Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Mymearan wrote:
Chaos space marines at 18... Can't believe that ugly old kit is still selling!

It is entirely possible GW are just BSing us

If this were sales of 2014 I'd say the Imperial Knight would be close to the top, I'm not sure it's continued to sell well enough to be up in the top 5 now though.

Is there any indication what this list actually means? Does it just say "most popular", or "best selling" or something like that?

Based on what I've read so far it could be anything from based on sales volume, based on revenue or based on what Fred from accounting likes best.

 Mymearan wrote:
"Most popular kits"

So.... that could literally mean damned near anything It could be the most sales, it could be the one that has the most views on the website, it could be the one that is most popular within the GW office itself.

Do we even know if the list is in order?

I did notice the "best sellers" list on the GW site doesn't match what's in this "most popular" list.

I'd be surprised if the Zoan/Venomthrope kit was actually 16th in overall sales, it's not a bad kit, but most nid players already would have owned several of them and the rules didn't change when they came out so there was no motivation to buy more.

That and the fact that even though it wasn't a bad kit, it didn't save all that much money compared to the old metal and resin versions. So I wouldn't have expected a bunch of people who previously couldn't afford the metals to run out and buy the new plastics when the new plastics weren't much cheaper.

That mostly leaves it down to new players and old players who for some reason didn't already have a bunch of Zoans and Venoms or are so hyper enthusiast that they'd want to buy even more of them.

But yeah, at this stage I'm not convinced the list we are getting is actually a "highest sales" list.

Mymearan wrote:You missed a big category - people who replaced their old metal/finecast zoans..

I meant to include those people under hyper-enthusiasts but I realise now that I worded it incorrectly, my apologies.

Sinful Hero wrote:Venomthropes had really good rules backing them- stick one in a Bastion and nearly your entire army had a cover save.

Yes but those rules existed for, umm, I think a year or so before the new plastics came out. So most people who wanted to exploit that rule had already purchased the old Venoms some time in the past year.

Most 'nid players would have already owned 1 to 3 or more Venoms because of their cover saves before that box ever came out, and the people who couldn't afford the metal and resin versions wouldn't have been won over by the very high price of the new Venom/Zoan kit.

There's definitely reasons why people would buy them, but enough to make it 16th overall compared to the hundreds of other kits GW makes? I very much doubt it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Talys wrote:@warboss - Here's the FW top 10 -

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-CA/Top-10

Top spot goes to the GBP1240 Warlord, #2 goes to Ta'unar, at GBP 250. Quad rapiers are #7, and it would just stun me if FW sold more units of $2000 warlords than $50 quad rapiers, since so many space marine players use those as models for Thunderfire Cannon (it's actually cheaper)

But of course, the Christmas GW list could be measured by a different metric than FW's top 10.

@Tsilber - I think Razorbacks. Personally, I would never buy a Rhino kit now. I'd just buy the razorback and not use the extra sprue (or not glue on the top, so it can be both). Rhno is $37.25 is $41.25, and the option is definitely worth $4 IMO.

warboss wrote:Thanks for the link. It doesn't look like FW qualifies it any further than "top 10" so it could easily be revenue for them (unlike what the word "popularity" implies).

That's a top 10 Christmas list, not a top 10 sales list. It's just telling you that GW/FW think the best Christmas gift in their line up is the 1240GBP Warlord Titan, it doesn't mean the 1240GBP Titan sold the most units and/or had the most revenue.

I think you people have made some leaps by assuming GW and/or FW are telling you anything to do with their sales numbers Top 10 Christmas list ≠ best sales and "most popular" ≠ best sales except in 1 specific context.

 Mymearan wrote:
I don't see a reason to doubt that it's a best-seller list, most probably by revenue.

It also contradicts their best seller list on their website.

The website has 12 40k "best seller" entries, but only 2 of them are on the "most popular" so far, so they can't physically squeeze the "best sellers" off the website in to their "most popular" list.

You could write that off as the fact this list includes AoS and the website doesn't.... but also, the Harlequin Troupe is #13 on the "most popular" list and features on the "best seller" list, yet things that are above it on the "most popular" list (Battleforce, Admech Dragoon and Admech Dunecrawler) are both missing from the website's "best seller" list.

