No real surprises. They sold less than they did in the equivalent period last year so turnover and profit are down, exacerbated by a stong pound meaning overseas sales are worth less than they were last year. Also they blame restructuring (still!) and the rebuilding of Warhammer World. Anything but reducing demand really. .. *rolls eyes*
Riquende wrote: Huh. Sales in the new online shop were broadly comparable to last year. I guess the £4m makeover helped stave off decline in that sector.
Good for them.
Any company that is spending £4m to simply NOT lose sales for a year instead of growing is in some serious trouble. No one wants to invest in a company only to see it stagnant.
At the end of it all, I don't see where the money went. The new website is crap and is ONLY a sales tool anymore. The resources for hobby material there are at best shadows of former glory such as Black Gobbo. And the kind of money they spent on it(at least in my eyes) is not equal to the kind of money they bring in. They basically spent £4m trying to reinvent the online shopping cart. The new filters are annoying, the product descriptions are often misleading for dual purpose kits, and overall it just feels like a webstore instead of a Warhammer site.
GW's crap makes me wish they'd take on the nearly outdated practice of not selling direct and only selling through distributors. It gives those distributors more incentive to push their product.
I'd compare them against another market I'm familiar with: drums. Drums Workshop is one of the largest names in drumming. They weren't always. They make arguably the best products in their market. They refuse to sell directly, and always send pricing requests to local dealers. Sure, they could sell direct and cut out the middle man, but then they'd have a nightmare in support to deal with, and would have shipping nightmares galore.
GW should never have opened corporate stores. They should all be franchises at best. That puts the store in the hands of an owner whose ass is on the line, and that owner would push support locally to keep the store floating. The stores have been losing GW money for years now. Hell just look at the New England market and how many stores have opened/closed there in the last 15 years.
GW got greedy, and for a while that was ok. Now, the competition is too steep, and independent retailers have all lost faith in the company to the point of many of them dropping their lines altogether.
GW started as a company of "corporate stores". They were originally a general wargames/RPG retailer, got into manufacturing and publishing, first with licensed products, then their own designs, then gradually phased out everything except their own designs, then phased out everything except Warhammer (40K).
I don't think it is a set of results that argues for a death spiral. I do think they are having to work a lot harder to keep sales at roughly the same level. (More kits, more books and so on.)
Personally I am glad they spent money updating Warhammer World, considering its the main store and it will supposedly be hosting bigger events.
It just looked liked a factory shop entrance before, it looked pretty ordinary when you turned up outside.
Rayvon wrote: Personally I am glad they spent money updating Warhammer World, considering its the main store and it will supposedly be hosting bigger events.
It just looked liked a factory shop entrance before, it looked pretty ordinary when you turned up outside.
This is a good point. Bearing in mind the work they did on the games hall (very nice)and Bugman's bar and the model displays they have, a nondescript door and a dark staircase to get to the goodies was a bit odd.
Of course they are probably also installing an entrance ticket office and pay as you go turnstiles on the toilets.....
It's not looking good. How do you release so many new products in a year at exorbitant prices and still lose that much revenue? The exchange rate doesn't even come close to accounting for this kind of drop in revenue and profits. Of course GW would never tell the truth and say "Profit and revenue are down because we lost customers and have made no attempt to figure out why or get them back."
darkcloak wrote: I never understood how companies can be expected to grow exponentially every single year. The profit line? How about the stability line?
How about instead of chasing profits we just try to keep people working and providing a consistent product and experience?
Wishful thinking I know but...
This isn't about growth. Exponential growth every quarter is impossible in all but a few sectors.
The goal here should be *any* growth. Stagnation shouldn't ever be applauded, especially when it's stagnation after investing something like 4 million pounds into a new website.
Because the 4m is an investment that should be recouped (ideally). If sales are stagnant, the investment isn't recouped and they essentially threw money away.
Taking a quick look at this report as well as their annual reports, GW's reports always looks like like it was written by a second year B-school student and it just gives me the general feeling that the people running GW doesn't know how to run a publicly traded company let alone a niche retail company.
darkcloak wrote: I never understood how companies can be expected to grow exponentially every single year. The profit line? How about the stability line?
How about instead of chasing profits we just try to keep people working and providing a consistent product and experience?
Wishful thinking I know but...
By all accounts, the tabletop war gaming hobby as a whole did grow exponentially over the past 2 years. Every other major player in the industry has been expanding. We don't know their exact sales numbers but we know from the industry reports that those other games are selling more and more every year. GW, the largest and oldest player in this industry, has been shrinking. I'll put it to you this way, if laptop computers had record sales growth over the last 2 years, would you expect a company like Apple to be losing 10%+ revenue and profit over that same period?
darkcloak wrote: I never understood how companies can be expected to grow exponentially every single year. The profit line? How about the stability line?
How about instead of chasing profits we just try to keep people working and providing a consistent product and experience?
Wishful thinking I know but...
Because stability is stagnation. Because of inflation, if your revenue is the same this year as last year, then the amount of business you conducted is actually worth less, how much less will depend on the current rate of course, but less nevertheless.
