. I'll pass.

After looking at the GW site......wait, what? How in the feth do you preorder a PDF?! How does that even work? And why?

when you pre-order, you get an alert as soon as the download is available...
you are not charged until you download the book...
it's really just an "alert me" button...

cheers
jah

 AegisGrimm wrote:
A PDF at the same cost as a printed book? And that printed book is already far too expensive for what it is just due to it being "niche"? And I have to buy an Ipad just to look at it?

Eh, no. I'll pass.

After looking at the GW site......wait, what? How in the feth do you preorder a PDF?! How does that even work? And why?

For, I don't know, the 41st time, none of the GW digital products are "a PDF."

Well...at least not direct from GW

Some...people...I know...were able to find GW's pretty much entire catalog since at least the mid 90's on PDF's way back in 2005/2006 and have just been adding to it since then, finding GW's half-hearted attempts to enter the digital market so late as to be irrelevant, overpriced, and incomplete.

Everything is incomplete until it's finished. Irrelevant? Hardly, I use the digitial codexs in my current games, so that makes no sense.

Overpriced is up to you.

 Moopy wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:


Digital content is still not worth physical content. The overhead alone should be reflected in the discounted price. The cost of paper, printing, shipping etc.

Digital goods have really a single cost: development. 3d files don't cost a damn thing to distribute, and for the few places that do charge fees(like iTunes) those fees are quite small.

I disagree.

Digital is better in several ways. Multiple codexs, that don't fall apart with use, get transported in one place with far less weight. They come with extra content. They also get updated, so I don't have to lug around the errata or have to try and convince someone that the errata exists to begin with, which has happened too many times for my liking.

So, yes, they are worth the cost. And there are upkeep costs for GW, be they corrections or the additions of new units. When GW comes up with it's own army builder that gets it right, and allows for plug and play information from the content you already own, digital codexs will become even more helpful to the player. For me this is not a matter of if, but when, since they've really gotten on the ball in releasing quality digital products.

I agree. Starting with Dark angels I have switched to ipad dex's they are so much nicer to use. no more flipping through books. I will be buying all codex's through itunes from now on. no only if i could get a rulebook on my ipad.

Cost is purely up to GW to decide and the purchaser to decide if they are willing to pay it, bleating on forums about it just makes you look like a child. It's not an expensive hobby, I have several others that make it seem quite cheap. There are plenty of other games if you don't like the ones that GW make so just save your energy and play those instead.

The real problem is the iOS only route, I would be happy (ok not happy but I'd pay it) to pay £30 for a version distributed through Google Play, Kindle, etc but I don't want an iPad.

I don't get why they won't support other tablet or PC OS, there are plenty of universal routes without any OS tie in that support all of the features of iBooks.*

 nwns wrote:
Cost is purely up to GW to decide and the purchaser to decide if they are willing to pay it, bleating on forums about it just makes you look like a child. It's not an expensive hobby, I have several others that make it seem quite cheap. There are plenty of other games if you don't like the ones that GW make so just save your energy and play those instead.

The real problem is the iOS only route, I would be happy (ok not happy but I'd pay it) to pay £30 for a version distributed through Google Play, Kindle, etc but I don't want an iPad.

I don't get why they won't support other tablet or PC OS, there are plenty of universal routes without any OS tie in that support all of the features of iBooks.*

Sorry, I'm a little confused by this post... you deride people for complaining on forums...and then complain about one of the things others are commonly complaining about.

I know but hypocrisy is such a human failing.

I just think that price isn't a valid criticism in a competitive market as it will settle to what people will pay.

 nwns wrote:
I know but hypocrisy is such a human failing.

I just think that price isn't a valid criticism in a competitive market as it will settle to what people will pay.

But surely if people are criticizing it then the market is saying "the price is too high" and a company should stop and look at that and lower prices next time, instead GW raise prices.

Uh, No?

X amount of people complain about the price, Y amount buy the product, and Z amount complain but buy it anyway.

X>0 doesn't mean lower prices - you need to know Y and Z.

The worst thing that could come from GW's charging of full price for digital books is others might see it as an example and say "Hey, we want more money too!"
It's not going to hamper thier sales and die out. People are, and will continue to pay full price for the digital codex's.

CDs were massively cheaper to produce than records, didn't stop the companies putting the prices as high as the market would stand. Ebooks are at a ridiculous price but it's the price they are so you buy them or you don't. Eventually they'll come down or they'll stay where they are and inflation will make them cheaper.

I bought Death from the Skies when it came out as I wanted the rules, it was £20 which is what? four pints in a pub? About what it costs for my daily commute? A couple of bottles of wine? Gaming is a luxury and once you have the basics it's nice and cheap to play, you don't need the new stuff, you just want it.

I am aware that these are just my views and I have no desire to change anyone else's :-)

insaniak wrote:

 nwns wrote:
Cost is purely up to GW to decide and the purchaser to decide if they are willing to pay it, bleating on forums about it just makes you look like a child. It's not an expensive hobby, I have several others that make it seem quite cheap. There are plenty of other games if you don't like the ones that GW make so just save your energy and play those instead.

The real problem is the iOS only route, I would be happy (ok not happy but I'd pay it) to pay £30 for a version distributed through Google Play, Kindle, etc but I don't want an iPad.

I don't get why they won't support other tablet or PC OS, there are plenty of universal routes without any OS tie in that support all of the features of iBooks.*

Sorry, I'm a little confused by this post... you deride people for complaining on forums...and then complain about one of the things others are commonly complaining about.

nwns wrote:I know but hypocrisy is such a human failing.

I just think that price isn't a valid criticism in a competitive market as it will settle to what people will pay.

But this is still largely a matter of cost. There's nothing stopping you from buying iOS devices to read the digital GW products. To be fair it would potentially require you to carry an extra device with you, but an iPad is roughly the size of a printed codex so this doesn't seem like a big issue. Bleating about carrying an extra 300g makes you look, I believe, like a child.

Unfortunately I do have a rather childish attitude towards Apple products but cost doesn't come into it.

Like I said hypocrisy is in each and every one of us, I don't feel the need to defend how I am

I will gladly pay the codex price for the digital copy. I feel i get more value for my money.

The price doesn't bother me so much as the reliance on iOS. Android tablet sales are quickly catching up to Apple and it's a bit silly to leave a potential market untapped.

lets all be honest, we all know if these were released as a regular PDF, in about 5 minustes it would be on the net and downloadable..... as iBook, i cant even view it on my computer... sure i can SS on the ipad and all but...... tedious very very tedious
now im not sure if the android version has the same security (for GW) as apples does (any info on this would be great) but selling an EBook that you can copy paste then just throw up as a torrent defeats the purpose just a touch... sure its great for those that want it all for nix, but thats not how a business makes money...
and to the chap that has 3 ipads on the 1 itunes BRAVO, i like this idea very much.

So, the only option on google products is PDF? They could make their own reader app easily enough. Hackers can get into apple products too....

 agnosto wrote:
The price doesn't bother me so much as the reliance on iOS. Android tablet sales are quickly catching up to Apple and it's a bit silly to leave a potential market untapped.

Android is fragmented as all hell, and Android 'customers' are 6 times less likely to purchase apps.

So to expand development apps to Android usually takes 10-15 times the effort than the unified iOS platform, and for much much less customers reached. You have to program so much conditional logic based upon OS, or pay a 3rd party for a unified platform software to build in and then license them for a piece of the pie. It is a real factor of diminishing rewards.

Apple has high rate of purchases of apps, as well as a wonderful OS and hardware to develop for. Android is a real bear for developers because Android devices won't force updates and hardware quickly can't support updates so you have to develop for 2-3 year old out of date devices and is a real waste of resources. Every company needs to decide for themselves if the risk and exponential effort is worth the reward. I totally see why companies choose to be iOS only from personal experience with mobile development.

nkelsch wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
The price doesn't bother me so much as the reliance on iOS. Android tablet sales are quickly catching up to Apple and it's a bit silly to leave a potential market untapped.

Android is fragmented as all hell, and Android 'customers' are 6 times less likely to purchase apps.

So to expand development apps to Android usually takes 10-15 times the effort than the unified iOS platform, and for much much less customers reached. You have to program so much conditional logic based upon OS, or pay a 3rd party for a unified platform software to build in and then license them for a piece of the pie. It is a real factor of diminishing rewards.

Apple has high rate of purchases of apps, as well as a wonderful OS and hardware to develop for. Android is a real bear for developers because Android devices won't force updates and hardware quickly can't support updates so you have to develop for 2-3 year old out of date devices and is a real waste of resources. Every company needs to decide for themselves if the risk and exponential effort is worth the reward. I totally see why companies choose to be iOS only from personal experience with mobile development.

You're right, no one is making money off of android products that's why there are so many of them and so many are sold while Apple is losing market share ( at least according to the latest market research by such organizations as ABI); google's also becoming more proactive in cleaning up their App Store. Besides all of that, they could easily partner with Amazon and have them do all of the hard work or some other company. As much as their charging for the digital content vs the discounts they give wholesalers and FLGSs, they'd still come out ahead.

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
lets all be honest, we all know if these were released as a regular PDF, in about 5 minustes it would be on the net and downloadable..... as iBook, i cant even view it on my computer... sure i can SS on the ipad and all but...... tedious very very tedious
now im not sure if the android version has the same security (for GW) as apples does (any info on this would be great) but selling an EBook that you can copy paste then just throw up as a torrent defeats the purpose just a touch... sure its great for those that want it all for nix, but thats not how a business makes money...
and to the chap that has 3 ipads on the 1 itunes BRAVO, i like this idea very much.

EVERY single 40k codex is up as a PDF with about 2 weeks of it's release. iPads haven't done a damn thing to stem that tide. GW selling legit PDF's at reasonable prices would curb that at least to some degree.

People thinking that the books aren't already pirated have no clue as to exactly how much media content is pirated.

Hypothetically I can throw any of those PDF's on any tablet right now, and they were free. GW could have sold them, and made some money, but instead they charge full price for a format that I can't use because I have the sense to use a better, less expensive tablet.

GW's loss, not mine.



Companies today can either find NEW ways to monetize media products, or they can watch as file sharing runs them down and slaughters them. The problem here is that file sharing as it stands is not going anywhere. TPB has been attacked constantly by several governments, and yet it stands stronger than ever.

ISP's can threaten all they want, but if piracy is as widespread as the FBI would have us believe, then ISP's will see themselves shutting off something in the area of 60% of their customers. Far too much money to be worthwhile.

If GW did a type of Kickstarter where people "bought" their codex ahead of time, they'd know straight away whether it's worth putting in the effort to develop for a platform or not.

I cannot afford to buy an iDevice, after buying an Android tablet and a Windows laptop.

 pities2004 wrote:
Didn't they update the storm raven and storm talon into the digital space marine book?

Yes, the digital SM codex was updated with the new rules & changes.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
A PDF at the same cost as a printed book? And that printed book is already far too expensive for what it is just due to it being "niche"? <snip> After looking at the GW site......wait, what? How in the feth do you preorder a PDF?! How does that even work? And why?

They're not PDFs. They're actually apps that provide a level of interactivity that you'll never see in an Adobe product. But they are in no way less expensive than the physical version of the product.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
And I have to buy an Ipad just to look at it?

Or you could buy an iPad for other reasons like the rest of us did and see this as just another option to get your 40k/WHFB rules stuff.

 Moopy wrote:
Everything is incomplete until it's finished. Irrelevant? Hardly, I use the digitial codexs in my current games, so that makes no sense.

 Vaktathi wrote:
...finding GW's half-hearted attempts to enter the digital market so late as to be irrelevant, overpriced, and incomplete.

I see it as incomplete as they haven't put out all the current books. Ogre Kingdoms and Tomb Kings, for example are in the current WHFB edition but don't have an iBook equivelant. Not releasing a digital version of DitS at the same time the physical book was released is also an example of GW poorly handling the digital side of things.

 nwns wrote:
The real problem is the iOS only route, I would be happy (ok not happy but I'd pay it) to pay £30 for a version distributed through Google Play, Kindle, etc but I don't want an iPad. I don't get why they won't support other tablet or PC OS, there are plenty of universal routes without any OS tie in that support all of the features of iBooks.

