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The way I see it, if they're going for a $50 price tag they're likely to do more than just make it a hardback book, they'll likely fill out the length a bit to further justify that price. GW should feel free to experiment. When its out, we have to judge it for everything it is and not just the fact it was one price and now its another.

malfred wrote:"People of Fantasy! I bring you 3..."



"...2 army books in the coming year!"

I have to confess I have been lazy to buy any dex or book from GW in a long time, I mean the fluff doesnt change much the artwork is from crappy to very good and I dont play much either... not much incentive... I was about to jump on the amazing new fantasy book then I just caved in and got some miniatures instead.

Kilkrazy wrote:You can't please everyone.

What I would like is for GW to release two editions of each book.

One would be the Full Monty, with oodles of fluff, colour pics, hard cover and all that, priced at say £30 to £50 depending on thickness.

The second would be the stripped down version, no fluff, no colour, soft cover, A5 size. Priced at £10.

Basically to follow the example set by the AoBR rulebook and the BGB.

And release them at the same time. Not 3-4 months apart.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Sorry I didn't realise one had to be true blue blood aristocracy to play plastic soldier games.
*doffs cap, tugs forskin*

Uhh.... please stop tugging on that.

Anyone recall the first of the third edition codexes? You know, those pamphlets that had 3 pages of fluff- and then the army lists and a bunch of pictures of the figs and maybe an ineffective 'how to' paint like the pros thing. they charge 15 or 20$ for those. And after having paid the same sort of prices for the hefty 2nd ed codexes it was a slap in the face. But people kept buying them.

A 50$ hard back with a bit more content is just the sort of thing GW would do- and then act as though they are doing us a great favor by granting us the priveledge of buying thier wondrous works of art.

Lets look at it another way. White Dwarf. It has doubled in price- almost tripled over the last 10 years- but yet the actual content has been reduced at an inversely proportional rate. The gamer community keeps showing GW that they will pay for medicore products- so GW feels entitled to keep doing so- and will continue to gouge those that buy thier products as long as they can.

So, just say 'Oh thank you mighty GW!' and keep buying their stuff. Or stop buying their attitude(as thats what youre paying for rather than the value of the content) and try out a game/company that actually LIKES their customers

I'd rather they scaled the rule books down to just the rules and stats and sold them for a much lower price.

Regards the issue of pdf's being standard and the HB's being the "premium" - I have a kindle, even had a few of the Apoc datasheets on it. Have to say that I would hate to have a rulebook on it as it would take forever to flick through the pages if you are hunting for something.

Also, I would not like to have to take my £100+ electronic book with £X of ebooks on it to a tournament, or even to my local GW/FLGS.

I also don't want to lug 80 tonnes of hard back books around with me either.

SilverMK2 wrote:I'd rather they scaled the rule books down to just the rules and stats and sold them for a much lower price.

Regards the issue of pdf's being standard and the HB's being the "premium" - I have a kindle, even had a few of the Apoc datasheets on it. Have to say that I would hate to have a rulebook on it as it would take forever to flick through the pages if you are hunting for something.

Also, I would not like to have to take my £100+ electronic book with £X of ebooks on it to a tournament, or even to my local GW/FLGS.

I also don't want to lug 80 tonnes of hard back books around with me either.

You don't use key-word search? Or just go to the ToC?

I buy a lot of RPG's etc, so hardbacks are nothing new for me, I just hope they aren't like the FFG dark heresy/rogue trader/death watch adventure books that look tiny in comparison to other hardbacks - inspiring a less than value for money effect.

Of course it does mean I'll probably buy less of them, unlike now, where I usually get everyone.

Given that an Army book is going to sit n my shelf for 5 years I think hardback would be a great way to go but only if it's full colour. I'm sick of black and white books especially when hardback graphic novels like the 2000AD and Marvel six issue collections aren't that expensive. I see no need to panic.

Personally I think the 'new style' will be just be 'full colour' however I'd love to see ebook versions.

if they are lookgn to cut costs why dont they make codices/army books a pay for download ro something?

Go to GW website, select your book, pay £5. Download and print.

i can't see them giving them out on free PDFs so this coudl work maybe.

Kilkrazy wrote:You can't please everyone.

What I would like is for GW to release two editions of each book.

One would be the Full Monty, with oodles of fluff, colour pics, hard cover and all that, priced at say £30 to £50 depending on thickness.

The second would be the stripped down version, no fluff, no colour, soft cover, A5 size. Priced at £10.

Basically to follow the example set by the AoBR rulebook and the BGB.

This is a sensible, and very likely extremely profitable plan that will make players happy. Therefore, GW will never do it.

I love my AoBR rulebook. Bbest thing i have bought so far i think.

i think if this comes to pass, GW will die out in about two to three years which will be awesome for some (ie me)

TyraelVladinhurst wrote:i think if this comes to pass, GW will die out in about two to three years

I predict that you are not very good at predicting things that will actually happen.

Scottywan82 wrote:You don't use key-word search? Or just go to the ToC?

I still find it easier to just open a book. And it is a lot faster and easier to use a book to flick around the rules/etc.

SilverMK2 wrote:

Scottywan82 wrote:You don't use key-word search? Or just go to the ToC?