Therefore there's no option but to keep on trying to grow. The issue with GW has been that when they have grown, and when they have made profit, they've often been more inclined to siphon it off to the shareholders than reinvest to build more growth.
I guess one could say they haven't been growing in the right way?
I'm sure that their chairman also being the largest individual stakeholder has absolutely nothing to with it.
Toofast wrote: It's not looking good. How do you release so many new products in a year at exorbitant prices and still lose that much revenue? The exchange rate doesn't even come close to accounting for this kind of drop in revenue and profits. Of course GW would never tell the truth and say "Profit and revenue are down because we lost customers and have made no attempt to figure out why or get them back."
Over 50% of GWs turnover was generated in foreign markets, exchanges rates really are very important. Ergo why it is mentioned in the report most years.
The last report also identified North America and Austrailia as having been challenging within the period. So they do mention the negatives albeit wrapped up in management BS, you just have to read beyond the chairmans preamble.
TerrorLegion wrote: Taking a quick look at this report as well as their annual reports, GW's reports always looks like like it was written by a second year B-school student and it just gives me the general feeling that the people running GW doesn't know how to run a publicly traded company let alone a niche retail company.
To quote Gordon Ramsay: I wouldn't trust you to run a bath, let alone a fething [miniatures company], you donkeys!
darkcloak wrote: I never understood how companies can be expected to grow exponentially every single year. The profit line? How about the stability line?
How about instead of chasing profits we just try to keep people working and providing a consistent product and experience?
Wishful thinking I know but...
By all accounts, the tabletop war gaming hobby as a whole did grow exponentially over the past 2 years. Every other major player in the industry has been expanding. We don't know their exact sales numbers but we know from the industry reports that those other games are selling more and more every year. GW, the largest and oldest player in this industry, has been shrinking. I'll put it to you this way, if laptop computers had record sales growth over the last 2 years, would you expect a company like Apple to be losing 10%+ revenue and profit over that same period?
Hmm, I don't necessarily disagree too fast, but there are alternative narratives and viewpoints from that very same data set.
I'm Playing devils advocate, mind.
Just food find thought, but Is it true 'growth' or is it 'cannibalisation' of an existing market? 75% growth for corvus belli (infinity), whilst admirable and extremely impressive (and I love the game) is a drop in the bucket, or shall change at best for a company the size of gw. Iirc, Corvus belli have about thirty people on the books (memory says 27, but let's be generous and say 50-100). Same with the likes of pp (iirc turnover of 15 to 20 million). Gw have over fifteen hundred. Two thousand at peak. Most other wargames companies (wyrd, Spartan etc) would conceivably be talking about turnover in the hundreds of thousands, or low (single digit) millions.
Is there a conceivable narrative that gw could be haemorrhaging customers, with the smaller companies picking up a piece from those leaving, but the overall 'net size' and overall health of the niche industry of wargaming still shrinking as a result? I remember seeing a thread a while ago discussing internet traffic for big wargaming names. Steady decline across the board was what I remember seeing. (but again, the system used to analyse wasn't exactly reliable either, so interesting data, but pinch of salt required!)
I'm not saying this is a fact, the current status or even what I believe. I think in principle, it could be a possibility. After all, when the cold hard numbers are looked at, rapid growth of small companies offset against the slow decline of a behemoth might still result in a net loss. (75% increase in 'small change' does not necessarily equal, or make up for a 10% decline in 'behemoth finance').
I guess all I'm saying us folks should be wary about talk of the 'growth' of table top wargaming. (Personally, and for the record at worst, I think it's about as popular as it's ever been)
Wonder if we'll see another restructured White Dwarf?
"This channel showed growth in North America, Australia and the UK, offset by larger declines in non-strategic accounts and magazine sales. The net effect was a decline of 5.1% (£1.2 million)."
It's got to be more cost effective to just kill Warhammer Visions off.
I think it is fair to say, at least anecdotally, that the table top games market as a whole has been growing, and that companies are not merely cannibalizing GW's market share.
If you look at Kickstarter alone, table top games are raking in tons of cash, and board games are growing in mainstream popularity. The lines between board game and miniatures games are blurring as well, and it is reasonable to believe that these crossovers are bringing new customers into the table top wargames market.
For me personally, I look at the recent profusion of IP licenses among table top wargames as a decent indicator of growth. It is a good time to be buying, playing, making, and selling table top games right now.
weeble1000 wrote: I think it is fair to say, at least anecdotally, that the table top games market as a whole has been growing, and that companies are not merely cannibalizing GW's market share.
If you look at Kickstarter alone, table top games are raking in tons of cash, and board games are growing in mainstream popularity. The lines between board game and miniatures games are blurring as well, and it is reasonable to believe that these crossovers are bringing new customers into the table top wargames market.
For me personally, I look at the recent profusion of IP licenses among table top wargames as a decent indicator of growth. It is a good time to be buying, playing, making, and selling table top games right now.
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I was just about to say the same thing. Kickstarter is a good indicator that people are buying into wargaming. People want these games/models. And with games like X-Wing it's a move from board game to tabletop gaming, and has become HUGELY popular. The models have basic paint jobs, but can easily be repainted, allowing people to ease into other aspects of the hobby at their own pace without having to field the dreaded army of grey plastic.
