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How can you say they(your MTG and YuGiOh players) don't understand a concept and then say you don't know if they're right. I'm gonna be honest that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You still didn't even attack the idea that there does indeed come a point where I can make more money investing the same effort/capital/workers in something else and should be doing that.
Beyond profitability if a company enjoys staying afloat they need to keep their image in mind too otherwise they stop being profitable too, I give you McDonalds, they didn't care enough about thier image a few years ago, now they really really care and are undoing that damage. It's working well but cost a TON of money. They're earning more money because of the turnaround now so no only thinking "is the line making me money?" is never the only thing that influences what you do as a business nor should it EVER be unless you don't look at the future at all.

Uelrindru wrote:How can you say they(your MTG and YuGiOh players) don't understand a concept and then say you don't know if they're right. I'm gonna be honest that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You still didn't even attack the idea that there does indeed come a point where I can make more money investing the same effort/capital/workers in something else and should be doing that .

1.) They have absolutely no clue of the work, time, and money, let alone the risk factor of trying to switch from selling miniatures and focusing the store on CCG's. They don't have the retail experience, they don't know a damn thing about my shop, inventory, accounting, costs of goods, or anything else. They would just rather I ran more CCG events than warhammer events.

2) It's quite possible that if I did something like that, low and behold!, I do indeed make more money. I was being honest and rather than saying "it wouldn't work", said "I don't know". The problem lies in the fact that to find out if their idea is right or wrong, I have to bet my store on it. I don't like that idea. I have many other people depending on me staying in business and rolling the dice on a new business model when I'm already making money is a risk I don't feel like taking.

You still didn't even attack the idea that there does indeed come a point where I can make more money investing the same effort/capital/workers in something else and should be doing that

Sure. And where that point is, and the cost to make the switch, and how successful it will be, are the tough questions that need answers. And generally you don't get those answers unless you commit to the project. And often people are wrong in those assumptions. It's never a slam dunk. The concept is fine. Putting it into practice has it's own costs involved.

So they have no clue because you say they do.You don't know they don't know anything about it, you are generalizing just the same way you were bashing everyone else for and for good reason, they likely don't know but opportunity cost is at it's base about efficiency which, if you're good at deck building in magic, you're good at efficiency. I would say that building decks in magic is almost all about weighing opportunity costs if you think about it and it may surprise you what they know, hell I had a friend that used to build decks for people with cast offs that were still good decks, he'd sell em on ebay and used it to fund his magic playing, it took up hardly any space and he was the only employee in his spare time it does work.
Really what you've been saying is it would be a gamble which is true but business is itself a gamble no matter what, you have to do what's working well enough and long enough to be able to catch what's going to be working and keep repeating the process at a pace that gets you were you want to be. So you do a ROI and if the numbers are sound, the demand is there and the market isn't crazy you throw the dice on a new plan. Just saying it's a gamble doesn't make it a bad idea though.
Though I will give you they probably don't know the cost to you in making the change, also I wouldn't touch magic right now I have seen magic displays shrink in stores since shortly before I got out it around 7th edition so I think it's hey day is past.
omg that is a mess and it is late, I'll clean it all up tomorrow I think. At least I'm enjoying the conversation

Uelrindru wrote:So they have no clue because you say they do.You don't know they don't know anything about it, you are generalizing just the same way you were bashing everyone else for and for good reason, they likely don't know but opportunity cost is at it's base about efficiency which, if you're good at deck building in magic, you're good at efficiency. I would say that building decks in magic is almost all about weighing opportunity costs if you think about it and it may surprise you what they know, hell I had a friend that used to build decks for people with cast offs that were still good decks, he'd sell em on ebay and used it to fund his magic playing, it took up hardly any space and he was the only employee in his spare time it does work.
Really what you've been saying is it would be a gamble which is true but business is itself a gamble no matter what, you have to do what's working well enough and long enough to be able to catch what's going to be working and keep repeating the process at a pace that gets you were you want to be. So you do a ROI and if the numbers are sound, the demand is there and the market isn't crazy you throw the dice on a new plan. Just saying it's a gamble doesn't make it a bad idea though.
Though I will give you they probably don't know the cost to you in making the change, also I wouldn't touch magic right now I have seen magic displays shrink in stores since shortly before I got out it around 7th edition so I think it's hey day is past.
omg that is a mess and it is late, I'll clean it all up tomorrow I think. At least I'm enjoying the conversation

-They have no clue, not because I say so, but because they have no information. They don't know my sales numbers, cost of goods, availability of product, shipping costs, cost of employee time, or anything else that would go into the process. Unless they 1) Had run a similar business, and 2) Had the data from my stores, they could not possibly have a clue.

-You're really going to equate deck building into efficiency in the rest of your life? Even when you know nothing of a subject?

-No, nothing about magic surprises me. I playtested for two years in one of the original playtest groups here in Philadelphia.

-Selling magic cards on EBay has little to do with what it takes to keep a large game/hobby store open.

-Magic is actually incredibly strong right now, based on the sales of several hundred retails. Your data is outdated, or from a very small pool. It's strong enough that many stores survive on Magic sales alone.

At this point I don't see a point to this derailment, So I suggest we let people go back to discussing GW's business model and their eventual doom.

boyd wrote:

ChocolateGork wrote:
Fantasy is slowly dying (partly due to the failure that 8th was in the eyes of so many people).

LOTR is DEAD. (Can they really be making profit from this?)