Development costs (paying coders to code) is expensive. The other factor is that GW is serious about controlling what happens to their product once it is released into the wild. It's a hell of a lot easier to do that with iTunes than it is with other services.

 nwns wrote:
I bought Death from the Skies when it came out as I wanted the rules, it was £20 which is what? four pints in a pub? About what it costs for my daily commute? A couple of bottles of wine? Gaming is a luxury and once you have the basics it's nice and cheap to play, you don't need the new stuff, you just want it.

You're making an apples to oranges argument here but the last bit is spot on.

 agnosto wrote:
You're right, no one is making money off of android products that's why there are so many of them and so many are sold while Apple is losing market share ( at least according to the latest market research by such organizations as ABI).

That's exactly what the Windows 8 people at Microsoft are saying.

 Aerethan wrote:
EVERY single 40k codex is up as a PDF with about 2 weeks of it's release. iPads haven't done a damn thing to stem that tide. GW selling legit PDF's at reasonable prices would curb that at least to some degree.

There is a logic fallacy in here somewhere... if people download PDFs for free already, why would they start to pay $50+ to buy it instead? I suppose there would be a few, but you'd really have to stretch your definitions to call it "stemming the tide". People torrent the PDFs because they are free, not because they don't have an iPad.

If it was my fault that this went so far off topic I apologise!!

I'm glad GW made Death from the Skies available as a digital download I just wish they'd now support different platforms. They won't so I'll continue to buy the physical ones unless I don't want to.

 Aerethan wrote:

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
lets all be honest, we all know if these were released as a regular PDF, in about 5 minustes it would be on the net and downloadable..... as iBook, i cant even view it on my computer... sure i can SS on the ipad and all but...... tedious very very tedious
now im not sure if the android version has the same security (for GW) as apples does (any info on this would be great) but selling an EBook that you can copy paste then just throw up as a torrent defeats the purpose just a touch... sure its great for those that want it all for nix, but thats not how a business makes money...
and to the chap that has 3 ipads on the 1 itunes BRAVO, i like this idea very much.

EVERY single 40k codex is up as a PDF with about 2 weeks of it's release. iPads haven't done a damn thing to stem that tide. GW selling legit PDF's at reasonable prices would curb that at least to some degree.

People thinking that the books aren't already pirated have no clue as to exactly how much media content is pirated.

Hypothetically I can throw any of those PDF's on any tablet right now, and they were free. GW could have sold them, and made some money, but instead they charge full price for a format that I can't use because I have the sense to use a better, less expensive tablet.

GW's loss, not mine.



Companies today can either find NEW ways to monetize media products, or they can watch as file sharing runs them down and slaughters them. The problem here is that file sharing as it stands is not going anywhere. TPB has been attacked constantly by several governments, and yet it stands stronger than ever.

ISP's can threaten all they want, but if piracy is as widespread as the FBI would have us believe, then ISP's will see themselves shutting off something in the area of 60% of their customers. Far too much money to be worthwhile.

a better less expensive table? .. might be cheaper but better, thats a bit of a call, and how would an IPad stem the tide of cheap ass people who pirate the hell out of the codexs to be cool and have them all? thatll never happen. but lets be honest i did a google for the codex's as a pdf, and OMG they are shoddy cheap rubbish scans 90% of the time with poor lighting, shocking coloring etc etc etc, now if GW already made it in the PDF format then they make it easier, and people will maybe d/l a shoddy version then get sick of that and buy the real thing, that wouldnt happen if the current digital dex's were just able to be copy/pasted.

 agnosto wrote:


You're right, no one is making money off of android products that's why there are so many of them and so many are sold while Apple is losing market share ( at least according to the latest market research by such organizations as ABI); google's also becoming more proactive in cleaning up their App Store. Besides all of that, they could easily partner with Amazon and have them do all of the hard work or some other company. As much as their charging for the digital content vs the discounts they give wholesalers and FLGSs, they'd still come out ahead.

I didn't say you can't make a profit on Android's framework, It is just harder to make a profit and less return on your investment due to the extra effort required. So for a company who is primarily not a software developer, I don't see any reason why they would want to pretend they are and make the effort to make a consistent product across the multiple formats. Lots of companies who are not GW choose single platforms and make plenty of money without entertaining the android market.

Google needs to be more pro-active on locking down hardware developers and forcing more consistent software updates. The issue isn;t with hacked Androids, it is that some POS garbage hardware manufacturer makes a cheap-smart phone which uses a specific OS, they never update it and you have some person walking around with a 3 year old OS which cannot be updated due to hardware layer issues. So now as an app developer, I have to make my app work for all those random versions of the core OS, and still have to have minimum requirements which leads to the inevitable: "Hey! My device is not supported, Why doesn't <Company X> make their stuff for all android! they don't want my money!"

It is a nightmare, unless you pimp your stuff out through a 3rd party framework which is expensive to license, or something like Amazon. And Amazon would be less feature complete. Many of the things people like about the new Digidex you lose in other formats. They basically would need to develop a custom multimedia app not just latch onto an ebook format.

And GW does have a product for the PC and Android market... It is called a physical paper rulebook. The issue is there are some who just want it 'for free' regardless what you do.

 ausYenLoWang wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
lets all be honest, we all know if these were released as a regular PDF, in about 5 minustes it would be on the net and downloadable..... as iBook, i cant even view it on my computer... sure i can SS on the ipad and all but...... tedious very very tedious
now im not sure if the android version has the same security (for GW) as apples does (any info on this would be great) but selling an EBook that you can copy paste then just throw up as a torrent defeats the purpose just a touch... sure its great for those that want it all for nix, but thats not how a business makes money...
and to the chap that has 3 ipads on the 1 itunes BRAVO, i like this idea very much.

EVERY single 40k codex is up as a PDF with about 2 weeks of it's release. iPads haven't done a damn thing to stem that tide. GW selling legit PDF's at reasonable prices would curb that at least to some degree.

People thinking that the books aren't already pirated have no clue as to exactly how much media content is pirated.

Hypothetically I can throw any of those PDF's on any tablet right now, and they were free. GW could have sold them, and made some money, but instead they charge full price for a format that I can't use because I have the sense to use a better, less expensive tablet.

GW's loss, not mine.



Companies today can either find NEW ways to monetize media products, or they can watch as file sharing runs them down and slaughters them. The problem here is that file sharing as it stands is not going anywhere. TPB has been attacked constantly by several governments, and yet it stands stronger than ever.

ISP's can threaten all they want, but if piracy is as widespread as the FBI would have us believe, then ISP's will see themselves shutting off something in the area of 60% of their customers. Far too much money to be worthwhile.

a better less expensive table? .. might be cheaper but better, thats a bit of a call, and how would an IPad stem the tide of cheap ass people who pirate the hell out of the codexs to be cool and have them all? thatll never happen. but lets be honest i did a google for the codex's as a pdf, and OMG they are shoddy cheap rubbish scans 90% of the time with poor lighting, shocking coloring etc etc etc, now if GW already made it in the PDF format then they make it easier, and people will maybe d/l a shoddy version then get sick of that and buy the real thing, that wouldnt happen if the current digital dex's were just able to be copy/pasted.

The last 3 40k codices that were scanned into PDF's are near flawless.

And not all piracy is done because people are cheap. In the case of PDF's, not only are they free(that's the illegal part) but they take up exactly zero room in your house. My kids can't rip pages out of them, the dog can't pee on them, the wife can't accidentally spill coffee on them.

With PDFs, I can take my entire library with me and use them on damn near any device or anyones computer should the need arise.

And for each one that I have, I would have paid for them. But GW doesn't offer the product that I want.

The issue is there are some who just want it 'for free' regardless what you do.

Sadly, that is true. But that is true of any industry really. There will always be shrink. The question is not how do you stop it outright(as that is impossible) but rather how do you convert thieves into customers.

Clearly they want your product, so find a middle ground. And then of course some people can't be won over at all and will pirate it anyway, those people are douchebags.

nkelsch wrote:
Android is fragmented as all hell, and Android 'customers' are 6 times less likely to purchase apps.

There's a difference between "Android customers" and "GW customers who own an Android device". Just because Android customers are 6 times less likely to purchase apps doesn't mean a GW customer with an Android device would be 6 times less inclined to buy an ebook than an GW customer with an Apple device.

Hell, I've owned an iPhone since the 3GS and I've never bought an app for it, never had the need. I have, however, bought audio books and plenty of music which I use on my iPhone.

Personally I'd buy several of GW's digital books if they were available across all devices. I find myself traveling a lot these days and it affects my choices to buy printed books. I don't have an iPad, but even if I did, I would NOT be buying a digital book that can only be read on an iPad, what happens in 2 to 3 years when the iPad dies? I'm locked in to buying another iPad regardless of the fact the competition may be better (assuming iPads still exist) or I lose access to all my digital books. No thanks!

 cincydooley wrote:
I'm a really big fan of all the digital content. Ill never buy a hardcover codex again.

Active updates? Check.
Multiple codeces in one tablet? Check.
Rule quick links ? Check.

Love it.

Ability to re-sell the book later?
Ability to loan to a friend?
Ability to keep the book should GW want to get rid of it (i.e. avoid remote delitions which do happen)?
Ability to read book on anything that isn't Apple*?

Some people value those things.

I'd probably buy an e-version of the codex IF it was reasonably priced (<50% of paper, or included with paper) and was vendor agnostic (.epub, .pdf etc). But I'm never going to buy an iDevice (no memory card slot is a deal breaker) so it's a moot point.


*Because even assuming you have an iDevice anyway, will you still have one in 5 years time? 10? What if Apple change to an incompatible system (it's happened) or goes bust (it's happened) or start releasing devices that you don't like for some reason (it's happened). Vendor lock in is a very bad thing for longevity.

Herzlos wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
I'm a really big fan of all the digital content. Ill never buy a hardcover codex again.

Active updates? Check.
Multiple codeces in one tablet? Check.
Rule quick links ? Check.

Love it.

Ability to re-sell the book later?
Ability to loan to a friend?
Ability to keep the book should GW want to get rid of it (i.e. avoid remote delitions which do happen)?
Ability to read book on anything that isn't Apple*?

Ability to re-sell the book later? - No. Then again, I don't really have the ability to sell my old codices later, either. Well, I do, technically but only for five bucks at most and with eBay/PayPal/postage fees it really isn't worth doing.

Ability to loan to a friend? - As long as you trust him/her with your iPad. I don't know about other platforms, do you have the ability to loan your Kindle eBooks to people?

Ability to keep the book should GW want to get rid of it (i.e. avoid remote delitions which do happen)? This can actually be done. You just have to make a back-up copy of your codex and keep it in a different folder "just in case". This way if you find that they've pulled some shenanigans, you can just drop the old file back in and be on your way.

Ability to read book on anything that isn't Apple*? You mean like your Microsoft Surface?

 Moopy wrote:
Everything is incomplete until it's finished.

And the sky is blue, what's your point?

They haven't bothered to digitize anything but new releases, but not otherwise existing, in-print and in-use books that already existed. The collection is incomplete, and will be for years to come most likely. This means digital copies do not remove the need to haul books around for many/most players, defeating much of the point.

Irrelevant? Hardly, I use the digitial codexs in my current games, so that makes no sense.

Irrelevant for those that have far more complete collections and have had them for many years, available to use on a far wider range of devices at a far lower price point

 Breotan wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
I'm a really big fan of all the digital content. Ill never buy a hardcover codex again.

Active updates? Check.
Multiple codeces in one tablet? Check.
Rule quick links ? Check.

Love it.

Ability to re-sell the book later?
Ability to loan to a friend?
Ability to keep the book should GW want to get rid of it (i.e. avoid remote delitions which do happen)?
Ability to read book on anything that isn't Apple*?

Ability to re-sell the book later? - No. Then again, I don't really have the ability to sell my old codices later, either. Well, I do, technically but only for five bucks at most and with eBay/PayPal/postage fees it really isn't worth doing.

Ability to loan to a friend? - As long as you trust him/her with your iPad. I don't know about other platforms, do you have the ability to loan your Kindle eBooks to people?

Ability to keep the book should GW want to get rid of it (i.e. avoid remote delitions which do happen)? This can actually be done. You just have to make a back-up copy of your codex and keep it in a different folder "just in case". This way if you find that they've pulled some shenanigans, you can just drop the old file back in and be on your way.