So the lists don't agree with each other, I think that's enough reason to doubt either 1 or both of them.

IMHO GW are just using this as a chance to promote the kits they want to promote rather than actually listing any sort of information on what is selling best.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Talys wrote:
The button says top 10 Christmas list, but the URL is the same one they used before, when it was just the top 10 bestsellers list...

Ah ok, I don't remember that, but I'll believe you

If it's based off revenue it makes sense that the Warlord would be top I guess.

 Talys wrote:
@Skink - I don't think the "Bestsellers" on the GW website is really meaningful...

I will be honest, I don't think any of them are meaningful

I'm always wary of best seller lists, especially if they don't come with any numbers attached to them or even how they were calculated. I'm even more wary of anything GW says. You might say what motivation do they have to lie, my response would be what motivation do they have to actually release data on what sells and what doesn't?

I think the GW website bestseller list is BS and I think the list we've been given here is "most popular" where "most popular" does not mean "best seller".

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I'd imagine the website best sellers list is probably just a refelction of what the site has sold that day/week/month or whatever (on some sort of rolling basis)

As to most popular who knows (could even be based on what people have put on their Xmas wishlists?)

I believe the best sellers list only just appeared recently on the website.

Goodness knows what criteria they are using.... I think the criteria for both lists probably isn't "best selling" and rather "a list of stuff Fred from IT decided to put up there".

 Talys wrote:
I would guess the ones that don't make the cut in 40k will be Stormfang, and Ven Dred for sure.

It wouldn't surprise me if those are up there, I don't know what it's like these days but 5 years ago there were as many SW players as there were Eldar players (based off codex sales from the Chapterhouse case). How many of them stuck around? I dunno. But a lot of SW players bought multiple Dreads and Stormwolf/fangs when they came out

 Talys wrote:
@Skink - I agree, but that was 2014. I'd just be surprised if there was enough momentum to keep it up in the *top 7* of 2015. Especially, with 3 of the spots almost certainly taken by AoS, Calth, and Imperial Knight, and some kits that are probably really popular like Space Marine Tacticals and AdMech Rangers.

Still, I see the buying patterns in my local area, and I'm no doubt influenced by that bias; for all I know, Stormwolf/fangs are super popular in 60% of the world.

I believe the Zoans and Venoms were a 2014 release and I've stated earlier why I wouldn't have expected them in the top 20 at all. So I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they SW stuff manages to squeeze in.

Again, I don't know what it's like now, it might have been people bandwagon jumping on SW's back in 5th, but the 5th SW codex actually sold as much as the 5th vanilla codex, so there's likely to be a whole heap of SW players out there.

That and I'm still not convinced GW aren't lying to us with this list but that's another matter.

I would expect the list to be biased toward things released at the start of the year.

It also depends what they are calling "2015". In financial statements, they often take from the start of Dec 2014 to the start of Dec 2015.... in which case Blood Angels were released right at the start of their year, so it doesn't surprise me that BA Tacticals are near the top of the list, they would be the only thing in the list that includes both the initial release/impulse buys + a full 12 months of "regular" sales.

Same with the Harlequins, Admech stuff. Sales SHOULD be biased toward them since they came out at the start of the year.

The surprising things are stuff like Zoans/venoms that came out toward the end of last year, but then I guess if they are reporting 2015 as being from Dec to Dec, maybe they are catching the 'nid release.

Actually, that would make the list make a bit more sense, if it's counted from the nid release last year up until early Dec this year, it would explain why all 3 of those nid kits + the swarm are on the list, as I'd be very surprised if 'nids were actually THAT popular to wiggle their way in without the list being biased toward them due to the release schedule.

 Sidstyler wrote:
Personally I was surprised to see the Tau stormsurge on the list. It literally just came out as this thing started getting updated and already sold well enough to be one of their most popular models. Kinda hoping more Tau stuff makes it towards the top but I doubt it.

I was thinking the same thing, it's only been 3 or 4 months I think?

If GW are using a reasonably large interpretation of "2015" which includes the last few months of 2014, then it would explain a bit better all the End Times stuff in the list, as I found once the End Times ended most people went on a purchasing hiatus of WHFB stuff (except people who were worried it was the end and purchased stuff to finish off their armies).