GW spent how much on the White Dwarf "redesign"? And what like 1-2 years after they had just overhauled it already? And it failed miserably. Any company worth it's salt would drop a new project idea that they ran with and ended up eating £1.2m. That number screams utter failure, no matter how big your company is.
GW management have been on a binge the last 10 years to try and squeeze as much blood from their rocks as they possibly can. Price increases well beyond the rate of inflation, rules designed to inflate model count requirements, trying to stalwart online discounters, trying to stop bits services, moving huge chunks of inventory to "direct only" to keep 100% of the profit on those items. They've neglected their distributors who used to do all the promoting for them, and then do NO advertising or marketing. Of course their growth is failing, they've cut off the hand that was feeding them and didn't replace it with anything else.
It's a shame Kirby owns as much as he does, and it's more of a shame that no one is in any position to force him and his terrible ideas out of the company.
If GW would release some decent product for a reasonable price, they could be raking it in. Their mismanagement of the Hobbit license is a good example of their stupidity that is locking them out of the growth in the table top market. People will buy stuff that's good, if it's priced reasonably.
GW have so many advantages- the legacy, the technological advantage, in house production, a decent amount of retail penetration, and a popular IP. The games might be a bit wonky but their miniatures are still pretty great, barring the odd Razorgor. It is stupid pricing and management policies that have them where they are, because quite frankly they should be destroying their competition and raking in the cash.
Okay, so projecting their revenue and profit to be identical in the 2nd half of the year (in other words, take the figures we just got and x2), this is what i come up with. So i would say that their cost cutting measures have been of some success (managing to roughly keep last year's profit levels despite declining revenue). It doesn't look good to me, however, especially since GW has been firing all it's big guns constantly of late. Running the figures for sales by channel (i calculated this years figures, so if anyone spots any errors please let me know) we get the following:
darkcloak wrote: I never understood how companies can be expected to grow exponentially every single year. The profit line? How about the stability line?
How about instead of chasing profits we just try to keep people working and providing a consistent product and experience?
Wishful thinking I know but...
The thing here is that GW is shrinking year on year, not remaining stable.
TerrorLegion wrote: Taking a quick look at this report as well as their annual reports, GW's reports always looks like like it was written by a second year B-school student and it just gives me the general feeling that the people running GW doesn't know how to run a publicly traded company let alone a niche retail company.
If this is true there should be an activist who can step in and fix it.
But, the company would need to be undervalued by at least half for an activist investor to take the risk.
Magic has been doing fine since wizards was taken over. Maybe the best we can hope for is a corporate buy out.
TerrorLegion wrote: Taking a quick look at this report as well as their annual reports, GW's reports always looks like like it was written by a second year B-school student and it just gives me the general feeling that the people running GW doesn't know how to run a publicly traded company let alone a niche retail company.
If this is true there should be an activist who can step in and fix it.
But, the company would need to be undervalued by at least half for an activist investor to take the risk.
Magic has been doing fine since wizards was taken over. Maybe the best we can hope for is a corporate buy out.
We've been waiting for that buyout for nearly 10 years now. No one wants to buy this sinking ship for how much the sellers would want for it. I don't doubt that any time shares are sold, Kirby and associates are likely the ones buying it.
Torga_DW wrote: Okay, so projecting their revenue and profit to be identical in the 2nd half of the year (in other words, take the figures we just got and x2), this is what i come up with.
Historically, GW's second half year results have been 7.7% higher than the first half year results (1995 till present) while the past 5 years have averaged 4%.
Their expenses are largely flat (have been for quite awhile) so the year end profits are likely to be in the £7-10 million range with another exceptional cost (Warhammer World renovation this year...).
...a stong pound meaning overseas sales are worth less than they were last year. Also they blame restructuring (still!) and the rebuilding of Warhammer World.
This problem is one that most companies alleviate by having strong foreign subsidiaries, GW's restructuring made them even more of British company with a international presence as opposed to an International company based out of Britain. Other companies structured the second way would have structured it such that GW-US would borrow as a loan what ever profits it was expected to send to GW-UK, in that way GW-UK owns a debt with a value plus interest which it won't owe taxes on until collected and GW-US can wait until its more advantageous from a currency exchange perspective to pay GW-UK.
Riquende wrote:Huh. Sales in the new online shop were broadly comparable to last year. I guess the £4m makeover helped stave off decline in that sector.
Good for them.
This is pretty disastrous when you consider that they've continued to shift more of their product offering as available only from their store.
...a stong pound meaning overseas sales are worth less than they were last year. Also they blame restructuring (still!) and the rebuilding of Warhammer World.
This problem is one that most companies alleviate by having strong foreign subsidiaries, GW's restructuring made them even more of British company with a international presence as opposed to an International company based out of Britain. Other companies structured the second way would have structured it such that GW-US would borrow as a loan what ever profits it was expected to send to GW-UK, in that way GW-UK owns a debt with a value plus interest which it won't owe taxes on until collected and GW-US can wait until its more advantageous from a currency exchange perspective to pay GW-UK.
And particularly nimble companies would take advantage of lower manufacturing costs by having the facilities in the US produce product for countries where it is advantageous to sell from there, while the UK would handle those which are best from there...