Ability to read book on anything that isn't Apple*? You mean like your Microsoft Surface?

On Nooks you can share any given title for something like 2 weeks to someone just like loaning them a book.

Also, I'm more inclined to share a $100 piece of hardware than I am a $500 ipad.

You can still resell current edition books for a decent sum if you decide to drop the army/game.

Other readers: ANY android device, Kindle, Nook, any other device that reads PDF's, as well as PCs. Not sure(as I don't own one) but can you read your ibook on your Mac computer? Can you print out a reference sheet from it?

 Aerethan wrote:
You can still resell current edition books for a decent sum if you decide to drop the army/game.

So, in other words I can sell it as long as I'm selling my figures, too?

I'm currently selling my Tau and am NOT getting significant value on my "investment". In fact, you might say that people buying my stuff are getting some pretty damned good deals. How much do you think my old Tau codex will go for?

 Aerethan wrote:
can you read your ibook on your Mac computer? Can you print out a reference sheet from it?

Don't know. I don't own a Mac. I'm going expect that you can't, though. The iBook is pretty highly customized for the iPad.

 Breotan wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:
You can still resell current edition books for a decent sum if you decide to drop the army/game.

So, in other words I can sell it as long as I'm selling my figures, too?

I'm currently selling my Tau and am NOT getting significant value on my "investment". In fact, you might say that people buying my stuff are getting some pretty damned good deals. How much do you think my old Tau codex will go for?

 Aerethan wrote:
can you read your ibook on your Mac computer? Can you print out a reference sheet from it?

Don't know. I don't own a Mac. I'm going expect that you can't, though. The iBook is pretty highly customized for the iPad.

Well, I think you know quite well that buying miniatures isn't an investment. I also suspect you know that used goods are typically worth less than new goods. I'm also pretty sure you understand that selling something you do not want for five dollars gives you more value than retaining the item that you have no desire to possess any more. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that you're being a touch disingenuous about this entire resale issue.

 Breotan wrote:
There is a logic fallacy in here somewhere... if people download PDFs for free already, why would they start to pay $50+ to buy it instead? I suppose there would be a few, but you'd really have to stretch your definitions to call it "stemming the tide". People torrent the PDFs because they are free, not because they don't have an iPad.

So look at that from the other angle... if people are going to share the illegal PDFs anyway, what difference does it make if GW release their digital media in an easier to pirate format? Those who would happily pay for the content if it was available can then do so, and those who have no interest in paying for it can continue to not do so. It's not going to mean more content being pirated... it's all already out there anyway.

The iBook format doesn't stop piracy. A PDF or ePub format wouldn't increase it. And GW are just proving once again that they don't understand the internet if they truly think that they can control the spread of digital media. All they achieve with the iBook format is to exclude that part of their customer base who would love to have legitimate digital copies but don't have an iPad.

the easier stuff is to pirate,

the more people will do it,

so the more likely it is that a copy will end up on a site a prospective 'shopper' will go to (and trust to download stuff from)

so even if you can't prevent piracy, it's worth making it harder

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Moopy wrote:
Everything is incomplete until it's finished.

And the sky is blue, what's your point?

They haven't bothered to digitize anything but new releases, but not otherwise existing, in-print and in-use books that already existed. The collection is incomplete, and will be for years to come most likely. This means digital copies do not remove the need to haul books around for many/most players, defeating much of the point.

Irrelevant? Hardly, I use the digitial codexs in my current games, so that makes no sense.

Irrelevant for those that have far more complete collections and have had them for many years, available to use on a far wider range of devices at a far lower price point

This 'collection' is something you have in your head, they are rule books for a game. There are only two things that matter. Do you want an iBook copy*, or not. I think GW caters for both options

*I am aware that people want it on other formats, but that is a whole different argument that I won't repeat for the nth time.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
the easier stuff is to pirate,

the more people will do it,

so the more likely it is that a copy will end up on a site a prospective 'shopper' will go to (and trust to download stuff from)

so even if you can't prevent piracy, it's worth making it harder

Can you explain to me how sharing a scanned PDF of a codex is harder than sharing an eBook?

The counter to that argument is that the easier stuff is the buy, the more people will do it. An officially unavailable product (e.g. a codex PDF) will always be pirated, without fail, because there isn't a way to get it legitimately. If it has a reliable and official retail channel? Sales will happen. Look at Steam! The greatest example of ease of acquisition beating out piracy. The thing about publishing a PDF for the codices is that it's trivial! Making a PDF from an already laid out book shouldn't be difficult. Making it available for sale can only be a good thing!

The Apple snobbery here is just hilarious, as it usually is. Beyond that, however, GW would have me as a customer for digital codexes if they were available on a platform other than iPads. I would pay if they gave me the option to.

 insaniak wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
the easier stuff is to pirate,

the more people will do it,

so the more likely it is that a copy will end up on a site a prospective 'shopper' will go to (and trust to download stuff from)

so even if you can't prevent piracy, it's worth making it harder

Can you explain to me how sharing a scanned PDF of a codex is harder than sharing an eBook?

You theoretically have to strip some DRM scheme out of an eBook using the myriad of software that exists for that sole purpose. I've never done it, as I don't really do the "ebook thing", but, as I know people who possess the entire Kindle library and did not pay for it, it must be quite trivial.

Unless you were asking rhetorically, in that case, disregard my answer.

Yeah, largely rhetorical. The point is that the format that GW choose for their digital media has absolutely zero impact on piracy, because piracy has never required original digital media in the first place.

They could release it in a format that requires you to be standing in Tom Kirby's office for it to activate, and someone would still just scan the paper codex and upload it.

When I said PDF, I didn't mean that, I mean iOS. Gah, I'm just too used to saying "PDF" when talking about digital downloads.

 insaniak wrote:
Yeah, largely rhetorical. The point is that the format that GW choose for their digital media has absolutely zero impact on piracy, because piracy has never required original digital media in the first place.

They could release it in a format that requires you to be standing in Tom Kirby's office for it to activate, and someone would still just scan the paper codex and upload it.

This.


Ibooks don't impact piracy. Prices, however, do.

As stated, for THIS specific product, there are those out there who are currently scanning books and uploading them scant days after release. Now if those people had PDF's to begin with, perhaps that time would slow down, or those who scan would stop altogether(since they no longer need to make scans).

GW COULD be cashing in on a % of those who currently download pirated PDFs of their content and who choose not to spend $50 for those books, but would spend $25 on a PDF(and having seen manufacturer PDF's of certain Codices, the formatting into consumer PDF's would be minimal since the final pre printed versions are already PDF's).

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Moopy wrote:
Everything is incomplete until it's finished.

And the sky is blue, what's your point?

When you make a generalized statement about something that's currently under production, or a work in progress, and infer it's bad because everything wasn't released all at once- then expect people to point out that logic is wrong.

It would be bad if they had no plans on making them ever. It's not bad because other products are in the pipeline; it will just take them longer to get to the ones you want.

 Aerethan wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Yeah, largely rhetorical. The point is that the format that GW choose for their digital media has absolutely zero impact on piracy, because piracy has never required original digital media in the first place.

They could release it in a format that requires you to be standing in Tom Kirby's office for it to activate, and someone would still just scan the paper codex and upload it.

This.


Ibooks don't impact piracy. Prices, however, do.

As stated, for THIS specific product, there are those out there who are currently scanning books and uploading them scant days after release. Now if those people had PDF's to begin with, perhaps that time would slow down, or those who scan would stop altogether(since they no longer need to make scans).

GW COULD be cashing in on a % of those who currently download pirated PDFs of their content and who choose not to spend $50 for those books, but would spend $25 on a PDF(and having seen manufacturer PDF's of certain Codices, the formatting into consumer PDF's would be minimal since the final pre printed versions are already PDF's).

I agree. You can't stop piracy, but you can mitigate it by offering a good deal that will tempt people who would otherwise not buy it (whether they pirate it or just read a friend's copy).

GW doesn't have a pipeline. They've said so themselves. Armies get redone when the mood strikes a writer to redo the book, then the models are designed and rules written for those models.

I'll put it this way, sense we're getting stuck on terms:

The codex are coming out at an extremely fast rate compared to before. Once we go through the codex for armies that don't have them, the ones that got skipped will be created.

Why do I think that? GW will want ways of bringing in new revenue after they've gone through all the splash updates. It'll be too soon to start a new revision of the rules, so will help. We all know how much GW loves money, so there's no reason for them not to put out more things to sell. Being a BA player, I know I'm going to have a long wait for my codex to come out digitally. : /

 insaniak wrote:

 Breotan wrote:
There is a logic fallacy in here somewhere... if people download PDFs for free already, why would they start to pay $50+ to buy it instead? I suppose there would be a few, but you'd really have to stretch your definitions to call it "stemming the tide". People torrent the PDFs because they are free, not because they don't have an iPad.

So look at that from the other angle... if people are going to share the illegal PDFs anyway, what difference does it make if GW release their digital media in an easier to pirate format? Those who would happily pay for the content if it was available can then do so, and those who have no interest in paying for it can continue to not do so. It's not going to mean more content being pirated... it's all already out there anyway.

The iBook format doesn't stop piracy. A PDF or ePub format wouldn't increase it. And GW are just proving once again that they don't understand the internet if they truly think that they can control the spread of digital media. All they achieve with the iBook format is to exclude that part of their customer base who would love to have legitimate digital copies but don't have an iPad.

Speaking for myself, I'm in the process of trying to pick up the various paper codices I've missed out on in the last 5-10 years. I don't own an iPad and have no intention to purchase one, but I do have PCs, Laptop, netbook etc and considering buying an inexpensive tablet. Would I pay (a reasonable price) for PDF versions of the codices to use? I sure would. Unfortunately, the only way to get PDF versions of these books to use on my current devices is to torrent them - and there's the rub!

It's funny: if GW had simply released "only a PDF" you can bet your bottom dollar people here would be complaining that GW took the easy, lazy way out and didn't add any benefit to the codex.

As to Apple snobbery: where? I love how there are some folks that like to pull that card simply because someone owns an ipad. We got ours because it has the Best App Store and we already had content on our iTunes account. And when we bought it (we have a gen 2) it was CLEARLY the best device on the market. My wife had a Nexus 7. We like it, for the most part, but a recent OS update has rendered the battery virtually worthless. It drains faster than if I was streaming HD content on my iPad

Azazelx wrote:Unfortunately, the only way to get PDF versions of these books to use on my current devices is to torrent them...

Well, there's also the option to scan them... and given our newish copyright law amendments, that's even a legal option if you're just looking for backup copies of your print books.

cincydooley wrote:It's funny: if GW had simply released "only a PDF" you can bet your bottom dollar people here would be complaining that GW took the easy, lazy way out and didn't add any benefit to the codex.

What 'added benefit' do they need? It's a codex. That's all it needs to be.

 insaniak wrote:

Azazelx wrote:Unfortunately, the only way to get PDF versions of these books to use on my current devices is to torrent them...

Well, there's also the option to scan them... and given our newish copyright law amendments, that's even a legal option if you're just looking for backup copies of your print books.

cincydooley wrote:It's funny: if GW had simply released "only a PDF" you can bet your bottom dollar people here would be complaining that GW took the easy, lazy way out and didn't add any benefit to the codex.

What 'added benefit' do they need? It's a codex. That's all it needs to be.

Exactly. If you want to pay full price to have all manner of search and pop up functionality, go for it. I don't need that, and I don't want to pay for it.

I've already outlined quite a few reasons to have a simple, inexpensive PDF codex earlier, and fancy pop ups are not one of them.

I've never been a big fan of anything digital. I prefer to have the physical copy. What happens if your ipad die's and you have no way to replace it. Or what if your coputer die's. I'd much rather have the physical copy of anything weither its a book or a cd. I'm glad they give it as an option for those that choose to use it. More options are good. Still not buying death from the skies though. I'm not paying 30 dollars for a page of rules. I have patience I can wait.

A basic form of digital codex and then an upgraded version for those that relish such things, much like the current crop of "limited edition" books that come out with each army/rules release.

Just a FYI and not defending or nay saying anything but i can build an app in indesign that does everything the ebook does. Hover-overs, 360 images, all that. Indesign CS6 can make extremely intricate pdfs with the DPS builder plug ins. Now i would agree that IOS distributing is much tighter, better organized and better watched over than others. You really can say a PDF can't do what they have now.