Well it's likely that the list is based off revenue rather than units sold, hence why the Tyranid Swam would be so high up.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Also isn't the Cadian Def Force web only? If so that could mean "Best Sellers of 2015" actually means "Most Revenue Generating Web Sale SKUs of Q4 2014-Q3 2015" which granted is a bit of a mouth full.

At this point I'm suspecting "2015" includes at LEAST Nov 2014, which explains why all 3 of the November 2014 Tyranid releases are in the list. Maybe even as early as September with all the End Times kits that made it on to the list.

 Talys wrote:
...they are on the bestsellers list that gw gives its independents, though I never actually believed they were best selling

Earlier in the thread someone asked why would GW lie, I figured "just to promote the models they want", but now that you mention this it does make more sense why they'd lie (if they are lying, who the feth knows ), so they can be consistent with lying to independent retailers about what the best selling kits are

 Talys wrote:
Seeing as all 3 of my local independent stores have told me that their ratio of 40k to WHFB was twenty to one -- or worse (for Fantasy) -- it doesn't surprise me at all.

I've always been under the impression WHFB was more popular in Europe than the USA. My understanding is when GW expanded in to the US, 40k grew but WHFB did not.

I tend to think End Times sold quite well, even compared to 40k.... just a shame it was the last thing they did before killing it.

 Talys wrote:
#3 is in!! SKITARII RANGERS!

About 2 hours late on that one

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If AoS bumped overall Fantasy sales from 5% of 40k volume up to 8%, while cutting support costs by 30%, that would be an unqualified success by any business measure.

How would AoS have cut support costs by 30%, if at all? They have the same number of kits on the shelves. They dropped army books, but are bringing out battle tombs which are going to take up the same shelf space. They are reboxing all the kits to have round bases. Not to mention the initial investment cost involved in bringing out a new system (it doesn't matter how sparse the rules are, it still costs money to introduce a new system).

nedTCM wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If AoS bumped overall Fantasy sales from 5% of 40k volume up to 8%, while cutting support costs by 30%, that would be an unqualified success by any business measure.

How would AoS have cut support costs by 30%, if at all? They have the same number of kits on the shelves. They dropped army books, but are bringing out battle tombs which are going to take up the same shelf space. They are reboxing all the kits to have round bases. Not to mention the initial investment cost involved in bringing out a new system (it doesn't matter how sparse the rules are, it still costs money to introduce a new system).

They moved most of the fantasy line to direct order. It is likely that they changed the production structure of fantasy to be more in line with sales. There are tons of kits of fantasy. Anything that isn't selling go to next to zero production. The stuff that is moving inhabits the limited shelf space along side the new kits they are actively promoting. In this respect it could be a big cost saver by clearing out the old junk so to speak. If something gets a small resurgence in sales, they print a few more runs. The panic after the AOS rumor drop ensured people would buy a lot of these kits as well before GW stops making them.

It is rather absurd that there are still no new kits outside of the end times stuff for fantasy in their top sellers. If I recall correctly all the end times stuff on there came out pre-leak bomb. The Imp Knight is likely the number one or two seller. If AOS is even up there it will be the boxed set. This makes a lot of sense for it to be this high or even number one spot because it is a great deal for a lot of plastic and there was a large initial popularity spike with the release of the game. None of the flashy stormcasts or khorne guys have made it on the list. There were several months this year were that was legit the focus of GW. Yet some how a regular box of chaos space marines has sold better than those.

It will be interesting to see the report coming out soon.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If AoS bumped overall Fantasy sales from 5% of 40k volume up to 8%, while cutting support costs by 30%, that would be an unqualified success by any business measure.

How would AoS have cut support costs by 30%, if at all? They have the same number of kits on the shelves. They dropped army books, but are bringing out battle tombs which are going to take up the same shelf space. They are reboxing all the kits to have round bases. Not to mention the initial investment cost involved in bringing out a new system (it doesn't matter how sparse the rules are, it still costs money to introduce a new system).

I didn't say cut to zero, I said cut by a 30%. AOS is a much simpler product that allows rules and models to be released faster and more easily, while reducing the physical stock SKU count. Over the next year, I think the AOS cost savings become clearer.