Torga_DW wrote: Okay, so projecting their revenue and profit to be identical in the 2nd half of the year (in other words, take the figures we just got and x2), this is what i come up with.
Historically, GW's second half year results have been 7.7% higher than the first half year results (1995 till present) while the past 5 years have averaged 4%.
Their expenses are largely flat (have been for quite awhile) so the year end profits are likely to be in the £7-10 million range with another exceptional cost (Warhammer World renovation this year...).
Accepting that the 2nd half will be 7.7% higher, the results still look to be worse than 2014 which frankly is a low point for the last 5 years. They're back to pre-2009 in terms of revenue, and given the constant price rises that means less volume being shifted. The profits actually look decent at least (in that they're not falling with revenue).
Also, the charts should just say revenue & profit, i forgot to remove the sales part from the spreadsheet before i made the graphs.
Given that last year's half year report was quite a shocker, and they didn't make it back up in the second half, the fact that this year's half-way report is even worse must be a cause for concern.
Toofast wrote: It's not looking good. How do you release so many new products in a year at exorbitant prices and still lose that much revenue? The exchange rate doesn't even come close to accounting for this kind of drop in revenue and profits. Of course GW would never tell the truth and say "Profit and revenue are down because we lost customers and have made no attempt to figure out why or get them back."
Over 50% of GWs turnover was generated in foreign markets, exchanges rates really are very important. Ergo why it is mentioned in the report most years.
The last report also identified North America and Austrailia as having been challenging within the period. So they do mention the negatives albeit wrapped up in management BS, you just have to read beyond the chairmans preamble.
Speaking of the exchange rates - a few years ago I noticed that GW consistently valued the British pound above its market value (when looking at their web-store prices). In essence I paid more if I bought in my local currency compared to paying in British pounds (and letting my local bank-branch handle the conversion using day-to-day rates).
I contacted GW about this issue. I was told that GW purposefully set the exchange rates in such a way (artificially high) so that they WOULDN'T BE AFFECTED BY CHANGES IN EXCHANGE-RATES.
So GW can take a long walk off a short pier. Lame excuses are lame, GW.
TerrorLegion wrote: Taking a quick look at this report as well as their annual reports, GW's reports always looks like like it was written by a second year B-school student and it just gives me the general feeling that the people running GW doesn't know how to run a publicly traded company let alone a niche retail company.
If this is true there should be an activist who can step in and fix it.
But, the company would need to be undervalued by at least half for an activist investor to take the risk.
Magic has been doing fine since wizards was taken over. Maybe the best we can hope for is a corporate buy out.
We've been waiting for that buyout for nearly 10 years now. No one wants to buy this sinking ship for how much the sellers would want for it. I don't doubt that any time shares are sold, Kirby and associates are likely the ones buying it.
I think it would be easier for another company to see GW go Bankrupt and then buy the IP for a pretty penny.
Jehan-reznor wrote: I think it would be easier for another company to see GW go Bankrupt and then buy the IP for a pretty penny.
Easier, but more profitable the long run? Letting GW go bankrupt would mean a huge amount of disruption as stores close, products go out of stock, etc. And that gives GW's competition a perfect opportunity to grab even more of GW's current market share, raising the question of whether any customers would be left by the time the new company gets everything back to normal. And that's on top of whatever damage GW does to the IP in their last desperate attempts to milk the cash cow and avoid bankruptcy for a few more months. Letting things get to that point only really makes sense if whoever buys the IP just wants to make some quick space marine iphone games at the lowest possible cost. A buyer that wants to keep GW's existing business mostly intact would be better off doing it at a point where share prices are down but there's still a reasonably intact company to take over.
Kilkrazy wrote: Given that last year's half year report was quite a shocker, and they didn't make it back up in the second half, the fact that this year's half-way report is even worse must be a cause for concern.
Perhaps, but if it is no one at GW is acknowledging it.
Jehan-reznor wrote: I think it would be easier for another company to see GW go Bankrupt and then buy the IP for a pretty penny.
Easier, but more profitable the long run? Letting GW go bankrupt would mean a huge amount of disruption as stores close, products go out of stock, etc. And that gives GW's competition a perfect opportunity to grab even more of GW's current market share, raising the question of whether any customers would be left by the time the new company gets everything back to normal. And that's on top of whatever damage GW does to the IP in their last desperate attempts to milk the cash cow and avoid bankruptcy for a few more months. Letting things get to that point only really makes sense if whoever buys the IP just wants to make some quick space marine iphone games at the lowest possible cost. A buyer that wants to keep GW's existing business mostly intact would be better off doing it at a point where share prices are down but there's still a reasonably intact company to take over.
I don't know get rid of all tainted work environment and start anew? Or a competitor will buy the IP and/or business for its machines and let GW IP die a slow death? What is best for us or for the GW business may not happen.
Stormwall wrote: I feel like when GW shoots itself in the foot, it uses the shotgun instead of a pistol.
I like to think that they are using a pistol, but after shooting themselves in the foot didn't work they tried the knee and are now pointed at something a lot more valuable just a little higher.