Also don't forget that in the ebooks and pdfs once you create a template the work is done. You are just linking new pictures and text.

Also i have seen full 6th edition rulebooks completely scanned in and read by acrobat OCR. EVerything is read and bookmarked accordingly. I personally do not need that as i like to have an open book near me.

I would love it actually as a consumer if they gave you a code upon purchasing a physical copy to download it on your chosen device for free or even a small fee at the register. Sort of like selling insurance on electronics. I buy the physical codex at the register and I would have the option to get a code for the digital download for say another 5 or 10 dollars.

 wowsmash wrote:
I've never been a big fan of anything digital. I prefer to have the physical copy. What happens if your ipad die's and you have no way to replace it. Or what if your coputer die's. I'd much rather have the physical copy of anything weither its a book or a cd.

This is basically why I don't want to buy anything that's linked to a single device. I don't have to worry about my music being lost because my computer dies because I have it all on 2 separate computers + a backup on an external HDD and it's also on my phone. I'm not overly worried about losing my video games, if Steam goes down it's a problem, but my house could explode and I would still be able to download all my games again.

The idea of a digital product is more robust than a physical product because you can lose a device but not have lost the product and you can carry hundreds of products with you unlike a physical product which you can lose and to carry more than a couple of books around is inconvenient.

BUT, GW have missed that boat by making it iPad only. I don't trust the lifespan of an iPad and when the iPad dies, who wants to have to buy another one specifically because all your products can only be viewed through one?

If they made digital versions that were actually cross platform, even if it required some proprietary software to read, I'd be all over the GW digital products (even if I do think some of them are overpriced... though I think the print versions are overpriced too so I'm not singling out digital on that point).

 Moopy wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Moopy wrote:
Everything is incomplete until it's finished.

And the sky is blue, what's your point?

When you make a generalized statement about something that's currently under production, or a work in progress, and infer it's bad because everything wasn't released all at once- then expect people to point out that logic is wrong.

It would be bad if they had no plans on making them ever. It's not bad because other products are in the pipeline; it will just take them longer to get to the ones you want.

If you're going to define "complete" as "only as they're done", sure, yes it's a work in progress, but the fact remains many books that are likely to be around for quite a while aren't going to ever see digital editions, and that negates much of the point of having such digital editions if you still need to carry book copies around that aren't any more expensive, thus the utility is greatly negated.

Just for curiosity hi much space do the codex take up. Is it the same for each dex or does it depend on the book?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 wowsmash wrote:
I've never been a big fan of anything digital. I prefer to have the physical copy. What happens if your ipad die's and you have no way to replace it. Or what if your coputer die's. I'd much rather have the physical copy of anything weither its a book or a cd.

This is basically why I don't want to buy anything that's linked to a single device. I don't have to worry about my music being lost because my computer dies because I have it all on 2 separate computers + a backup on an external HDD and it's also on my phone. I'm not overly worried about losing my video games, if Steam goes down it's a problem, but my house could explode and I would still be able to download.....

Yeah....that's pretty much how iTunes works. If you're not worried about steam, you shouldn't be worried about iTunes. And all concerns about "losing it" are IMO silly, as every one can be applied to a regular book as well.

BUT, GW have missed that boat by making it iPad only. I don't trust the lifespan of an iPad and when the iPad dies, who wants to have to buy another one specifically because all your products can only be viewed through one?

If they made digital versions that were actually cross platform, even if it required some proprietary software to read, I'd be all over the GW digital products (even if I do think some of them are overpriced... though I think the print versions are overpriced too so I'm not singling out digital on that point).

You lost me here. "Lifespan of an ipad?" Really? I have an 11 year old iPod that still works great and is still supported by iTunes. I think you'd be really hard pressed to find any computer based electronics with longer life spans than iDevices.

It is so freaking hard to not throw more lather into the Apple fight but, gah, this is Dakka not Slashdot.

wowsmash wrote:Just for curiosity hi much space do the codex take up. Is it the same for each dex or does it depend on the book?

I want to say they're in the 500MB-1GB range, but that may have been people talking about White Dwarf issues. I know someone who's been regretting his decision to get the smallest iPad mini because the WD stuff is taking up all the storage on it.

 wowsmash wrote:
Just for curiosity hi much space do the codex take up. Is it the same for each dex or does it depend on the book?

The chaos daemons book is 1.67GB it seems :0 not tiny
Dark angels it says 1.03GB
Tau is 1.40GB
Chaos space marines 887MB
Space marines 362MB

So it varies a lot.

Massive sizes for a product that you can't add memory to.

Here are examples of PDF sizes for those same 5 products:

Daemons 138MB(Crazy high quality compared to the rest)
Dark Angels 47MB
Tau 20MB
Chaos Space Marines 36MB
Space Marines 159MB(again abnormally large)

The only thing that appears to vastly affect file size here is the resolution of the scans. Full 6th edition rulebook is only 260MB, and that is one that you can search and copy text from(the rest are just image scans).

Massively smaller on average. Across the 42 PDF's that I don't have it's 2.99GB including all of the IA books.

Those file sizes for the ibook versions are crazy high.

Yeah, I'm sure the fact that there's 360° pictures in a resolution designed for the Retina screens has nothing to do with the file size.

Quark wrote:
Yeah, I'm sure the fact that there's 360° pictures in a resolution designed for the Retina screens has nothing to do with the file size.

I don't think anyone was suggesting that GW is just throwing 500MB of random noise into their files for fun.

Quark wrote:
Yeah, I'm sure the fact that there's 360° pictures in a resolution designed for the Retina screens has nothing to do with the file size.

But is that content that is really needed? It's the same 360° pic from their website, and I doubt anyone really needs those pics when they are out of range of some manner of WiFi or computer with internet.

To me, every single pic that is on GW's site is free content. I will not pay for it's inclusion in a product. GW could sell me a codex with not a single picture of the models and I'd be completely fine with that.

And even more so, GW deliberately adding unnecessary content into files that can only be used on a product with incredibly limited storage space is just stupid. If GW did every 40k and WFB they'd be looking at well over 32GB of space taken up, which is more than most iPad users generally have.

I feel like at this point you're just finding reasons to dislike it. And that's fine, but there are plenty of us that very much prefer the format. It gets tiring being treated like a pariah because you do.

 cincydooley wrote:
I feel like at this point you're just finding reasons to dislike it. And that's fine, but there are plenty of us that very much prefer the format. It gets tiring being treated like a pariah because you do.

I'm not bashing any consumer for buying it. I'm saying that the way GW is doing it is limiting that potential customer base.

Ipads are cool. Could they be better? Absolutely, and if they had some basic things like expandable storage(which even my $70 nook has) then they'd open themselves to a wider market.

It's the same thing with the iBooks. If GW made them more accessible, then they'd have more customers to buy them.

As it stands, I don't need an iPad, and I can't use the GW iBooks without one, therefore GW gets no money from me.

I understand completely why Apple limits memory on Ipads: so they can sell you a new one for more money in 12 months. You think that 128GB of flash memory costs that much? It really doesn't. $800 for an iPad who's only difference from the $500 model is <$50 worth of flash storage. They charge $100 for 16GB of memory that costs $20 at wal mart on a thumb drive. A 32GB mini SD card is $24.

So you take a product with VERY limited storage, and your first instinct is to make bulky files for it that would fill the tablet after only a few books and the core rule book?


The product could be so much better, and GW could make far more money. That is the point here.

 Aerethan wrote:

As it stands, I don't need an iPad, and I can't use the GW iBooks without one, therefore GW gets no money from me.

Before GW made Digibooks... did you buy and pay for a phsyical book for every PDF you have in your collection?

And GW has three choices to expand their e-book market:

1. Develop a custom app for Android which can replicate the functionality... But there would need to be a risk analysis that the expanded market and increased customer purchases off-sets the extensive development costs so it is actually a profitable venture.

2. License a 3rd party framework which will handle the fragmented issues across platforms, but then pay a percentage to this company... there would need to be a risk analysis that the expanded market and increased customer purchases off-sets the licensing costs so it is actually a profitable venture.

3. Make everything into open-format PDFs which is easy to do. Attempt to 'sell' the PDFs and hope people pay for the PDFs and that it doesn't actually lead to a drop in digital and physical sales for a net loss.

If you can show a working business model, I am sure GW would accept it. Just because you claim you want to give GW money, it doesn't mean it is always profitable for GW to do what is required to accept that money. Often people have ideas and wants which just are not realistic... Android development to expand your market is not a simple 'no-brainer' decision and lots of companies have iOS only apps because of it. It has lots of risks and often can be a moneypit. If the goal is to take a small loss there to use it to promote other parts of the business, then maybe it can be accepted. I think providing physical books is probably a better solution for a non-software engineering company for right now until Android gets its act together.

(Nooks with their handicapped OS are a whole nother mess. You can make stuff which is android compatible which won't run on Nooks due to BS hardcoded restrictions. I can't see how anyone legitimately uses a nook without cracking the OS.)

 Aerethan wrote:
age scans).

Massively smaller on average. Across the 42 PDF's that I don't have it's 2.99GB including all of the IA books.

Those file sizes for the ibook versions are crazy high.

And presumably you have the physical copies of all 42 of those PDFs?

nkelsch wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:

As it stands, I don't need an iPad, and I can't use the GW iBooks without one, therefore GW gets no money from me.

Before GW made Digibooks... did you buy and pay for a phsyical book for every PDF you have in your collection?

And GW has three choices to expand their e-book market:

1. Develop a custom app for Android which can replicate the functionality... But there would need to be a risk analysis that the expanded market and increased customer purchases off-sets the extensive development costs so it is actually a profitable venture.

2. License a 3rd party framework which will handle the fragmented issues across platforms, but then pay a percentage to this company... there would need to be a risk analysis that the expanded market and increased customer purchases off-sets the licensing costs so it is actually a profitable venture.

3. Make everything into open-format PDFs which is easy to do. Attempt to 'sell' the PDFs and hope people pay for the PDFs and that it doesn't actually lead to a drop in digital and physical sales for a net loss.

If you can show a working business model, I am sure GW would accept it. Just because you claim you want to give GW money, it doesn't mean it is always profitable for GW to do what is required to accept that money. Often people have ideas and wants which just are not realistic... Android development to expand your market is not a simple 'no-brainer' decision and lots of companies have iOS only apps because of it. It has lots of risks and often can be a moneypit. If the goal is to take a small loss there to use it to promote other parts of the business, then maybe it can be accepted. I think providing physical books is probably a better solution for a non-software engineering company for right now until Android gets its act together.

(Nooks with their handicapped OS are a whole nother mess. You can make stuff which is android compatible which won't run on Nooks due to BS hardcoded restrictions. I can't see how anyone legitimately uses a nook without cracking the OS.)

The nook reference was only there to point out that a $70 ereader has expandable storage, yet an $800 tablet doesn't.

And I understand the need for GW to have a solid plan for such things, and I understand the costs associated with it. So let me posit an instance where GW already had that crap figured out and still manages to botch sales.

Army specific magic cards. There is ZERO reason to limit these to small runs. It costs about $.40 to make a pack which they then sell for what, $6? And 99% of people who play that army will end up buying the cards, because $6 is not much to the consumer and the perceived value is high. I'd even buy them(and currently do) for armies I don't play, just because I collect them.

The overhead for those cards is minimal, and the profit margin is huge.


Just because GW knows a product is profitable and the legwork is already done doesn't mean they know what they are doing.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cincydooley wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:
age scans).

Massively smaller on average. Across the 42 PDF's that I don't have it's 2.99GB including all of the IA books.

Those file sizes for the ibook versions are crazy high.

And presumably you have the physical copies of all 42 of those PDFs?

I did say that I DON'T have them... >.>

nkelsch wrote:
1. Develop a custom app for Android which can replicate the functionality... But there would need to be a risk analysis that the expanded market and increased customer purchases off-sets the extensive development costs so it is actually a profitable venture.

2. License a 3rd party framework which will handle the fragmented issues across platforms, but then pay a percentage to this company... there would need to be a risk analysis that the expanded market and increased customer purchases off-sets the licensing costs so it is actually a profitable venture.

What functionality does a codex need?

Sure, 360 degree rotating pictures and pop-up rules notes are nice, but we've survived without them in hardcopy codexes since forever, and I think we could all quite successfully use a digital codex that similarly lacked these things.

