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BrianDavion wrote:
Games workshop is a busniess. not only are they a busniess, but they're incorperated, meaning they are owned by Shareholders. These Shareholders expect the company to turn a profit. If warhammer 40k's manafacturing is taxed to capacity and there is still high demand for the product, they're going to see how much they can charge. that's the nature of the beast.
Dealing with corperations in our hobby means we're always going to have to accept a degree of "these people don't actually care about the hobby and just wanna maximize profits from it" weather this is from GW's pricing or FFG's recent "reorginization".
It's just a fact of life.

*looks at made-to-order Yarrick at over 400% the price of when he came out*

Yep. Just a business.

There's no point trying to convince anyone anything is "worth" something.

The simple facts are they can't manufacture enough, so there is no problem with demand. They are charging what enough people are willing to pay to max out their current production capabilities.

The argument about the pricing structure not being sustainable would be stronger if they hadn't been going through record growth and just invested a significant amount in expanding production.

The price has nothing to do with their production capabilities, it's purely related to milking people for profits.

Cheaper price absolutely would sell more. If they were up front about their ability to produce, perhaps this same tired line trotted out by people eager to claim that GW's pricing increases are beyond reproach would be anything more than empty conjecture. My point remains, by the volume of voices here - the price may be correct for them short term, but it's unsustainable, unpopular, and part of a trend that has been going on for years now, and has lost no momentum in terms of fan discontent.

Out here, GW spend hard cash on promotions. They buy out a fair chunk of pages every month in BIG hobby publications, trying to drum up interest. They've done exclusives and all sorts of other stuff too, to try to tap into the lucrative east asian modeling market.

Almost none of it has worked on any scale. And it's got nothing to do with lack of enthusiasm. Japanese Warhammer fans exist. But none of them that I've met really have armies. They pick up models here and there, paint them up, maybe get a smaller game of something in, then back to one of the legions of more cost-efficient alternatives. If GW think the price is correct, bully for them, woo-hoo. But equally, they're wasting their obvious efforts out here to try and create any kind of significant following. Asia is a huge market. GW can't tap into it because of these prices.

Speculate until you're blue in the face about production capacity. These prices aren't sustainable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Vorian wrote:


The argument about the pricing structure not being sustainable would be stronger if they hadn't been going through record growth and just invested a significant amount in expanding production.

because if you just keep putting profits first, the bust will never come, right?

I'd urge anyone to use that £32+, and take their mother/father/partner/whatever out for a nice dinner. Buy another round for the boys at the pub. Go to Bandcamp and check out the new page, and see if you can't find something exciting. Buy yourself some fancy ingredients and make something really ooh-la-la for tea tonight. Just don't waste it on five tiny space elves that cost much less this time last year.

Production capacity is everything to do with it.

They have to maximize the profit on what they can produce.

Dropping prices to sell more is completely pointless if they can't produce more.

As they are increasing their production capacity they obviously believe that they can sell more at current prices (which looks true given their results).


Could they expand more in the region's if they dropped prices? I'm certain they could. Do they have any reason to do this currently? Not really.

You can see where they've identified as expansion areas by where they are concentrating their promotion efforts. The US and Germany..

tneva82 wrote:

Thing is if they can't produce more price IS correct for them. Lowering price would have: Same sales(production capability is capped remember), lower price.

Here is the thing. I'm a customer. My sole duty as a rational agent under capitalist system is to acquire goods I want at the lowest possible price. I do not have to worry, if that hurts GW's shareholders, because that's the company's duty, not mine. I want more models, cheaper. Now, obviously in a real world just because I want something it doesn't mean it'll happen, but I can voice my displeasure with their price structure, hoping that it will be amended. And in some cases it is, they repacked 5 stormcast models to 10-size boxes within a year of release because of poor sales.

Vorian wrote:
Production capacity is everything to do with it.

Production has been at capacity this entire time, and that's why the prices have never stopped going up? Wow! Heard it here first, ladies and gents! GW official confirmation that production is at capacity, and surely once the glorious new factory is built, everything will become reasonably priced, finally! An end to hikes, an end to patronizing not-discounts, an end to pricetag creep!

Vorian wrote:
They have to maximize the profit on what they can produce.