Stormwall wrote: I feel like when GW shoots itself in the foot, it uses the shotgun instead of a pistol.
I like to think that they are using a pistol, but after shooting themselves in the foot didn't work they tried the knee and are now pointed at something a lot more valuable just a little higher.
Stormwall wrote: I feel like when GW shoots itself in the foot, it uses the shotgun instead of a pistol.
I like to think that they are using a pistol, but after shooting themselves in the foot didn't work they tried the knee and are now pointed at something a lot more valuable just a little higher.
Their Femoral Artery?
You think now its something more substantial? Could be.
Right now, if things hold true to the previous years, GW should have gross sales of £60.4MM - £61.5MM in H2 of year and £116.9 - £118MM total for year.
This wipes out 7 years of revenue growth (excluding 2014). 2009 turnover was £125.7MM while 2008 was £110.3MM.
However, since GW likes to talk in constant currency - 2008 turnover of £110.3MM in 2015 rates would be £133.5MM. So GW is now about to can about ten years of revenue increase.
Lastly, considering they had COS increase (against a revenue decline), GW is looking like they will cross the critical threshold of when costs can no longer keep up with revenue declines in 2H15 or 1H16. That's when things will get real interesting. But that is a new CEOs worry because it will happen on his watch rather than on Kirby's.
GW can cut costs further if it comes to that: they have attempted to make their operations leaner, meaning they still have roughly same scale of operation but with less people and infrastructure. However, if their sales keep dropping, then there is probably no point maintaining some of their operations, they can scale back production, etc.
It's of course downward spiral, but one cannot make a linear projection "when the costs graph meets the revenue graph -> then kaputt" because one will affect the other.
Backfire wrote: GW can cut costs further if it comes to that: they have attempted to make their operations leaner, meaning they still have roughly same scale of operation but with less people and infrastructure. However, if their sales keep dropping, then there is probably no point maintaining some of their operations, they can scale back production, etc.
It's of course downward spiral, but one cannot make a linear projection "when the costs graph meets the revenue graph -> then kaputt" because one will affect the other.
But what about GW's long list of lease obligations?
I am under the impression that in order to get great rates on many of their UK locations, they accepted long leases with few or no break clauses, so they'd have to sub-let to take the costs off their books - though obviously if they close the location at least they save on utilities and staff costs.
In the past I'd railed on about how I feel the brick and mortar stores are bleeding GW money, but lately I've been wondering if the issue lies more with Warhammer Fantasy being a failing production line.
With the over catering to veteran players it created a game that was hard for new players to buy into, and ultimately vets had to buy little, if anything, to stay on top of things. I almost thing the lost money has been going into producing things for that line that aren't selling which could be leading to the reboot of Fantasy into something that is both more legally protectable, as well as accessible to more players. Plus if it hooks the vets right it might get them buying up whole new armies again (I know a few locally who'd be up for that if the game is decent).
It's just conjecture of course, but when locally I heard that 40k is outselling Fantasy 5.5:1 it makes me pause and wonder.
If true I don't know if their approach to updating Fantasy (which might help trim a lot of the fat they've been loath to get rid of that just doesn't work for the game, not to mention doesn't sell) will be enough to change things, but then again if it can get WFB back in the top 5 wargames then it might help turn the trend GW has been facing.
If you are right it is ironic that some of the changes of the past five years in Fantasy are being applied to 40K as well, and we have been seeing much wailing and gnashing of teeth by erstwhile 40K players, and GW's sales have been falling year on year for a couple of years now.
For my money it was the introduction of £30 hardback codexes that did it.
I agree Kilkrazy, $50 codecii was a complete no-go for me. I have all the codecii for my armies up through 5th and the rulebook for 6th, but when the army books went from a manageable and reasonable $30 to $50 and hardback I had a big "nope" moment.
Riquende wrote: Huh. Sales in the new online shop were broadly comparable to last year. I guess the £4m makeover helped stave off decline in that sector.
Good for them.
Anyone who has access to internet shops and still buys directly from GW does so on purpose. That would be the die-hard supporters because everything else you can get from other sources cheaper, even wthout much research.
Kilkrazy wrote: If you are right it is ironic that some of the changes of the past five years in Fantasy are being applied to 40K as well, and we have been seeing much wailing and gnashing of teeth by erstwhile 40K players, and GW's sales have been falling year on year for a couple of years now.
For my money it was the introduction of £30 hardback codexes that did it.
Precisely, same for us. We don't consider paying a good amount of money for a product that is so poorly done. If their codices were well-written and it they actually put some effort into it, then yes, we'd gladly pay for them. But such shoddy work does not deserve the insane prices they ask for. Yarrrrrrrrrrr.
They should publish a solid / exciting set rules & codexes, at a sensible price. The idea being to make gamers want to buy more models or try out another army. In fact you could class them as a 'lost leader'. Get gamers interested in wanting more stuff. They are currently charging a premium price for something that is in no way worth the price.
Wolfstan wrote: They should publish a solid / exciting set rules & codexes, at a sensible price. The idea being to make gamers want to buy more models or try out another army. In fact you could class them as a 'lost leader'. Get gamers interested in wanting more stuff. They are currently charging a premium price for something that is in no way worth the price.
