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I agree completely with what Buzzsaw and Gymnogyps has posted.

Over and over again people have commented about the GW pricing scheme.

I firmly believe that they have lost touch with the economics of their market.

The financials will tell you this. The closing of stores and layoffs in the US will tell you this. The failure of 8th WHFB. I know first hand that people are not playing this game because of the changes in the rules and the lack of immediate support (via new codexes). Planetfall, Cities of Death, Battle Missions, IMHO are not good sellers. Some of the models GW creates recently are not acceptable in quality. The increase in competition (which in a way not a bad thing) shows that people are moving to something else.

We are still in a global recession. The price of playing this game is getting to be too much for the average hobbyist to continue.

But until Kirby is removed from the board, there will be no change on how GW does things.

The entire problem is this
GW target children with their products, using a churn and burn strategy
Yet the pricing of the products makes targeting them entirely pointless, because quite frankly children don't have that kind of money except for birthdays and christmas
Yet they need a steady income, which can't come in except for those points on the year and the money from those times won't be substantial enbough to buy anything worthwhile

It just makes no sense, why target a audience that can maybe buy something one or twice a year and never come back again
Even if they do have money, the prices are so insane they can get almost nothing from it unless they are spoiled rotten by their parents
It just isn't a sustainable business plan, because the only people who can afford the products are ones who have a sustainable income and even then the pricing is outrageous

To be quite honest I'm suprised they haven't already gone bankrupt with these half assed strategies
People say The Hobbit will bring them in revenue and GW is probably banking on this as well

But see LOTR was advertised extremely well the first time through excellent magazines like Battle games in Middle Earth and had advertisements on TV
Not to mention the movies were done really well.
So not only do they have to rely on The Hobbit being successful and popular with youth, but they'll have to advertise in a similar way to get that amount of sales again
What are the bets they won't do anything of the sort though?

If the Hobbit doesn't bring in the sales, I don't see a bright future ahead for GW

If you compare GW prices with stuff like Lego, or Playmobil, they're not horrendous. As a parent, I was happier about buying my son a £30 Battlewagon that he may well be able to use and enjoy for the rest of his life, and that he can eBay to recoup a fair fraction of that £30 if he changes armies or gets into girls and motorcycles instead, than the £80 Playmobil castle that he wanted and got a few years earlier, and that I knew for sure he'd grow out of in 2-3 years.

That's just on the "parents buying stuff for their kids" front, though, and at least somewhat assumes knowledgeable geeky gamer parents. As an adult gamer, I am put off by GW prices to the extent that I've never bought anything in a bricks-and-mortar GW store, buy Vallejo paints rather than GW ones, and buy from eBay for preference.

And I'd like to contribute even more utter bollocks, but I think this thread has that in spades.

So I shan't.

Too late
you just did, but like Goering and Himmler in the old song they are very small.

To the tune of Colonel Bogie on the count of three...

Hitler has only got one ball
etc

This topic appears to have exhausted itself.

Until the next time...