This couldn't be further from the truth. There are more WHFB games going on now in Central Florida than ever before. Its mainly due to the fact they are releasing beautiful models and the fact that everybody is beginning to understand how the game works. In Orlando alone there is a WHFB Gaming group with approx 40-50 players that meet up once a month (or every other month time and place permitting) for some open gaming, two stores with WHFB escalation leagues with about 10-15 people in each. WHFB in FL is far from dead.

As far as LOTR goes, there was just a big tournament for it recently - Shadows in the East that had a huge turn out. There is also Bilbo's Birthday coming up and several other big LOTR GT's. Neither game are on their last legs.

I would challenge you to play these other games, they are a blast. I've slowly stopped playing 40K over the years because I prefer WHFB hands down to 40K because I have a better time playing it.

Region to region as I like to say so your challenge is a mute point. What I see in my region that there is far more 40K players than WHFB. I saw a lot of players leaving WHFB because of 8th ED. LotR games are few and far between. I do love their game mechanics though and have a goblin army myself.

But in the end you can not deny what was placed in the recent Financial Report. The Ultimate Fate of GW is when Kirby retires and leaves (if he leaves that is) the Hobby completely. Until then I believe that it will be a slow decline on their customer base and a slow decline on their net profits as time goes on.

Region to region as I like to say so your challenge is a mute point. What I see in my region that there is far more 40K players than WHFB. I saw a lot of players leaving WHFB because of 8th ED. LotR games are few and far between. I do love their game mechanics though and have a goblin army myself.

My comment was primarily geared towards the person that said its slowly dying. Its not dying - if it were they would release a new rules set going back to 7th edition. The gripe about Fantasy was they drastically changed the rules and have not supported the game properly. Its been out for more than a year and they have only updated 3 armies? The drastic change in the rules left some armies too powerful and some too weak. Overall, the game has improved as it is put most of the armies on equal footing . Heck when you start to see Bretonians winning/placing in tournaments, you know something drastic has happened.

But in the end you can not deny what was placed in the recent Financial Report. The Ultimate Fate of GW is when Kirby retires and leaves (if he leaves that is) the Hobby completely. Until then I believe that it will be a slow decline on their customer base and a slow decline on their net profits as time goes on.

From the looks of the most recent Financial Report, it showed they have a net profit and a net operating profit. Given the current economic climate in the US, I would say they are doing MUCH BETTER than most Companies. Given the fact that they are making a profit, I do not see them in some slow decline that is killing them. They have people who are buying their models, paints, etc. at the current prices and they are making a profit.

The problem that the majority of the Dakka Posters complain about is the price of the models being so high that they would prefer to buy their models from an internet retailer rather than from GW. Since GW is a manufacturer, distributor, and retailer the waters are pretty murky and they need to find a way to manufacture their product, distribute it to other buyers, and sell directly to the customers without stepping on the toes of other retailers who sell their products to the same customers. GW manufactures the model and it is sold via the distribution arm of GW - the model is sold for a profit at this point. At this point the Retail Company that purchased these models can sell them for any price. GW slapped the MSRP (yes thats a suggested retail price). Since GW also has a retail arm, they sell the same models at the Suggested Retail Price because if they didn't the Retail Stores they distribute to would tell them its unfair sales practices and more than likely would stop buying from them. Unless you're buying your product used, you're supporting GW when you buy from a FLGS or Internet Retailer.

mikhaila wrote:

Baragash wrote:

mikhaila wrote:Everyone dumps on LOTR, but the simple fact is that as long as GW are making a profit off the line, it would be a bad business move to get rid of it.

I think it's the best ruleset of their core games personally and would be sad to see it die.

Anyway, that statement is not true. Use of resources has an attaached opportunity cost so as long as they can't make more money doing something else with the resources it would be a bad move to get rid of it

Everyone can make more money doing something else. You yourself have a promising job paying you a lot more money....somewhere.)

LOTR takes nearly no effort for them at this point. Molds are done and paid for. They can keep producing those kits for years at a profit, with the major factor being the cost of the liscense.

The 'opportunity cost' arguement pops up all the time. Most people actually mean "I don't like LOTR - Go get to work on the Codex I want to see". The team doing the sculpting on the LOTR range is not the group doing 40k and WFB. If they dump LOTR, they don't gain a lot, as the Perry Brothers just go back to doing more historicals.)

I understand 'opportunity cost'. I also understand the cost and risks of dumping a currently profitable activity to pursue another activity that MIGHT make more money. I had two people yesterday telling me to dump Warhammer from my shop, and do more MTG and Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments. (Strangely, they are MTG and Yugioh players, coincidence, im sure.)

Might be true, who knows? But they don't understand the cost of changing the focus of my store, training staff, and building up a totally new community of gamers. And the cost of lost sales when my current community gets a bit disgruntled and walks out of the store. It's a gamble switching to the shiny new thing, and hoping it pays off. A gamble that the people advising me don't have to suffer if they are wrong. I'll stick to what I'm doing, and build up MTG with the resources and time I have left over from keeping up with the activities that currently pay my bills.

Similarly, it would be easy for GW to dump LOTR, but I'm not sure they gain anything from it, and certainly lose sales and profits.

Right now the only cost associated with the game are production runs of their books, models, and the conversion from pewter to fine cast (which isn't developing new models). They don't have the same overhead for WHFB and WH40K because they aren't creating a new version of the game, updating the codex, or doing any major fixes right now. They are casting models as needed to fill orders. They have already sunk their resources into the game and there isn't a requirement to sink more into it. If they can sell the models to cover their costs then its a no brainer to just keep the game. It would be a stupid move on their part if they took something that was profitable and just cut it out.