Exactly this. The issue is that the rules are poor relatively speaking; some people might still find them fun but personally I want rules that are clear and don't require negotiations prior to playing. Couple that with a business strategy that seems to be offer as few as possible for as much as possible (I have no doubt they wouldn't sell a Tactical Squad at 5 for $40 if they didn't think there would be a cataclysmic backlash to it) and on top of that constantly push out things.
The idea of dataslates and supplements isn't a bad one if it was used to expand things that had to be cut from the books or just explore other things (e.g. different theme forces for example Chaos Legions or cults, different Craftworlds or Tau Septs), but not at the price they're asking (seriously, why is a supplement the same price as a full codex for half as much content?) and not when they do it seemingly with no rhyme or reason.
They've pretty much resorted to snake oil salesmen tactics, trying to milk the rubes out of as much cash as possible before the jig is up and they have to get out of town before the lynch mob forms up.
Another thing they've done in the past few years which is a real shame is get rid of all the great hobby content that used to be on their website. This content was produced and therefore any cost is already paid, and it just had to sit there, taking up a very small amount of space, but ADDING VALUE to the product for customers.
Paying premium prices for minis is less painful if other things are set up so that the miniatures you sell have more value than miniatures of other companies, for intangible reasons like better support in terms of guides, background information, and general hobbying support. Getting people enthused about gaming through terrain articles, painting articles and background is a cheap and effective way of getting them to buy miniatures. But GW scrapped all of that work for pretty much no reason. It makes no sense to me at all, and it's a tremendous shame.
I think the main reasons I personally buy less 40K than I once did are the prices getting to an unjustifiable point for casual expense, their retail stores being pushy, spending too much time on Dakka and taking in the negativity like a hate sponge and not having anyone to play with since moving to London.
Da Boss wrote: Another thing they've done in the past few years which is a real shame is get rid of all the great hobby content that used to be on their website. This content was produced and therefore any cost is already paid, and it just had to sit there, taking up a very small amount of space, but ADDING VALUE to the product for customers.
Paying premium prices for minis is less painful if other things are set up so that the miniatures you sell have more value than miniatures of other companies, for intangible reasons like better support in terms of guides, background information, and general hobbying support. Getting people enthused about gaming through terrain articles, painting articles and background is a cheap and effective way of getting them to buy miniatures. But GW scrapped all of that work for pretty much no reason. It makes no sense to me at all, and it's a tremendous shame.
Yeah.. I fondly remember modeling/painting/collecting articles on the website. And then they took them all down, presumably because they figured why are we giving this for free when we can charge $30 for a digital "How to Paint X" book instead...
The painting articles and books were based on the paint sets two paint sets ago. With the colors changing, and then the colors and the types of paints changing, the old material wasn't as helpful anymore to people who didn't know how to paint or didn't have a bunch of old paints sitting around like people are leading on.
The terrain book sadly was a casualty of GW making the terrain kits.
ClockworkZion wrote: The painting articles and books were based on the paint sets two paint sets ago. With the colors changing, and then the colors and the types of paints changing, the old material wasn't as helpful anymore to people who didn't know how to paint or didn't have a bunch of old paints sitting around like people are leading on.
The terrain book sadly was a casualty of GW making the terrain kits.
They couldn't have kept them with a big note that said that the colors used were from a previous paint range and therefore wouldn't match exactly with the new one, but could provide inspiration? They had to not only remove but actually delete the pages entirely?
When you been in business for so long you can always smell something foul going on. After 2006 they went down the rabbit hole of Greed. I take much pleasure in seeing this company becoming a shadow of it's former self. I also take much satisfaction of shoving GW corporate ideology into the apologists faces. Where is your God now?
OH! Just love the there stock prices at this moment of time. Does not quite reflect (to me) the actual cost of the share.
Kilkrazy wrote: There used to be How To Paint Citadel Miniatures and How To Build Wargames Terrain books by GW. They dumped those product lines years ago.
...and those were damn good books. Still got a copy of the terrain book.
ClockworkZion wrote: The painting articles and books were based on the paint sets two paint sets ago. With the colors changing, and then the colors and the types of paints changing, the old material wasn't as helpful anymore to people who didn't know how to paint or didn't have a bunch of old paints sitting around like people are leading on.
The terrain book sadly was a casualty of GW making the terrain kits.
They couldn't have kept them with a big note that said that the colors used were from a previous paint range and therefore wouldn't match exactly with the new one, but could provide inspiration? They had to not only remove but actually delete the pages entirely?
I'm not claiming that nothing could be done with them to make them work (hell, I'd love it if they'd archive the Paint Splatter articles from WD on there at least) but why they pulled what was out there. With the new paints the approach they used to teach people to paint is simpler and still gets a great tabletop look so I'm willing to bet that's the other reason it was dropped.
Even if it hadn't been dropped sooner it's likely that we'd end up losing them when the site was revamped.
Kilkrazy wrote: There used to be How To Paint Citadel Miniatures and How To Build Wargames Terrain books by GW. They dumped those product lines years ago.
I have both those old books, they are awesome, and I really wanted to do all the stuff in the terrain book, but I never found the time or resources.