They want to. They didn't have to raise the prices. That landraider kit has paid itself off. As have dozens of others. They wanted to raise the price.

Vorian wrote:
Dropping prices to sell more is completely pointless if they can't produce more.

Weird how all I've been talking about is not hiking prices, and keeping things more uniformly priced internationally, yet this has translated to me having some kind of price-drop agenda.

Vorian wrote:
Could they expand more in the region's if they dropped prices? I'm certain they could. Do they have any reason to do this currently? Not really.

You can see where they've identified as expansion areas by where they are concentrating their promotion efforts. The US and Germany..

I've got a shiny new HobbyJapan on my coffee table that would beg to differ. It's even still advertising the SOB box set, because they couldn't sell them out here, and they were on shelves months later... probably something to do with the price being just shy of £200. They buy out space every month. Even bought out a whole special addition. Wanna see it?

Were they at production capacity before this growth? No. That they have had this growth whilst continuing to increase prices shows that price was not the limiting factor.

You can read Rowntree's thoughts in the early reports add to what those problems were and how they were going to ages them (and then see they did).

None of that matters to the current situation where they are selling out what they can make. Increasing production doesn't mean the prices will lower, that will depend on what the real ceiling to their sales at these prices will be.

International pricing is something completely different. They left the prices at historic exchange rates, I can see the logic to that. They don't need to increase volume and local value is not effected by £ fluctuations.

Selling out in Japan is going to be very low down on GW priorities. It is not worth their effort expanding there currently.

2 boxes of Banshees vs. 1/7 Holo from Wolf and Spice painted, in a wedding dress. I know what I would choose.

The paradise island of modeling doesn't need GW.

Vorian wrote:
Were they at production capacity before this growth? No. That they have had this growth whilst continuing to increase prices shows that price was not the limiting factor.

From what I understand, the factory has always been working at full capacity, actually. Because otherwise they lose money. Might have more to do with having a fethton more of plastic kits and needing to spread production more over all of them than anything else.

So "but production capacity" must be this decade's "but minimum wage".

They've been steadily bringing in more machines (and swapping out older kit for new faster, bigger ones) so it's not been a critical issue until recently as lots of new kits keep coming out and lots of new (and old) gamers join the GW party

it's just that they've now hit the point of no more space to do squeeze anything else in and no more power to run it either (I don't think the new substation is done yet?) until the expansion is finished

so now the more popular they get the worse their production capacity gets hit, every (net) new gamer they means extra stuff they need to make they can't increase production to do

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
They've been steadily bringing in more machines (and swapping out older kit for new faster, bigger ones) so it's not been a critical issue until recently as lots of new kits keep coming out and lots of new (and old) gamers join the GW party

it's just that they've now hit the point of no more space to do squeeze anything else in and no more power to run it either (I don't think the new substation is done yet?) until the expansion is finished

so now the more popular they get the worse their production capacity gets hit, every (net) new gamer they means extra stuff they need to make they can't increase production to do

I heard they hit the electric grid's hard limit a couple years ago, maybe more?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So "but production capacity" must be this decade's "but minimum wage".

The two are not remotely related to each other at all. It's an entirely different point being made.

tneva82 wrote:
AOS is whole another level of mess and prices were hardly the issue.

After the Fireslayers hit the market, even those guys in the Club that liked the new system left because of the prices of those boxes

Vorian wrote:
The simple facts are they can't manufacture enough, so there is no problem with demand. They are charging what enough people are willing to pay to max out their current production capabilities.

This just means that they are good at calculating how much they are going to sell
without knowing how big those production runs were are why exactly they did noot produced more it says nothing about overall sales.

GW confirmed long time ago that they use cheaper material to make molds which makes it possible to make HIPS models to be profitable at lower numbers
and those cheaper molds also have a much shorter lifetime

therefore they cannot make more even if they wanted to, without making their production more expensive

limited manufactoring possibilities is a thing, but this is more a limit on how many new HIPS frames can be produced and not how many items of a single frame

We know they are increasing their manufacturing capacity, they've told us. They've stuck a load of solar panels on the roof and upgraded the power supply.

There's a new factory site (I'm pretty sure?)

We know they've been struggling to keep things in stock.


They are not struggling to sell things, they are struggling to make enough to sell. The prices are not harming them.