There is absolutely zero need for some piece of complex software or a custom app. A PDF or an ePub can be read with at most a simple, readily available application, on any Android, Apple or Microsoft device. Tablets, home computers, laptops, phones. Hell, I could probably access them on my TV if I got really carried away.

3. Make everything into open-format PDFs which is easy to do. Attempt to 'sell' the PDFs and hope people pay for the PDFs and that it doesn't actually lead to a drop in digital and physical sales for a net loss.

As I said before, those who would be happy to pay for them will do so. Those who won't would have been using pirate copies anyway. So the net result of releasing the books in a more accessible format is that they increase their potential market from those people with an iPad who are happy to pay for a digital release, to those people with any electronic device made in the last 20 years who are happy to pay for a digital release.

The mathematics there don't seem to be too complicated.

I would definitely pay for a high quality PDF that had searchable text.

Right now, I am aware that people that are not me get low quality PDFs that often do not have searchable text. This annoys these other people that are not me. Not that that stops those people from downloading those low quality PDFs anyways. I mean you takes what you (meaning those other people) can get.

Of course, those other people who are not me might not buy PDFs if they were as expensive as the paper codex either.

we all know why GW is doing iBooks Codex and Army Book releases...
they have all the bells and whistles, so appear as a high-end product...
GW is trying to sell Ferraris, not Yugos...
sure, the Yugo will get you to work and back, but it doesn't look, sound, or feel like a Ferrari...
i'm not saying it's right, just that we all know where GW's head is at...

nobody needs the high-end options, but some people like them...
thankfully, everyone still has the option of buying a printed Codex...
imagine GW releasing only digital iBooks material, and no more print...
if that happened, all the complaints would be 100% legit...
right now, to me, it's much ado about nothing...

cheers
jah

 insaniak wrote:
What functionality does a codex need?

Sure, 360 degree rotating pictures and pop-up rules notes are nice, but we've survived without them in hardcopy codexes since forever, and I think we could all quite successfully use a digital codex that similarly lacked these things.

There is absolutely zero need for some piece of complex software or a custom app. .

For you.

For those of us that can only get one or two games in a month, that don't have all the rules hard-line memorized, the pop ups are an absolute godsend. I love having access to them.

I also quite like having the 3D images at hand. I typically have my iPad sitting next to me while I paint, and having the 3D models for reference is also fantastic.

I would not buy a PDF version that didn't have the first feature. For me, the 360 renders is simply a value add.

So again, because those features are superfulous to you doesn't mean they arent an absolute boon to others.

 cincydooley wrote:
For you.

For those of us that can only get one or two games in a month, that don't have all the rules hard-line memorized, the pop ups are an absolute godsend. I love having access to them.

Both ePubs and PDFs can have internal links to a rules glossary, which would accomplish exactly the same thing. And ePubs could probably handle a similar pop-up system, with rules terms just being added to the device's (or an internal) dictionary.

So again, because those features are superfulous to you doesn't mean they arent an absolute boon to others.

I didn't say they weren't useful features. Just unnecessary ones. A less clunky filetype could accomplish almost exactly the same functionality for the rules, and the 360 degree pictures can just as easily be viewed through the GW website.

Insaniak, I'm just curious if you've used one of the digital codeces yet. I don't know that I've ever seen an eBook or PDF that has the functionality these do. I'd have no interest in a glossary because I'd still have to flip back and forth.

 cincydooley wrote:
Insaniak, I'm just curious if you've used one of the digital codeces yet. I don't know that I've ever seen an eBook or PDF that has the functionality these do.

I'm getting the impression he hasn't or at least hasn't had extensive time to play with all the features. I've got the SM and Necron codeces on the iPad and they're far closer to actual apps than eBooks. They have functionality that a PDF can't match. Now if that functionality is something a PDF lover isn't interested in, fine but don't try to play it off as though PDFs are the same as what GW is selling on iTunes.

 insaniak wrote:

What functionality does a codex need?

Sure, 360 degree rotating pictures and pop-up rules notes are nice, but we've survived without them in hardcopy codexes since forever, and I think we could all quite successfully use a digital codex that similarly lacked these things.

There is absolutely zero need for some piece of complex software or a custom app. A PDF or an ePub can be read with at most a simple, readily available application, on any Android, Apple or Microsoft device. Tablets, home computers, laptops, phones. Hell, I could probably access them on my TV if I got really carried away.

Eh... 10 years ago I swore GPSs were a fad. Then when you get a car with one, not only are they useful, but you become simply a more informed driver. Being able to see an overhead map of the city blocks and upcoming turns and compass directions simply make you a better driver, less need for crossing 4 lanes or being lost, knowing the posted speedlimit at all times. I find it hard to drive without my built-in GPS now because it provides me so much more useful information and makes me a safer driver.

I find a majority of the features of the iCodexes super useful. And the ones which are not useful are fun and worth the added effort to me. Now that I have it, I would be upset if they 'dumbed down' the format and took these features away... Which is the issue. If they release a poorer version on other formats, people will complain why they didn't spend a ton developing an app version equal to the ipad version.

And people don't pay for PDFs. The rampant piracy isn't going to go away because people who Pirate will find a reason why the released product isn't a 'value' to them, but they still must have it. They are incapable of 'going without'.

 cincydooley wrote:
Insaniak, I'm just curious if you've used one of the digital codeces yet. I don't know that I've ever seen an eBook or PDF that has the functionality these do. I'd have no interest in a glossary because I'd still have to flip back and forth.

I've seen them, but not used them. I don't have an iPad, and have no interest in getting one. So until GW release digital codexes in a format that will work on my computer, Kobo or phone, they won't be selling them to me.



Oh, and as it turns out, PDFs also have the functionality built in to create pop-up notes. So either ePub or PDF could accomplish the same thing as the iBook for your rules requirements, without the need for a separate Glossary page that you have to turn to (and when did that become a hardship, really?)




Automatically Appended Next Post:

nkelsch wrote:
And people don't pay for PDFs. The rampant piracy isn't going to go away because people who Pirate will find a reason why the released product isn't a 'value' to them, but they still must have it. They are incapable of 'going without'.

Many of the same people who bought the iBook version would have bought a PDF or ePub version. While I accept that some people like all the bells and whistles, others don't care about them at all, and just wanted a legal digital version.

If you can find one of those PDFs I'd love to see it. I didn't know they could do that and could find some real applicability for my job.

If it was in PDF or ebook I simply think they'd lose a lot of sales. I have nothing to back that up, but those PDFs would be online within a week.

 cincydooley wrote:
If you can find one of those PDFs I'd love to see it. I didn't know they could do that and could find some real applicability for my job.

If it was in PDF or ebook I simply think they'd lose a lot of sales. I have nothing to back that up, but those PDFs would be online within a week.

PDF's are already up within a week. Iirc the 6th edition rulebook which is rather well indexed was up 2 weeks after.


People are able to do them decently in their free time, just think of what GW could do with them if they actually put some effort into it.



And since so many people ask me if I do/would buy physical copies of all the PDF's I have, short answer is sometimes. The 40k ones I have mostly because they were part of a larger collection. For the WFB ones, I don't have copies of some of the books, but if legit PDF's were sold, I'd honestly buy them.

A few examples: I had the PDF for Storm of Magic and Monstrous Arcanum, and still wanted actual books of them, so I bought them. To the same degree, I ordered Blood in the Badlands at my local GW store, and a week later was told it was OOP and out of stock and that I wouldn't be getting the book. I then scoured for a PDF and found one. It's an absolute crap copy, but well enough to get the rules. And that book I'd buy in a heartbeat if they brought it back.

So while there will always be those who want it free, I am not one of them. Another reason I like having PDF's is so that I can tab between them and Army Builder when designing lists to read up on the actual rules instead of the AB cliff notes. Having a book across the house that I have to go get, prop up, light, not spill on etc makes that a bit hard. I'm willing to pay for convenience, it's the American way.

Is ever single thread about an electronic product released by GW going to devolve into the exact same OT discussion about the merits of PDFs?

NEWS FLASH: GW isn't going to be releasing their stuff in PDF format. Get over it already.

I have the space marine one and I would prefer pdfs, the codex is over 200 pages, and there is a huge amount of flicking and tapping I would prefer the summary page like the paper books which is much faster.

 Breotan wrote:
Is ever single thread about an electronic product released by GW going to devolve into the exact same OT discussion about the merits of PDFs?

Until GW start releasing digital media in a format everyone can actually use, probably.

Although I should point out that I haven't been talking exclusively about PDFs. I would rather see the ePub format, personally.

Seems like a really large file just for a codex. Especially for small spaced devices. That's unfortunate.

I meant a PDF with the pop ups.

There are plenty of people that have ethical problems with having PDFs without owning a physical copy. You are clearly not one of these people.

You mention the ability to flip to rules for army builder and news flash: the GW digital codexes do this.

Small spaced devices? Mine has 64 GB if storage. I've never had any problems.

 cincydooley wrote:
I meant a PDF with the pop ups.

There are plenty of people that have ethical problems with having PDFs without owning a physical copy. You are clearly not one of these people.

You mention the ability to flip to rules for army builder and news flash: the GW digital codexes do this.

Small spaced devices? Mine has 64 GB if storage. I've never had any problems.

You are right, the iBook does do that, if you own an iPad. I have a computer with 2 monitors, so I don't need a tablet on my computer desk.

And 64GB is small if the average codex is 1GB.

I'm not bashing the product's functionality, but it's lack of expandability and it's intentionally short lifespan are issues. It's the same with iPhones(I have one of those). They are designed to last long enough for you to buy the next one, quite different from computers which can easily last a decade if you maintain it well enough and barring the odd hardware malfunction. That longevity is why XP lasted so long as the top OS in the world, no companies needed to upgrade to Win7 because their desktops from 2002 still ran just fine(MS pulling support for XP is what finally killed it's hold on the market).

Apple does a lot of things specifically to prevent this. One way they do that is by not allowing computers older than X to update to newer versions of OSX. I have a Mac Mini from late 2006. It runs fine(a bit slow by todays standards) but it can't support newer software because that software requires OSX 1.5 or higher, and that Mini won't update past 1.4.3. You know what that new software was that I wanted to install for my kids? Angry Birds. For some reason Rovio and Apple felt that hand me down computers for kids to play on is stupid and somehow that stupid flash game won't play on it. It's designed specifically to get me to upgrade to a newer Mac, which isn't going to happen since my use for it is for my kids to watch youtube and play games.

For the same money as a new Mac Mini, I can get an entire bundled desktop with peripherals, and as long as the hardware works I can upgrade it for nearly a decade provided the system req's don't skyrocket.

And as I pointed out earlier, flash memory is dirt cheap, there is no reason why an iPad with 128GB should run $800 when the memory size is the ONLY difference between it and the baseline model.

At any rate, I don't only want legit PDF's for mobile devices, I like having them on my PC as well. My tablet can easily be stolen out in public, whereas my PC is locked behind a rather heavy door with a very grumpy 16 year old cat guarding it as a heat source.

 Aerethan wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
I meant a PDF with the pop ups.

There are plenty of people that have ethical problems with having PDFs without owning a physical copy. You are clearly not one of these people.

You mention the ability to flip to rules for army builder and news flash: the GW digital codexes do this.

Small spaced devices? Mine has 64 GB if storage. I've never had any problems.

You are right, the iBook does do that, if you own an iPad. I have a computer with 2 monitors, so I don't need a tablet on my computer desk.

And 64GB is small if the average codex is 1GB.

I'm not bashing the product's functionality, but it's lack of expandability and it's intentionally short lifespan are issues. It's the same with iPhones(I have one of those). They are designed to last long enough for you to buy the next one, quite different from computers which can easily last a decade if you maintain it well enough and barring the odd hardware malfunction. That longevity is why XP lasted so long as the top OS in the world, no companies needed to upgrade to Win7 because their desktops from 2002 still ran just fine(MS pulling support for XP is what finally killed it's hold on the market).