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Adam LongWalker wrote: When you been in business for so long you can always smell something foul going on. After 2006 they went down the rabbit hole of Greed. I take much pleasure in seeing this company becoming a shadow of it's former self. I also take much satisfaction of shoving GW corporate ideology into the apologists faces. Where is your God now?
OH! Just love the there stock prices at this moment of time. Does not quite reflect (to me) the actual cost of the share.
But it is getting awfully close though.
Oh yeah, gak you m8, just saying spiteful stuff about GW is pointless on such a thread.
Kilkrazy wrote: There used to be How To Paint Citadel Miniatures and How To Build Wargames Terrain books by GW. They dumped those product lines years ago.
They have now tons of "how to paint this" or "how to paint that unit", check the digital editions. The tutorials are pretty basic and you can do much better with free stuff on this here forum, but yeah, they haven't stopped that stuff.
As for Terrain - you are not supposed to build your terrain anymore. You are supposed to buy GW terrain, battleboards and whatnot.
Kilkrazy wrote: There used to be How To Paint Citadel Miniatures and How To Build Wargames Terrain books by GW. They dumped those product lines years ago.
...and those were damn good books. Still got a copy of the terrain book.
Me too. It is actually a really good book on how to build terrain out of easily found, cheap materials.
As someone said above, these days "Terrain building" means buying a GW terrain kit.
Terrain building really died (not that it was doing so hot before this happened) with GW's new rule of "no rules if no model kit" making it so that unless they had a kit of some kind they would/could not put something out for it.
It's dumb, but at the same time I can at least see the logic behind it (unlike some things they do).
Kilkrazy wrote: There used to be How To Paint Citadel Miniatures and How To Build Wargames Terrain books by GW. They dumped those product lines years ago.
They have now tons of "how to paint this" or "how to paint that unit", check the digital editions. The tutorials are pretty basic and you can do much better with free stuff on this here forum, but yeah, they haven't stopped that stuff.
As for Terrain - you are not supposed to build your terrain anymore. You are supposed to buy GW terrain, battleboards and whatnot.
They're doing faction specific painting books now too. Space Wolves, Tyranids and Dark Eldar all got books.
The funny thing about removing the painting articles is that GW spent some obscene amount of money designing a website that nobody ever wants to visit. Look at the website for MTG, where you'll find daily articles about game design, new releases, recent tournaments, etc. Even if you aren't trying to make an immediate purchase you still have reasons to keep going back to the website, and that keeps the MTG brand fresh in your mind. But somehow GW fails to see the benefit of having people visit their website frequently, and even the limited blogs and articles they used to have are gone. So now, unless you're buying a specific product, you'll never visit their store and you'll never have an opportunity to think "hey, I could buy one of these" while you're there.
Well now they sell the terrain, so why teach you how to make innovative terrain out of various household items when they can just sell you another skull-encrusted tower?
GW is a company that doesn't truly understand its own success beyond knowing their customers and fans have an almost addicted relationship with them. GW saw what FFG and FW were doing and it tried to imitate them without understanding their success. This is why we have superficially "high production value" hardback codices, with the same standards of writing as before.
Accessibility is what gets people into a hobby, quality of the experience is what keeps them their. GW doesn't understand that cost diminishes the experience. There is an emotional and experiential enrichment to every hobby and GW has eroded that by nickel and dime-ing the experience and by making the hobby less accessible for the sake of premium branding.
aka_mythos wrote: GW is a company that doesn't truly understand its own success beyond knowing their customers and fans have an almost addicted relationship with them. GW saw what FFG and FW were doing and it tried to imitate them without understanding their success. This is why we have superficially "high production value" hardback codices, with the same standards of writing as before.
Accessibility is what gets people into a hobby, quality of the experience is what keeps them their. GW doesn't understand that cost diminishes the experience. There is an emotional and experiential enrichment to every hobby and GW has eroded that by nickel and dime-ing the experience and by making the hobby less accessible for the sake of premium branding.
ClockworkZion wrote: The painting articles and books were based on the paint sets two paint sets ago. With the colors changing, and then the colors and the types of paints changing, the old material wasn't as helpful anymore to people who didn't know how to paint or didn't have a bunch of old paints sitting around like people are leading on.
The terrain book sadly was a casualty of GW making the terrain kits.
They couldn't have kept them with a big note that said that the colors used were from a previous paint range and therefore wouldn't match exactly with the new one, but could provide inspiration? They had to not only remove but actually delete the pages entirely?
They could have put the colour conversion chart sheet inside the cover, rendering the book useful again. But they want you to buy the ebook painting guides for a single unit/faction for each unit you buy.
aka_mythos wrote: GW is a company that doesn't truly understand its own success beyond knowing their customers and fans have an almost addicted relationship with them. GW saw what FFG and FW were doing and it tried to imitate them without understanding their success. This is why we have superficially "high production value" hardback codices, with the same standards of writing as before.
Accessibility is what gets people into a hobby, quality of the experience is what keeps them their. GW doesn't understand that cost diminishes the experience. There is an emotional and experiential enrichment to every hobby and GW has eroded that by nickel and dime-ing the experience and by making the hobby less accessible for the sake of premium branding.