From what I recall the new factory is at the same site as their main factory - all in the Nottingham HQ. I think that they land they bought to build it on was even land that they once owned and sold before to make income in the past.

Power Grid issues would still be a problem for a new factory, that's more the local council/electric companies that have to step up the supply and I'm not sure what pressure GW can put on them. Though the new factory might be linked into a different section of the grid so it might not harm it.

I'd also say that stock isn't just about raw production output. Overseas its also about warehousing and affordability of stocking more product in reserve. I think that's something many forget; its not just GW's ability to produce material, but the ability to produce enough that it remains in stock overseas when they only get shipments at set times rather than more ad-hock - which the UK supply chain can support. Which is why the UK supplies tend to appear better because GW can react on almost a weekly basis - if something isn't selling they can scale back production there and focus on what is selling out. For overseas I've no idea how often GW sends shipments out; however it could be a month or two before they can restock.



The prices argument I think comes around a lot because sites like Dakka have a larger number of people on the fringe of moving to other games/hobbies or who have already moved. so the price argument flares up a lot more because its one more nail for some; whilst for others its reinforcing one of their justifications to move on.

Meanwhile those who are still into the game complain, but by and large still justify the costs.

The two groups butt heads the whole time because basically its a matter of affording a non-essential item in life and about justification of costs.

I recall reading in White Dwarf that the AT Warhounds would be £45 but on the Saturday of pre-order they were actually £40.

Having slept on it( always a good thing! ) I think on Saturday we'll all be seeing £22.50 or £25.

you can arque about cheaper price sells more until your face is blue but until you can actually sell more with cheaper price that's irrelevant if they cannot sell more. Especially as halving price would need to more than double the sale count to be even break even proposal.

SamusDrake wrote:
I recall reading in White Dwarf that the AT Warhounds would be £45 but on the Saturday of pre-order they were actually £40.

Having slept on it( always a good thing! ) I think on Saturday we'll all be seeing £22.50 or £25.

Don’t get your hopes up. That was the price shown in white dwarf. These prices are from retailers, which I don’t remember ever being wrong/changed. They only have a week lead time, unlike White Dwarf which had a 3 month lead time.

There's still the outside chance that the Community Article was talking about the content of one sprue being "one kit" whilst the "box" contains two kits/sprue.

Otherwise time to hunt down cheap ones on ebay/facebook from the Blood of Phoenix set (which I note has suddenly gone off sale).

I should point out, I have zero issue with how GW prices their kits or why. I don't need people to try to justify it, or not justify it, etc. GW is their own company and they can do whatever they wish - I do not feel "entitled" to having cheaper minis, I don't expect them to produce minis for cheap as a community service, etc.

However, I also will not refrain from commenting on what damage I think their pricing can do - not to GW, but to younger players and the community moving forward. I know what I find value in, and it's not five small plastic miniatures for $55.00. I'm not saying I can't pay that much, I could, but I choose not to. Likewise I'm not criticizing other people for paying that. I think there are far better ways you could spend your money, but I occasionally binge on "suspiciously" priced hobby items myself - ones which I find value in.

This is a hobby, a "luxury" hobby at that, and I support any company to charge whatever they want. I just happen to support customers and potential customers speaking out about what they think just as well. I think we can all agree GW is charging whatever they can, and will continue to do so. This is not a crime, but it will have a negative effect on some of their customers.

I personally decided about a year and a half ago that there is no future for me and GW, or at least 40K. I have since bought a couple of Shadespire boxes for use in dungeon crawling because I find them to be of a reasonable value (7 miniatures for around $23-24 is reasonable for me). But going forward into 40K is a no go. $100 tanks, $80 transports, $55 for five figures...etc. There is no longer value for me in those products, particularly when I compare them to my other games which provide more fun for less money invested.

What makes me struggle the most with GW is where value exists...and where it doesn't. This, for instance...is pretty insulting:

 ImAGeek wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:
I recall reading in White Dwarf that the AT Warhounds would be £45 but on the Saturday of pre-order they were actually £40.

Having slept on it( always a good thing! ) I think on Saturday we'll all be seeing £22.50 or £25.

Don’t get your hopes up. That was the price shown in white dwarf. These prices are from retailers, which I don’t remember ever being wrong/changed. They only have a week lead time, unlike White Dwarf which had a 3 month lead time.