I didn't say you said cut to zero, 30% is still a hell of a lot.

So basically you think they're going to drop a lot of product in the future? Because at this stage AoS would have cost them significantly more money than WHFB did over the past few years of letting it stagnate, because at this stage they have the same number of kits + the cost of converting them to round bases + the initial costs involved in AoS and they are writing battletomes to replace Army Books so there's no money saving there.

If it's because they're moving stuff to direct only.... well they could have done that with WHFB anyway, and in fact I think they were doing that (weren't Bretonnians shifted to direct only?).

The simpler rules themselves don't save you any money, especially if you never actually put any time in to playtesting and FAQing the complicated rules anyway

 Tainted wrote:
I'm expecting the AoS stater to make the list, not because I think it sold well, but because GW want us to believe it sold well. Perhaps that's just me being cynical, but if AoS wasn't on the list then they may have to admit to potential retailers that the product wasn't selling as well as they thought it was. IMHO it's more likely that they'd rather pretend it's doing great.

At any rate, I'm willing to believe that the list so far is based on actual sales, although with the Cadian and tyranid boxes so high up I suspect it's more likely by revenue that units sold. Even so, if they are being honest with the list then sadly I doubt that AoS will make the cut.

If AoS isn't on the top of the list it'll convince me that GW didn't rig the list.... I don't even think GW are silly enough to rig a list and not include AoS on it

puree wrote:
So if AoS doesn't make it then it proves AoS was a flop. If it does make it then it proves GW are rigging the list?

Love it.

FWIW, I was questioning the validity of the list from page 1 of this thread It has been said why would GW lie, IMO it's more like why wouldn't they lie if the truth exposes something they'd rather keep hidden (like the product they've invested a lot in to not doing so well).

 nullBolt wrote:
I don't think it's possible to say the list is rigged when we have no idea what metrics GW are even using.

We could say they chose particular metrics because they gave the results they wanted, but we still have no idea what they are.

The whole list is REALLY weird, though.

I think the list makes sense if you assume 2 things...

1. It's revenue rather than units shifted (explains why some big kits that wouldn't shift many units are nearer the top).

2. The period of recording is from around September 2014.

#2 explains why the End Times kits are there (released Sept 2014), why the Tyranids are there (released Nov 2014), why the BA tactical squad is so high (released Dec 2014). Then Admech, Harlequins, Bloodthirster and Tau Stormsurge are all 2015 releases.

That covers everything except the Space Marine stuff (explained by their general huge popularity), Cadian Defence Force (not unbelievable if you consider it's based off revenue as it's an expensive kit that's pretty good value), Necron Battleforce (same as Cadians), Chaos Space Marines (that one's a surprise), the Scions (another surprise, I wouldn't have expected them to make the top of the list, they aren't a bad kit but I didn't think that many people would buy them) and the Baneblade (a bit of a surprise, it's an expensive kit so wouldn't have to shift as many units, but I figured most people who wanted Baneblades would have bought them in years gone by, I would have expected the Wraithknight to be up there rather than the Baneblade).

I guess the other surprise would be the lack of Eldar with their new codex and powerful units... maybe there aren't as many power gamers as we think there is.

That said.... I wouldn't put it past GW to lie if it suits their needs (making an unpopular kit they are heavily invested in seem more popular than it is).

 Talys wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
2. The period of recording is from around September 2014.

No, Deathstorm would have surely outsold some of the other kits (like baneblade or blight kings), as they sold every unit they produced. It could be from Dec 1 to Nov. 30, though -- that's pretty reasonable, since the countdown started at the beginning of December.

How many did they produce? I thought those things were in pretty limited supply. I remember Stormclaw sold out very quickly and if I recall correctly that was a "limit X per customer" thing, so it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't make all that many.

I sincerely doubt all those Tyranids would be there if the period they are counting didn't include at least Nov 2014.

It is also possible they just aren't including starter sets, which Deathstorm basically was.

Hmmm, that does surprise me. Although it further convinces me that the numbers do include the last part of 2014 as that's when Smaug was first released.