Kilkrazy wrote: Well like I have said before the ultimate expression of Teh GW HHHobby is that users log on to the GW web site and spend money.
They don't get sent any products, they just spend the money.
Surely the ultimate expression of the GW hhhobby is they help themselves to your cash and tell you what you would have bought?
I agree with Kilkrazy. I think Black Library's sale of desktop wallpaper exemplifies this drive.
Wait a minute. I've been out of the GW loop for a while, but Black Library are sellingdesktop fething wallpapers?
I just checked to confirm this... wow, have we gone back in time? Is it 1996 again when people will pay for anything tech related? Well, I guess GW might think it's still 1996 with how they try to market, but still. Holy gak...
aka_mythos wrote: GW is a company that doesn't truly understand its own success beyond knowing their customers and fans have an almost addicted relationship with them. GW saw what FFG and FW were doing and it tried to imitate them without understanding their success. This is why we have superficially "high production value" hardback codices, with the same standards of writing as before.
Accessibility is what gets people into a hobby, quality of the experience is what keeps them their. GW doesn't understand that cost diminishes the experience. There is an emotional and experiential enrichment to every hobby and GW has eroded that by nickel and dime-ing the experience and by making the hobby less accessible for the sake of premium branding.
Kilkrazy wrote: Well like I have said before the ultimate expression of Teh GW HHHobby is that users log on to the GW web site and spend money.
They don't get sent any products, they just spend the money.
Surely the ultimate expression of the GW hhhobby is they help themselves to your cash and tell you what you would have bought?
I agree with Kilkrazy. I think Black Library's sale of desktop wallpaper exemplifies this drive.
Wait a minute. I've been out of the GW loop for a while, but Black Library are sellingdesktop fething wallpapers?
I just checked to confirm this... wow, have we gone back in time? Is it 1996 again when people will pay for anything tech related? Well, I guess GW might think it's still 1996 with how they try to market, but still. Holy gak...
One can hope that although GW are trying to sell wall papers, no one is buying them...however, there are a lot of true believers who no doubt think that the pixels are worth paying for...because they are special GW pixels with special GW encoding...
I think GW's is quite clear this year.
Establishing a new game or call it Fantasy 9th edition.
Start at smaller pt level such that players have a chance to get into the game and Fantasy players can adapt.
The revenue this year will mainly come from the new game and 40k supplements and data slates.
I hope it will work out.
I think GW's is quite clear this year.
Establishing a new game or call it Fantasy 9th edition.
Start at smaller pt level such that players have a chance to get into the game and Fantasy players can adapt.
The revenue this year will mainly come from the new game and 40k supplements and data slates.
I hope it will work out.
I hope it doesn't, so maybe they'll finally get it through their heads that people want a good fething game to play, not just overpriced figures to play it with.
I think GW's is quite clear this year.
Establishing a new game or call it Fantasy 9th edition.
Start at smaller pt level such that players have a chance to get into the game and Fantasy players can adapt.
The revenue this year will mainly come from the new game and 40k supplements and data slates.
I hope it will work out.
I hope it doesn't, so maybe they'll finally get it through their heads that people want a good fething game to play, not just overpriced figures to play it with.
I'm with you here.
But still I hope the show goes on.
I think GW's is quite clear this year.
Establishing a new game or call it Fantasy 9th edition.
Start at smaller pt level such that players have a chance to get into the game and Fantasy players can adapt.
The revenue this year will mainly come from the new game and 40k supplements and data slates.
I hope it will work out.
I hope it doesn't, so maybe they'll finally get it through their heads that people want a good fething game to play, not just overpriced figures to play it with.
I'm with you here.
But still I hope the show goes on.
The show won't be stopping anytime soon...
In terms of the impact that a new Fantasy game may or may not have on the year end report...a lot of that will depend on when it comes out. Year ends the beginning of June. The bulk of the initial run on a new release happens in the first month or so of the release, that means that to have the most impact it would need to be released the end of April. Based off from past data on Fantasy sales, a new edition on its own wouldn't be enough to turn around the report from another year over year drop in profit (a Fantasy Edition release is good for about $2-2.5 million). That means if they are counting on it doing much at all in terms of the numbers - they will need to drop a whole lot more at the same time. Completely rewrite the army books and push them all out the door at the same time might work. As would invalidating large numbers of existing figures and replacing them with new figures to buy.
Granted, some of the info coming from that direction does in fact point to that as what is going to happen. The problem then becomes that instead of having your existing Fantasy player base (minus a bit for those who leave/stick with the old edition) you run the risk of forcing even more of those players away. Then the $2-2.5 million becomes something like $300-500K, and you are stuck carrying a lot of inventory over to the next year (which makes the books look a bit worse). GW is playing a game right now, in trying to figure out how to get more money back in their coffers. It is a very risky game too - as a lot of people who like WFB like it because of the big blocks of troops. They also often have much larger armies, and the thought of those much larger armies becoming irrelevant with new rules probably won't sit too well with the old guard.
Given that the old guard are the ones who do the advertising/recruiting for GW - it could be enough to kill the game as being commercially viable for GW to continue.