Apple does a lot of things specifically to prevent this. One way they do that is by not allowing computers older than X to update to newer versions of OSX. I have a Mac Mini from late 2006. It runs fine(a bit slow by todays standards) but it can't support newer software because that software requires OSX 1.5 or higher, and that Mini won't update past 1.4.3. You know what that new software was that I wanted to install for my kids? Angry Birds. For some reason Rovio and Apple felt that hand me down computers for kids to play on is stupid and somehow that stupid flash game won't play on it. It's designed specifically to get me to upgrade to a newer Mac, which isn't going to happen since my use for it is for my kids to watch youtube and play games.

For the same money as a new Mac Mini, I can get an entire bundled desktop with peripherals, and as long as the hardware works I can upgrade it for nearly a decade provided the system req's don't skyrocket.

And as I pointed out earlier, flash memory is dirt cheap, there is no reason why an iPad with 128GB should run $800 when the memory size is the ONLY difference between it and the baseline model.

At any rate, I don't only want legit PDF's for mobile devices, I like having them on my PC as well. My tablet can easily be stolen out in public, whereas my PC is locked behind a rather heavy door with a very grumpy 16 year old cat guarding it as a heat source.

Dude, we get it. You don't like the digital products. You can stop beating the dead horse.

 undertow wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
I meant a PDF with the pop ups.

There are plenty of people that have ethical problems with having PDFs without owning a physical copy. You are clearly not one of these people.

You mention the ability to flip to rules for army builder and news flash: the GW digital codexes do this.

Small spaced devices? Mine has 64 GB if storage. I've never had any problems.

You are right, the iBook does do that, if you own an iPad. I have a computer with 2 monitors, so I don't need a tablet on my computer desk.

And 64GB is small if the average codex is 1GB.

I'm not bashing the product's functionality, but it's lack of expandability and it's intentionally short lifespan are issues. It's the same with iPhones(I have one of those). They are designed to last long enough for you to buy the next one, quite different from computers which can easily last a decade if you maintain it well enough and barring the odd hardware malfunction. That longevity is why XP lasted so long as the top OS in the world, no companies needed to upgrade to Win7 because their desktops from 2002 still ran just fine(MS pulling support for XP is what finally killed it's hold on the market).

Apple does a lot of things specifically to prevent this. One way they do that is by not allowing computers older than X to update to newer versions of OSX. I have a Mac Mini from late 2006. It runs fine(a bit slow by todays standards) but it can't support newer software because that software requires OSX 1.5 or higher, and that Mini won't update past 1.4.3. You know what that new software was that I wanted to install for my kids? Angry Birds. For some reason Rovio and Apple felt that hand me down computers for kids to play on is stupid and somehow that stupid flash game won't play on it. It's designed specifically to get me to upgrade to a newer Mac, which isn't going to happen since my use for it is for my kids to watch youtube and play games.

For the same money as a new Mac Mini, I can get an entire bundled desktop with peripherals, and as long as the hardware works I can upgrade it for nearly a decade provided the system req's don't skyrocket.

And as I pointed out earlier, flash memory is dirt cheap, there is no reason why an iPad with 128GB should run $800 when the memory size is the ONLY difference between it and the baseline model.

At any rate, I don't only want legit PDF's for mobile devices, I like having them on my PC as well. My tablet can easily be stolen out in public, whereas my PC is locked behind a rather heavy door with a very grumpy 16 year old cat guarding it as a heat source.

Dude, we get it. You don't like the digital products. You can stop beating the dead horse.

I didn't say that I don't like them(or at least the idea of them). I said the execution could be much better, as could the price.

 Aerethan wrote:

 undertow wrote:

Dude, we get it. You don't like the digital products. You can stop beating the dead horse.

I didn't say that I don't like them(or at least the idea of them). I said the execution could be much better, as could the price.

I agree that the execution could be better, but some of that is a failing of their chosen platform. I buy technical books pretty frequently, and I don't buy them through iTunes because I can't read them on anything that doesn't run iOS. I think the price is too high as well.

However, I don't think these objections are enough to outweigh the usefulness that the digital codex brings. I already owned a couple of iPads, so that was an expense I had already incurred.

 undertow wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:

 undertow wrote:

Dude, we get it. You don't like the digital products. You can stop beating the dead horse.

I didn't say that I don't like them(or at least the idea of them). I said the execution could be much better, as could the price.

I agree that the execution could be better, but some of that is a failing of their chosen platform. I buy technical books pretty frequently, and I don't buy them through iTunes because I can't read them on anything that doesn't run iOS. I think the price is too high as well.

However, I don't think these objections are enough to outweigh the usefulness that the digital codex brings. I already owned a couple of iPads, so that was an expense I had already incurred.

Which is completely reasonable. The argument I make is that the market for these products is vastly limited to those who already own iPads, and with non Apple tablets growing in popularity, the rest of the market is growing to a point where it would be irresponsible financially for GW to ignore.

 cincydooley wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 wowsmash wrote:
I've never been a big fan of anything digital. I prefer to have the physical copy. What happens if your ipad die's and you have no way to replace it. Or what if your coputer die's. I'd much rather have the physical copy of anything weither its a book or a cd.

This is basically why I don't want to buy anything that's linked to a single device. I don't have to worry about my music being lost because my computer dies because I have it all on 2 separate computers + a backup on an external HDD and it's also on my phone. I'm not overly worried about losing my video games, if Steam goes down it's a problem, but my house could explode and I would still be able to download.....

Yeah....that's pretty much how iTunes works. If you're not worried about steam, you shouldn't be worried about iTunes. And all concerns about "losing it" are IMO silly, as every one can be applied to a regular book as well.

Yes I know that's how iTunes works, however the GW ebook can only be read on an iPad, hence, it is linked to a device family. I can download my iTunes music on my desktop or on my laptop or on my work PC and transfer it to my phone or my mp3 player or whatever. To use a GW ebook, you need an iPad.

If my house burns down, my Intel Sandy Bridge PC may die with all my music and games on the hard drive, but I can then still redownload and play them on my laptop or buy a new computer that isn't an Intel Sandy Bridge desktop and still be able to use them. That is what makes digital products really useful IMO. GW's ebooks are not the same.

BUT, GW have missed that boat by making it iPad only. I don't trust the lifespan of an iPad and when the iPad dies, who wants to have to buy another one specifically because all your products can only be viewed through one?

If they made digital versions that were actually cross platform, even if it required some proprietary software to read, I'd be all over the GW digital products (even if I do think some of them are overpriced... though I think the print versions are overpriced too so I'm not singling out digital on that point).

You lost me here. "Lifespan of an ipad?" Really? I have an 11 year old iPod that still works great and is still supported by iTunes. I think you'd be really hard pressed to find any computer based electronics with longer life spans than iDevices.

I could believe that an ipod would last 11 years, I'm not so convinced an iPad could last that same distance. It's larger and more susceptible to damage, it's battery is probably going to be dead in 3-4 years and it'll be outdated in a couple of years. If it breaks, the battery dies, randomly stops working, the buttons cease to function or it is simply incapable of performing day to day tasks, you're locked in to holding on to it, repairing it or buying a new one (if they even still exist) in order to not lose your entire book collection.

You may have had an ipod for 11 years, but an ipad is a different kettle of fish which I don't really want to gamble hundreds of dollars worth of ebooks on, and frankly, 11 years ain't all that long, I have my Space Wolves codex from almost 20 years ago and still occasionally flip through it, I have my Epic 40k rulebooks from some 16 years ago, I have my Citadel Annual from 1998.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
... my Intel Sandy Bridge PC ...

Why not just say your PC?

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
... my Intel Sandy Bridge PC ...

Why not just say your PC?

Because I was trying to draw a more appropriate parallel to an ipad. An iPad is a specific computing device, a tablet, and it's a specific type of tablet, an Apple one. I didn't say "PC" because you can buy various types of PC with different architecture using components from different companies. If my PC dies, I don't have to buy another Intel x64 desktop one to replace it and regain access to my other digital goodies, but if your iPad dies you can't just go buy ANY tablet or ANY computing device, you have to buy a tablet and it has to be an Apple one and while PCs have existed for decades, what's to say iPads will exist for decades as well (even if "tablets" still exist, "ipads" may not).

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
... my Intel Sandy Bridge PC ...

Why not just say your PC?

Because I was trying to draw a more appropriate parallel to an ipad. An iPad is a specific computing device, a tablet, and it's a specific type of tablet, an Apple one. I didn't say "PC" because you can buy various types of PC with different architecture using components from different companies. If my PC dies, I don't have to buy another Intel x64 desktop one to replace it and regain access to my other digital goodies, but if your iPad dies you can't just go buy ANY tablet or ANY computing device, you have to buy a tablet and it has to be an Apple one and while PCs have existed for decades, what's to say iPads will exist for decades as well (even if "tablets" still exist, "ipads" may not).

I know what building a PC is Last desktop I had I built myself.

I just thought you were pointing out your processor to show off or something

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
I know what building a PC is Last desktop I had I built myself.

I just thought you were pointing out your processor to show off or something

LOL, nope, it's only an i3-2100, tis pretty fast, but it's a budget CPU rather than high end and not worthy of showing off.

It would have been more appropriate if I could have said "Dell Inspiron" or "HP Pavilion" or something similar, but I have never owned a prebuilt computer in my life so it would make a liar out of me

I just showed my wife the price of the Death from the Skies book on the GW site and then asked her what she thought a digital copy might be sold for. She is crazy about her kindle so she stated that digital versions of books on there are usually sold for at least 20-30% less than a physical copy. I then went to the itunes store (I don't own an ipad) and showed her the savings one will find on the digital copy, a whopping 1 cent (for those of us in the States). She literally laughed.

Ok, my wife normally laughs a little at me for collecting little green men (Orkz), but I get the feeling that most anyone outside of the hobby would immediately have a similar response. Honestly, I find being charged full price for a digital copy that can only be used on expensive devices produced by one select company downright insulting. I love what GW makes but their business decisions over the last couple of years are near insufferable.

 Sencho wrote:
Ok, my wife normally laughs a little at me for collecting little green men (Orkz), but I get the feeling that most anyone outside of the hobby would immediately have a similar response. Honestly, I find being charged full price for a digital copy that can only be used on expensive devices produced by one select company downright insulting.

This is because the vast majority of consumers are unaware that the cost of the printing and transportation of a book only accounts for under 10% of its purchase price. The vast majority of the price goes to the writing, editing, copyediting, artwork - both interior and cover, and then of course the retailer. Apple and Amazon take 30% of that off the top, plus they charge the originator a "transmission fee" based upon the amount of data they run through their servers. With the GW books, it's pretty hefty as they range between .5-1.5G a book...because GW isn't peddling mere PDFs of their books. They're entirely separate editions that allow you to click on the images, zoom in - they occasionally contain added content.

The reason your wife thinks a book should be 20-30% the price of a physical book is because Amazon has been using the lower prices as a loss leader for years in order to create a big market for digital books, the selling point being that they are cheaper. The downside to this is that anyone who has the audacity to sell their book for what it is worth ends up getting fileted for ripping off the customer by customers who haven't the foggiest about what the business model really looks like.

Source: I'm a professional writer with a number of close friends in the gaming industry.

Massawyrm wrote:

 Sencho wrote:
Ok, my wife normally laughs a little at me for collecting little green men (Orkz), but I get the feeling that most anyone outside of the hobby would immediately have a similar response. Honestly, I find being charged full price for a digital copy that can only be used on expensive devices produced by one select company downright insulting.

This is because the vast majority of consumers are unaware that the cost of the printing and transportation of a book only accounts for under 10% of its purchase price. The vast majority of the price goes to the writing, editing, copyediting, artwork - both interior and cover, and then of course the retailer. Apple and Amazon take 30% of that off the top, plus they charge the originator a "transmission fee" based upon the amount of data they run through their servers. With the GW books, it's pretty hefty as they range between .5-1.5G a book...because GW isn't peddling mere PDFs of their books. They're entirely separate editions that allow you to click on the images, zoom in - they occasionally contain added content.

The reason your wife thinks a book should be 20-30% the price of a physical book is because Amazon has been using the lower prices as a loss leader for years in order to create a big market for digital books, the selling point being that they are cheaper. The downside to this is that anyone who has the audacity to sell their book for what it is worth ends up getting fileted for ripping off the customer by customers who haven't the foggiest about what the business model really looks like.

Source: I'm a professional writer with a number of close friends in the gaming industry.