I still find it easier to just open a book. And it is a lot faster and easier to use a book to flick around the rules/etc.

I use the iPad sometimes, and I always find things way faster than in the actual book. I'm not wild about the Kindle's small screen though. Maybe that makes the difference.

Bloodwin wrote:Given that an Army book is going to sit n my shelf for 5 years I think hardback would be a great way to go but only if it's full colour.

I'm inclined to think thats the sort of thing GW's likely to do with a $50 book.

Praxiss wrote:if they are lookgn to cut costs why dont they make codices/army books a pay for download ro something?

Go to GW website, select your book, pay £5. Download and print.

GW doesn't want to lose revenue, so from their point of view they'd want to at least break even. A scheme like this could easily go hand in hand with a larger fanicer version that justifies the price tag while compensating for the diminished revenue due to the sale of digital copies.

If GW went this route they'd likely follow FFG's example where the digital copy is 30% off... $5 is an undervaluing of their product. If every 40k player paid only $5 per codex and bought every codex GW wouldn't be able to afford to write the next codex.

I think you overestimate the amount of cash it takes to writea codex rather than print and distribute it.

I suppose. The price point itself weas just a example. if i coudl DL a codex at a discoutn and then print it out and get it spiral bound myself or something, i would rather do that than lug a £3 HC book around.

Also, if i paid that much for a book, i woudln't want to take to a tourney or even my FLGS for fear of it getting messed up.

I would actually be completely behind this move if GW made bare bones versions of the army book rules available as free .PDFs online. If they want to market these vanity books to people for their own armies, more power to them. But for tournament organizers and the like that need to build a library of rules resources, or people who are curious about an army but not sold enough on it to pony up big bucks, there needs to be an alternative.

Or GW can just alienate more of the customer base than they already have over the past five years. One or the other.

GW will most likely never offer the Codices as free PDF's, but I've been proven wrong before.

When I first read the rumor about this my initial thought wasn't about price, but rather the ability to include more in the book (and not have it fall apart). I would certainly buy $50.00 hard cover Codices if they were packed with fluff, art, images and all that good stuff.

SkaerKrow wrote:

Or GW can just alienate more of the customer base than they already have over the past five years. One or the other.

Or just make new ones.

I think the question will be whether or not their target audience will be just as willing
to buy-in should the price-tag for the army rules alone becomes 50 USD.

Kilkrazy wrote:I think you overestimate the amount of cash it takes to writea codex rather than print and distribute it.

I think you underestimate the amount of overhead GW's floating. They currently sell books at ~65% retail price to retailers. This year their operating cost was £83M and their cost of sales is £31M all to generate £15M profit. Thats not great, they don't have huge margin to cut into to bring us savings. To maintain that level of profitability they can only play with the price of an army book so much. GW charges ~$30 currently; in switching from paper to digital they cut out the cost of materials, printing and shipping... but that only accounts for about 1/2 of the 65% of retail, or about 1/3. Anything else eats into the money that otherwise covers overhead or profit. They could always play with the numbers a bit and bring that down marginally, but not to the degree they could afford to charge only $5 for a digital armybook. GW has to maintain their same physical distribution system whether books are sent through it or not. You could bring up warehousing costs, but GW has to maintain that space no matter what so that comes down to opportunity costs. Other markets that have shifted from one media to digital are often times companies with a single type of product.

This is why I was saying before where if GW does it as a parrallel effort to a nicer higher margin item, the margin of one can offset the other. Even still while GW could do it but not for as cheap as people seem to want it.

TBH if the next Chaos codex came out as a HC with loads of fluff and artwork i woudl most likely fork out the cash it is my main army and the reason i started the game. Any other codices i would either not bother or DL if it was an option.

Agreed, all the FFG RPG books have really made me appreciate hard back books.

I like the idea of hardback codex/army books.. but if they were to do that I'd want it to be a pretty big book, like twice the size of an average codex.. tons of great art, model photos, painting guides, stories more than 3 paragraphs, etc. Like more of a "sourcebook" with everything you need to know about the army.

And, I doubt this will ever happen, but a digital version for ipads and stuff too.

Have any of these rumours actually been confirmed or substantiated? Or is this just 5 pages of conjecture based on here-say?

I mean, I dislike GW's business practices as much as the next man (unless the next man is H.B.M.C. in which case I don't even come close) but surely even they would think hiking the prices of army books up effectively 100% is going to damage sales.

GW's perspective is they want $X more profit, but that has an escalating effect. If they make something hard covered and it costs them $5 per copy to do that... they have to raise the price by another $5 to make a justified profit and the retailer by another $10.

Given that the OP sites FFG and FW success being GW's motives, I tend to think GW will try and make these books similar to those. The slimest hardcover by FFG is 144 pages the same as the current larger than average Space Marines codex. So its $20+ more for getting a book similar to that, hardbound and likely with more color.

In all fairness GW's shown what a hardbound $50+ rulebook looks like... the core rulebook. So chances are they'll raise the production value and have less pages than that.

filbert wrote:surely even they would think hiking the prices of army books up effectively 100% is going to damage sales.

I think their long term goal is to sell less for more until there is just 1 really rich guy somewhere who is supporting their eitire company on his own.

this would really suck