And yet, in retail, mistakes are still made. For now, there's no harm in waiting for the pre-order price on Saturday before we fetch the hounds and pitch forks.

Edit - NM, wrong thread...

 Elbows wrote:


What makes me struggle the most with GW is where value exists...and where it doesn't. This, for instance...is pretty insulting:

Spoiler:

one of those is a discount box the other isn't. and everyone agreed calath was a insanely good deal when it came out

Sure, but what relevance does that have? GW has proven in several cases that they "can" produce miniatures at a reasonable price - they just choose not to. It's not likely GW was losing money on HH boxes, or the Dark Imperium starter box, etc.

Models are models, how you package them is irrelevant. The same can be seen in the yearly Christmas "battle force" boxes, etc. Some of them are occasionally a really solid deal. GW could have those types of boxes available year round, but choose not to - obviously because they can make profit in other places.

When a company shows that they have the ability to sell you reasonably priced miniatures...and then chooses not to, it helps one make up their mind pretty quick about where their money goes.

I think part of the issue is that Aspect Warriors are sort of middle-ground elite units; especially with the modern rules where many once limited elite units are now far more numerous.

Think of Tyranids when once the Zoanthrope was a one or perhaps two elite; steadily its grown and grown and now taking 4 or 8 in a single army isn't out of the question. Aspect warriors are much the same, going from owning a single operational squad to where owning three or four is now quite practical. And those squads have grown from 5 to 10 man units.

The result is that they are still elite, but far less limited than they once were to practically put into an army.

Long story short, the prices are insane. The people that want and love to pay it, please do. However I can say my spending on GW has gone down to record lows as I'm not getting the bang for my buck.

I love the game but that much for 5 little elves ? No way. That is out right robbery and I won't condone it. I didn't get the new tanks that are skirting 100$ USD for ad mech and I love my ad mech, nor did I for marines, nor will I. I'm not going to reward this insane prices with my money.

I'll wait down the road if they ever do an intense deal, otherwise I'll go my whole life without them. The cost of the unit shouldn't be dictated so heavily by role in the army. Even then the prices sky rocket even on core needed units. As I said when they re work the guard infantry kits you already know they will be 60$ for a box of 10. How many new guard armies do you think anyone will make when you will need at effective minimum like 6 boxes of them to be minimal in terms of useful status ?

This model is unsustainable and I'm one of their die hards and I'm saying enough with my money. Who is buying all these new kits for their kids ? What kid is making enough pocket change to play this game and affording say school stuff, car, better push that thought away if you have a GF.

I get some people don't care and will buy them no matter how much they cost. Those people though won't be able to sustain the system forever and if even hard liners are finding this crazy that should be a sign.You can argue the market, demand, etc, etc. Without seeing the numbers we don't know how much of this is a selling more or selling higher thats driving the profits. We don't see production numbers, sales numbers, know the profit margin. All we know for sure is they are making profits, high ones but not precisely where they are coming from in the numbers.

If these numbers are accurate and I believe for bad they probably are this is a step too far. I'm glad I don't need the new kits aside from one of the characters. They've priced me out to just a small kit guy, and keeping an eye on the deals.

The more " they know best comments that come " What are they going to say if GW shoot themselves with that mentality ? Oh yes then it'll be all our fault for not supporting them more. The company itself can do no wrong, it's all our fault. That's such a twisted way to view things.

If I were an eldar player I wouldn't be so eager for upgrades to these old kits at these prices. The company will do what it will but if it fails and rots on the vine that is their fault not the customers.

It has nothing to do with the cost but feeling like you're getting value for your dollar, this isn't it, not anymore.

It seems 40k is going down the" WHFB in its waning twilight route" Lower and lower pts costs, meaning armies having to be bigger and bigger... while price per model steadily going up. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if 40k end times is on the books..

"Warhammer Age of the Emperor"
As long as space marines continue to exists and continue to sell. It doesn't matter about other armies or the lore or anything really does it from a company perspective right?

I really hope not but as I said, it'll be all our fault if it happens I guess.

Vorian wrote:
The two are not remotely related to each other at all. It's an entirely different point being made.

I think you perhaps missed what I was saying.