A very interesting read. It would be nice if that would be the end of it, but, unfortunately, this is Dakka

I call BS on that, most books are written on Computers anyway, it is the book publisher that sets the book price, and the costs are known before hand, like the costs of the manuscript.

And strangely i would just have an PDF rulebook for the rules, not for knick knaks that don't add value.

Massawyrm wrote:
Source: I'm a professional writer with a number of close friends in the gaming industry.

Me too, and the PDF's from the companies I have experience with don't cost as much as the physical copies.

Digital copies should not cost as much as physical products, and GW's own physical book products shouldn't cost as much as they do either.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Me too, and the PDF's from the companies I have experience with don't cost as much as the physical copies.

Right. But not because they don't cost substantially less to produce; it's because people believe the physical production costs are higher than they are.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Digital copies should not cost as much as physical products, and GW's own physical book products shouldn't cost as much as they do either.

I won't argue you on the second point as I have no direct knowledge of GW's margins. But the first part is pure belief, stemming from the fact that, despite being a writer, you seem to think that the material value of a thing trumps the immaterial; that the work of a guy who makes your shoes is worth more than a guy who writes a book. But we know that's not always true. To see this in action, take a look a Blu-ray prices. Each Blu-ray costs something like .50 cents to produce, but new and popular ones cost between $30-$40, while older, less popular ones cost as low as $5 - all regardless of how much the movie cost to make. Why? Because we hold that the immaterial thing on the disc has value apart from the plastic it cost to make it. We're willing to pay more for a newer movie we love than an older one, despite it costing the same small amount to physically produce it. But put that same $40 movie online for streaming and download and people won't pay any more than $15 for it. Somehow, that .50 cents of plastic adds $25 of value in the mind of the buyer, because they think it is worth more if they can hold it. It doesn't play any different on my system. And the only difference between my $41 SM codex and my $41 Digital Codex is that my digital codex is actually up to date with new units and errata. Guess which one I use more often.

Whether or not the codexes should cost that much is a different argument altogether.

Translation- I can charge what I want it's not me its them.
/sigh. I'm still not paying full for digital copy. Main reason being its not real.

From friends in the publishing industry ebooks can even be more expensive than paper books

that's because (according to them) the physical costs of printing/shipping etc runs to about 7-15% of the retail cost of the book (low print runs & higher quality books are at the upper end of that)

but you have to remember that in the EU at least ebooks are liable for VAT of 3-21%

(3% if you buy from Amazon which runs out of Luxemburg or 5.5 % if your publisher sells out of France)

So a publisher selling books out of the UK probably gets more cash per copy from physical books than ebooks

"Not Real," eh?

Care to elaborate on that?

Massawyrm wrote:
But the first part is pure belief, stemming from the fact that, despite being a writer, you seem to think that the material value of a thing trumps the immaterial; that the work of a guy who makes your shoes is worth more than a guy who writes a book.

No, it's stemming from the idea that producing a book and then printing it and shipping it around the world, and producing a book and not printing it don't cost the same amount...


Regardless of the actual amount of the cost difference, people are not going to perceive the digital product as being worth as much. Not because they value 'immaterial' things less, but because they see the physical production as being an added expense... because it only makes sense that if you remove the last step of the production process (ie: actually making the physical product) and the costs of shipping and storage, that the product should cost less. And so they expect to see some tangible sign of that cost difference reflected in the final price.

As with your downloads example, people largely don't know how big that difference actually is, and most of them won't particularly care. They just expect a difference that feels 'correct' to account for the difference in the product.

Insaniak pretty much nailed it.

The digital copy doesn't have to sit in a warehouse taking up inventory space (and costing money whilst it does that). It doesn't have to be shipped anywhere (costing money for each time that happens). It doesn't have to be printed and bound (costing money each time that happens). There are a whole stack of associated costs on top of the creation of the book that are added to the cost of a physical copy.

This is why a physical copy should cost more than a digital copy because it is actually more expensive to produce.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
From friends in the publishing industry ebooks can even be more expensive than paper books

that's because (according to them) the physical costs of printing/shipping etc runs to about 7-15% of the retail cost of the book (low print runs & higher quality books are at the upper end of that)

but you have to remember that in the EU at least ebooks are liable for VAT of 3-21%

(3% if you buy from Amazon which runs out of Luxemburg or 5.5 % if your publisher sells out of France)

So a publisher selling books out of the UK probably gets more cash per copy from physical books than ebooks

Correct.

I work in publishing and have worked on iPad-only pitches. The economics are terrible, because Apple take up to 30% and there is 20 % VAT in the UK on eBooks, compared to 0% VAT on printed books. THat eliminates most of the print and distribution savings straight away. The stories you hear from amazon about millions being made on eBooks are mostly BS; most publishers are losing money on eBooks, but they have to support them to stay in the market.

For all their faults, GW pay tax in the UK, and pay UK-rate VAT, unlike many other bigger companies and many of the coffee shops on your high street - and of course Amazon.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
For all their faults, GW pay tax in the UK, and pay UK-rate VAT, unlike many other bigger companies and many of the coffee shops on your high street - and of course Amazon.

Which is why GW's eBooks cost more in Australia than in the UK.

Wait...

As someone said before low print runs will cost more per copy - and Death from the Skies will not be published in anything like the numbers of a top 10 paperback and will have colour photos in high res to boot. Costs per edition are likely to be quite high.

While I accept there is still a large cost in e-book publication, once you hit a break-even point there are no additional costs unlike with physical books. Sell out your first 1,000 copies and it costs real money to get a further 1,000 books into the market place - print runs, distribution, storage etc. E-books? No real additional cost that I can see.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Insaniak pretty much nailed it.

The digital copy doesn't have to sit in a warehouse taking up inventory space (and costing money whilst it does that). It doesn't have to be shipped anywhere (costing money for each time that happens). It doesn't have to be printed and bound (costing money each time that happens). There are a whole stack of associated costs on top of the creation of the book that are added to the cost of a physical copy.

This is why a physical copy should cost more than a digital copy because it is actually more expensive to produce.

The 10% average I mentioned earlier covers all of that. Your argument exists in a vacuum that assumes all of these costs are higher than they are, that the books magically format themselves (that no added personnel are needed to convert, upload and monitor online sales) and that there is no such thing as a "transmission fee". At the end of the day an e-book ends up either marginally cheaper or marginally more expensive, depending - unless it is art heavy, at which point Amazon's .15 cent a MB transmission fee can cause even a modest 20mb PDF (like the more compressed codexes you can find online) to cost $3 more before they take their 30% of the purchase price. I have no idea what kind of negotiated deal GW has with Apple to transmit those Gigabyte monsters, but I can guarantee you it ain't cheap.

The margins of profit in publishing are slim. They always have been. That's why it's a numbers game. Think about this for a second: if e-books really did cost significantly cheaper to produce, why has the industry been so sluggish to move to it? Cheaper books means more sales. They should have been stampeding to embrace it; phasing out physical books and offering digital editions that are better and earlier than their physical counterparts. But they aren't. Because they actually understand the numbers that you guys are fudging in your heads.

The argument exists in a setting where an ecodex is priced $40 higher than previous releases for the sole reason that the print version is a hardcover...

And that we're dealing with Amazon (or similar non-native/non-whole owned digital distribution networks), which not everyone (including GW) are.

Y'know what? Let's look at some hard covers and PDF releases hey (all prices USD$)?

Pathfinder RPG (Paizo) - $49.99 (hardback), $9.99 (PDF)
Only War Core Rulebook (FFG) - $59.99 (hardback), $30 (PDF)
Total Warfare (Catalyst) - $39.95 (hardback), $15 (PDF)

And something at random (that is Amazon):

Inferno (by Dan Brown) - $17.49 (hardback), $9.99 (Kindle).

GW are also not going to get much sympathy for Apple taking a cut of their pie, since that's a problem that they choose.

Or for the conversion and transmission costs that come from choosing to turn a codex into over a gigabyte of bloatware.

So how do you all feel about Digital Copies of video games? I know on PSN, they're pretty much the exact same cost as a physical copy.l

Also, FWIW, there was a considerable amount of extra work that had to be put in to make the eCodexes, as they're not just straight PDF copies.

 cincydooley wrote:
So how do you all feel about Digital Copies of video games? I know on PSN, they're pretty much the exact same cost as a physical copy.l

Also, FWIW, there was a considerable amount of extra work that had to be put in to make the eCodexes, as they're not just straight PDF copies.

It depends on the game. If it's a console game, I feel like a digital version is worth less since I no longer have the option to resell. On a PC resale is usually restricted by DRM so the digital version is worth about the same as the physical. This changes if the physical game comes with something else that adds value beyond a plastic case and disk; an attractive (faux) leather case for a game that I think is really amazing could be something I would enjoy keeping.

Some people love having shelves full of books. Some people love having shelves of movies. I'm now going to do something more productive and see if anyone has any advice on last minute add-ons to get for Myth.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And that we're dealing with Amazon (or similar non-native/non-whole owned digital distribution networks), which not everyone (including GW) are.

Y'know what? Let's look at some hard covers and PDF releases hey (all prices USD$)?

Pathfinder RPG (Paizo) - $49.99 (hardback), $9.99 (PDF)
Only War Core Rulebook (FFG) - $59.99 (hardback), $30 (PDF)
Total Warfare (Catalyst) - $39.95 (hardback), $15 (PDF)

And something at random (that is Amazon):

Inferno (by Dan Brown) - $17.49 (hardback), $9.99 (Kindle).

Yup, as has been pointed out, a PDF sold direct is far cheaper to make and will cost less at retail.

We buy our GW stuff from discount places, like Dark Sphere, because they're way cheaper. Works for us. But what we don't do is go to a GW store in a swish mall, or the iTunes store, and moan about the price. Because (a) there's a readily visible rationale for the price and (b) it ain't gonna change, so best to work with it.

Wrong, I tell manufacturers if I'm dissatisfied with their product or price. Most business want feed back so they can better adjust their products accordingly. That's how this system is supposed to work. We as the customer tell them what we want, they make it, and we buy it. Just becuase a few companies want to beat you over the head with their contrary idea of we can do what we want and you'll like it or else doesn't mean I'm not going to voice my complaint.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And that we're dealing with Amazon (or similar non-native/non-whole owned digital distribution networks), which not everyone (including GW) are.

Y'know what? Let's look at some hard covers and PDF releases hey (all prices USD$)?

Pathfinder RPG (Paizo) - $49.99 (hardback), $9.99 (PDF)
Only War Core Rulebook (FFG) - $59.99 (hardback), $30 (PDF)
Total Warfare (Catalyst) - $39.95 (hardback), $15 (PDF)

And something at random (that is Amazon):

Inferno (by Dan Brown) - $17.49 (hardback), $9.99 (Kindle).

So for those items, the publishers feel that the physical aspect of the book accounts for 50-80% of the books value.

I'll draw a parallel to CD's. How much is a CD in store? Usually in the area of $15-20 USD. How much do 99% of albums cost on iTunes? $10. Even taking into account Apples 30% cut, we see an immediate drop in price between 30-50%

Massawyrm wrote:
At the end of the day an e-book ends up either marginally cheaper or marginally more expensive, depending - unless it is art heavy, at which point Amazon's .15 cent a MB transmission fee can cause even a modest 20mb PDF (like the more compressed codexes you can find online) to cost $3 more before they take their 30% of the purchase price.

That seems pretty steep, but then how much does it cost to get a paper version printed and shipped to a distributor and what percentage share do they take? I bet they get it for at least the 30% cut too.

We all agree that the cost to develop the e-book and paper books are equivalent (bar extra digital content, and assuming similar proofreading because digital can always be fixed later), but I can't see how sending a digital file through a reseller can cost more than printing and sending a tangible object through a courier or mail service.


The other issue is in worth; we know that value isn't related to production costs, but we also know that many people don't assign as much value to digital products (because there are less rights regarding resale and reduced accessibility in a lot of cases), therefore it's not unreasonable to expect digital books to be priced lower.

That doesn't take into account VAT in the EU, but that can't be eradicating the difference entirely or you'd see the prices differing in countries where tax isn't paid on e-books whilst paper books are exempt.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Insaniak pretty much nailed it.

The digital copy doesn't have to sit in a warehouse taking up inventory space (and costing money whilst it does that). It doesn't have to be shipped anywhere (costing money for each time that happens). It doesn't have to be printed and bound (costing money each time that happens). There are a whole stack of associated costs on top of the creation of the book that are added to the cost of a physical copy.