They made 200 Smaugs in 2014, so that's about £60,000 revenue. They didn't sell out instantly, I think it took a week or two? I'd be surprised if they sold more than 400-600 total, so maybe £180,000 total?

 Talys wrote:
@Skink - the best point of reference is IK. Though of course it's hard to estimate the number of those kits, too.

Well Smaug is the only kit on the list we actually know how many they made in a certain period, as it was one of their advertising points when it first came out that they only made 200 before Christmas.

I could be off by miles, but I'd guess if they sold 200 in a few days (I think it was about a week?) then the next 200 is probably going to take you a few weeks to sell and the next 200 a few months to sell, that's why I guessed at around 600 total.

Imperial Knights, it's hard to say how many Wardens they sold, I didn't really follow that release. The first IK release my local store got I think 9 in stock and sold them all in the morning of the first day, goodness knows how many they sold in total, 5000, 10000, 15000? Hard to say. But that was early 2014. The Knight Paladin didn't make the list at all, so sales must have dropped off fast enough to not make the top 28.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Herzlos wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Hmmm, that does surprise me. Although it further convinces me that the numbers do include the last part of 2014 as that's when Smaug was first released.

They made 200 Smaugs in 2014, so that's about £60,000 revenue. They didn't sell out instantly, I think it took a week or two? I'd be surprised if they sold more than 400-600 total, so maybe £180,000 total?

I thought Smaug was limited to 200 in total?


Edit: it looks like a standard production run, when did that happen?

BrookM wrote:It was a limited run when it was first released, just before the holidays last year IIRC.

The initial release was the start of Dec 2014, limited to 200 "before Christmas", I think it was a week or two in to 2015 when it went back up on the store without the "limited" status.

 Talys wrote:
By the way, the math on GBP 180k doesn't work out.

That was kind of my point I find it hard to believe they sold much more than that many number of Smaugs. If Smaug had of sold out instantly when it was first released I could have believed that they sold a lot more than that, but it didn't, if my memory serves it took a few days to a week to sell only 200 of them.

Even if you say Smaug made up 1% of total revenue, that's around 3300-3400 Smaugs they would have had to sell and I just don't think that happened.

Unless GW have some wacky way of determining what a best seller is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Talys wrote:
Even putting aside that it's a crazy popular model that some people buy 5 or 10 or more of, I think every independent and GW store HAD to buy at least 1 (I believe it's one of the models the store must stock), and I think most stores are happy with this model (ie it has sold).

I'm sure the Knight sold a lot.... but remember we're talking about the Warden which came out mid 2015, not the Paladin which came out mid 2014. I'm sure they sold a lot more Paladins than they sold Wardens.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually I wonder if this list is just a "webstore" list. That would heavily bias it to Smaug because Smaug is both expensive AND webstore exclusive.

 Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:
I think some folks are underestimating the madness behind a collectable piece like Smaug, although I'd not pay that for one, when you compare him to the official Weta collectable prices, Marvel figurines and the like, he's a pretty fair deal.

I would suspect a heck of a lot of them sold to folks who don't even know what GW is or does. Hell I saw one generic Fantasy Facebook group sharing a link to him back when he first came out, I doubt it was the only one.

Definitely he's a great piece, I was even tempted to buy him to paint up as a display piece, if he had a different base I probably would have got one

But I'm just going off the typical thing where sales typically diminish over time, if it took them a few days to a week to sell only 200, I struggle to believe they sold THAT many over the course of a year.

Though maybe if this is based off webstore only, then it's a bit more believable, because out of the Smaugs made ALL were sold through the webstore. Out of all the Knight Wardens sold, maybe 1 in 10 were sold through the webstore.

Makes a bit more sense then

 JamesY wrote:
The first 200 smaugs sold in 5 minutes, not days. No staff discount allowed. The second and third runs only lasted a day each, before being sold out. It was phenomenally successful. I hear also that the current batch will be the last produced as they have sold to most people who want/can afford it.

I'm sure it wasn't minutes, because I distinctly remember looking at it and thinking "hmmm, maybe I'll buy one", then coming back a day or two later and thinking the same thing and it wasn't until a couple of days later again that it was gone.

But even given that, how many batches have they actually done? They aren't set up to mass produce it anyway so I can't imagine each of the runs were terribly large.