This is why a physical copy should cost more than a digital copy because it is actually more expensive to produce.

Why do I get the feeling that if someone in charge at GW read this, they'd increase the price of physical books instead of dropping the price of digital ones?

Herzlos wrote:
but then how much does it cost to get a paper version printed and shipped to a distributor and what percentage share do they take? I bet they get it for at least the 30% cut too.

This was my thought as well, saying Apple takes a 30% cut is pretty immaterial unless physical retailers are taking less than 30% on wholesale -> retail.

Yes, Apple takes 30%, but it's not like you are selling the physical copies to retailers at RRP anyway, you sell the physical copies at a wholesale as well, that margin is then in addition to the distribution costs., you'd have to do some work to convince me it costs less than 30% when you add distribution AND retailer margins for physical copies.

People: The price you pay for an item has nothing to do with it's production and distribution costs.

It is entirely, 100%, dependent upon two factors. The amount a buyer is willing to pay for it and the amount a seller is willing to part with it.

As long as GW has customers who are willing to pay $50 for a codex, whether physical or digital, then GW will sell it for that. If for one minute they thought people would pay $100 for a codex you can bet those prices would jump instantly.

You can talk about how production/distribution is only 5-15% of a book. You can point out how Apple/Amazon take 30% of the sale. You can point out how much it costs for a writer to do his thing. You can even throw in things like VAT or other taxes.

But at the end of the day, none of that matters. What matters is how much a group of people are willing to pay.

Someone mentioned complaining about prices to GW. That won't work as long as you are pulling out your wallet. So if you really really want to make an impact: stop buying. They'll get the message and act accordingly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 undertow wrote:
Why do I get the feeling that if someone in charge at GW read this, they'd increase the price of physical books instead of dropping the price of digital ones?

Your first mistake is thinking that anyone at GW would expend time and/or effort in reading this thread. Companies know people complain on the Internet; what matters is what they do, not what they say. So, the *only* thing management is going to look at is sales figures. If they can produce a book and it sells beyond their expectations you can be sure that the next book they put out will cost even more.

clively wrote:
As long as GW has customers who are willing to pay $50 for a codex, whether physical or digital, then GW will sell it for that. If for one minute they thought people would pay $100 for a codex you can bet those prices would jump instantly.

The reason complaints about pricing keep popping up is because a lot of us AREN'T willing to pay that, and GWs sales are dropping to prove it.

clively wrote:
Someone mentioned complaining about prices to GW. That won't work as long as you are pulling out your wallet. So if you really really want to make an impact: stop buying. They'll get the message and act accordingly.

The purpose for discussion is that some people feel the prices are justified by actual production and distribution, others aren't.

The "people keep buying it" thing comes up a lot and from looking at GW's financial records, over the past few years the "people keep buying it" argument is starting to falter as their revenue stagnates or drops in the face of rising prices, hence LESS people are buying it.

I personally still buy GW products, but a fraction of what I used to. Back in the day when Codex/Army Book prices were more reasonable, I'd actually buy Army Books for armies I didn't even own just for the sake of reading them. I have a giant stack of Codices/Army Books for armies I've never touched from back then. I haven't done that in years because the price of the silly things has jumped from just being casual spending to being rare spending only if I really really want it.

 cincydooley wrote:
Also, FWIW, there was a considerable amount of extra work that had to be put in to make the eCodexes, as they're not just straight PDF copies.

I think you meant '...a considerable amount of completely unnecessary work...'

The effort of converting the file into iBook format and adding a whole bunch of extra stuff that wasn't needed in the codex in the first place is not going to earn them any more brownie points than the 'Apple takes a cut' thing does.

There are much less work-intensive options.

 insaniak wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Also, FWIW, there was a considerable amount of extra work that had to be put in to make the eCodexes, as they're not just straight PDF copies.

I think you meant '...a considerable amount of completely unnecessary work...'

The effort of converting the file into iBook format and adding a whole bunch of extra stuff that wasn't needed in the codex in the first place is not going to earn them any more brownie points than the 'Apple takes a cut' thing does.

There are much less work-intensive options.

Also last time I checked it doesn't cost as much to pay a team to transpose already digital material into eBooks format as it does to print, package, and ship physical books.

 insaniak wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Also, FWIW, there was a considerable amount of extra work that had to be put in to make the eCodexes, as they're not just straight PDF copies.

I think you meant '...a considerable amount of completely unnecessary work...'

The effort of converting the file into iBook format and adding a whole bunch of extra stuff that wasn't needed in the codex in the first place is not going to earn them any more brownie points than the 'Apple takes a cut' thing does.

There are much less work-intensive options.

I don't consider all of the extras uncessary. I like the pop ups. I like the extra internal links. I wouldn't have bought a PDF version.

@Blue Dagger --> For like, the 45th time, it isn't a simple transposition of the rulebook. There are a lot of other additions that cost man-hours.

 cincydooley wrote:
I don't consider all of the extras uncessary. I like the pop ups. I like the extra internal links. I wouldn't have bought a PDF version.

PDF isn't the only other option. Although you can still have the pop-ups and internal links in PDF. And those won't the unneccesary extras I was talking about.

 cincydooley wrote:

I don't consider all of the extras uncessary. I like the pop ups. I like the extra internal links. I wouldn't have bought a PDF version.

I don't really give a hoot about pop ups, internal links are nice and are extremely quick and easy to do in a PDF (I can't imagine pop ups are terribly difficult and I know internal links are easy to do). If it's taking them significant man hours to do things like links and pop ups, it seems a flaw in their system rather than a feature I'd be willing to pay more to have.

There is no reason why each of the books needs to be a 1gig+ in size and filled with fancy extras.

Wait... their eBooks are over a gig in size? Da eff? I knew their prices were god-awful... its weird that what gets me is how massive they are.

Listen, clearly the fact that I, and many others, like the eBooks means that we are fools that are being taken. As such, there's really no reason for me to continue as part of this explanation of why were wrong for liking them----err... I mean conversation. Cheers.

I don't think anyone is calling you or anyone else a fool. We're just stating our reasoning for why we think it isn't a good buy for us.

I made the mistake of buying the iBook, lousy content, I feel a bit cheated!

Yeah, there's really nothing wrong about liking the Apple eBook codices (except that it means you're a smelly doo-doo head, but that's besides the point.) There are just a lot of people (myself included) that would like a different product. There's also an argument that the digital versions should be less expensive.

A simple PDF, without any additional linking or features (practically nothing more than an official codex scan) would serve me quite well, and I believe other people in this thread agree with me on this. I would happily pay a little extra to get a digital copy of my codex when I bought the physical version, or pay close to the price of a printed codex and simply print my own copy (you could get a reasonable print and binding done at a copy store for $10-15 I believe.)

I wouldn't be surprised if they could put together a basic PDF version of a codex (probably put links in it too) by having a single person working on it over the course of a day, and I'd be amazed if it couldn't be done in a week. A distribution system would probably be the hardest part, because let's face it... they wouldn't go with Wargames Vault or anything like that. It doesn't seem like they would need to sell all that many copies of the PDF in order to make the endeavor profitable however. To sell physical + digital copy, however, wouldn't require any special distribution system beyond slipping a CD into each codex, or keeping a stack behind the register.

GW doesn't appear to be interested in this. They want to put out the shiniest stuff possible, and consumer demand be damned. That's okay. My spending has shifted accordingly. I feel like I really ought to stop spending any money on GW, but I'm chasing that plastic dragon hard.

 cincydooley wrote:
Listen, clearly the fact that I, and many others, like the eBooks means that we are fools that are being taken.

You have missed the point somewhat, I think.

You're perfectly entitled to like them. but whether or not you like a bunch of included extra stuff has no bearing on whether or not that extra stuff is actually necessary, and whether or not adding that stuff in and having a higher price as a result is a good idea.

GW could triple the price of their print codexes so that they could all include a 500-page life story of Makari the Gretchin. Some people might like that, and they would be perfectly entitled to do so. But that wouldn't change the fact that including those extra 500 pages would be completely unnecessary, and that fewer people would buy the resultant product.

 cincydooley wrote:
Listen, clearly the fact that I, and many others, like the eBooks means that we are fools that are being taken. As such, there's really no reason for me to continue as part of this explanation of why were wrong for liking them----err... I mean conversation. Cheers.

No one's calling you a fool for liking them. Don't play the victim card in some sort of odd attempt to take a moral high ground.

They are overpriced. There's no reason why they can't release PDFs (or another e-reader format) for less than the price of the actual Codex, just like many other game companies do.

 insaniak wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Listen, clearly the fact that I, and many others, like the eBooks means that we are fools that are being taken.

You have missed the point somewhat, I think.

You're perfectly entitled to like them. but whether or not you like a bunch of included extra stuff has no bearing on whether or not that extra stuff is actually necessary, and whether or not adding that stuff in and having a higher price as a result is a good idea.

GW could triple the price of their print codexes so that they could all include a 500-page life story of Makari the Gretchin. Some people might like that, and they would be perfectly entitled to do so. But that wouldn't change the fact that including those extra 500 pages would be completely unnecessary, and that fewer people would buy the resultant product.

I would absolutely love it if you could actually buy the rules without having to buy a book which is 95% "other". I do like the pictures and fluff as well and would buy some of them, but I would love it if I could buy the rules separately so I could actually get ALL the rules for the game without paying $750.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They are overpriced. There's no reason why they can't release PDFs (or another e-reader format) for less than the price of the actual Codex, just like many other game companies do.

Except that this is GW and they wouldn't release the electronic version of their product for anything less than the physical product's price and you know it. Even if GW broke down and said, "PDFs for everyone!!!" they'd still charge $50.00 US for each. At least until the next round of price increases when we'll see it all go up. But that's not really unexpected from GW, is it?

to be fair here, if you feel the digital book is over-priced, then the print books must be over-priced as well, and by that logic, everything GW puts out is over-priced as well...
so, if that is how you feel, then we are all fools for buying anything from GW...

personally, i don't buy anything that i feel is a ripoff, and the only things i do buy are the things that i want bad enough to pay for, and look for the best deal i can find...
i'm not buying the digital codex simply because i can get one in print for 25% off...


if the choice was only either or, for full retail, i would go digital thanks to free updates and corrections...

cheers
jah

 jah-joshua wrote:
to be fair here, if you feel the digital book is over-priced, then the print books must be over-priced as well, and by that logic, everything GW puts out is over-priced as well..

Not necessarily. There are things in the digital version that either add or subtract value. The "ipad only" is a huge subtracter of value for many people, even people who do own an ipad it reduces value IMO.

i don't see anything in the digital versions that subtract value...
example???

as i said, though, i can get the print version at a discount...
that 25% off is added value for me, because i'm not a gamer...
if i was, i would want the digital versions for the added bonus of free corrections and updates...
how is something like that a "huge subtractor" for iPad owners???

cheers
jah

 jah-joshua wrote:
i don't see anything in the digital versions that subtract value...
example???

as i said, though, i can get the print version at a discount...
that 25% off is added value for me, because i'm not a gamer...
if i was, i would want the digital versions for the added bonus of free corrections and updates...
how is something like that a "huge subtractor" for iPad owners???

cheers
jah

The requirement of an iPad is a massive subtraction of value to many customers, some of whom even have iPads.

If GW's only market for this product is iPad owners who are also GW players, then they've shot themselves in the foot by vastly limiting their potential customers.

 jah-joshua wrote:
i don't see anything in the digital versions that subtract value...
example???

as i said, though, i can get the print version at a discount...
that 25% off is added value for me, because i'm not a gamer...
if i was, i would want the digital versions for the added bonus of free corrections and updates...
how is something like that a "huge subtractor" for iPad owners???

cheers
jah

Well, I said it earlier in the thread. If a product is iPad only, the product's lifespan is only as long as the iPad survives unless you want to buy another iPad when it dies. Not just another "tablet", but specifically an "ipad", so if Windows tablets become better than iPads or you want to save some money and get an Android one, too bad, your hundreds of dollars worth of ebooks are ipad only.

Plus not everybody buys the 64 gig or what ever the current highest model is. I usually buy the lower size or mid size devices becuase I never use all the space. Since these codex are so large then it fills it up rather quickly.