notprop wrote:
Selling out is good, it's how you manage that fortunate situation that governs whether or not is is a success. Now if as I am lead to believe there is distribution stock that is to be made available then they can leverage what will already been seen as a successful release into a great one. It's only day 1 of release, let's see what happens in the new week before declaring ruination and disaster.
There were so many nested quote tags there, I hope I'm attributing the above the right person.
I agree completely with what is above.
The declaration of it being failure is based on the money they missed out on had they known what the real demand for this product would have been, but no one can provide any
quantifiable factor that
GW could have reliably
known in advance to know to produce more, nor have they said anything about how their pet reason (it's obvious people would want it! it's necromunda and people have nostalgia!" or "people want
40k universe with good rules" or whatever) would have been reason enough to make more than their known sales figures for their other stand alone products or their terrain kits.
Yes, they underestimated demand. Now they know. And their "punishment" for figuring out the demand for
40k with different rules was something people wanted is to have blown away their sales goals and set themselves up for meeting that demand with a new version of
40k, an electronic release of the SWA rules and possibly another box or bundle. Yes, they left money on the table. So now they need to figure out how to get as much of that money as possible
going forward.
455_PWR wrote:So a few folks got upset. They can buy pdf rules later to use their existing models. Anyone can buy the scenery. Their main games are 40k and aos anyway. Sorry but selling out sw:a isn't going to ruin gw folks, even if a handfull walk away upset.
Exactly. And given what they know quantifiably know about the demand for
40k games using different rules than current
40k, support for a lower model count, cool terrain bundled together, how effective their marketing team was, etc., it could well be that they'll make a plan for new40k that makes it the best selling edition of
40k in the game's history. Their return on investment for their new approach to marketing might be that good.
All the people saying this is so awful for business and they alienated all these customers who wanted one may find themselves totally shocked by future financial reports.
Blackwing530 wrote:QFT. In any publicly owned business, maximizing shareholder wealth is paramount. Another poster above said the same. While perhaps not a failure, per se, this can absolutely be considered a squandered opportunity.
They suceeded in meeting their goals with the SWA product, but are in the process of possibly squandering the opportunity to make more. It's possible that they'll get a digital copy out fast enough and offer some cobbled together version or a bundle or something and still capture much of that money. Or a lot of that money will still be there to be captured by new40k.
streetsamurai wrote:Calling a succes selling out a product when there is a lot of angry customers who aren't able to purchase it, shows an alarming lack of business sense.
I think that's totally over estimating the effect of these angry customers. Odds are the number angry enough to hurt
GW's bottom line is really, really low and many of them will be offered something they want in the near future.
But just for the amount of ill will and bad publicity that this has generarted, it is far from a success. At least, lest hope that this force GW to change some of its pratices, and that they start to do that weird arcane thing that is market research.
I'll ask this again, what form of market research would you suggest for figuring out that the demand for this would have been higher than sales levels of their other stand alone products? Furthermore this research needs to be such that you can actually make decisions based on it and it needs to show that they should ignore their internal sales data for stand alone games. And on top of that, it needs to be done in a time line that allows them to make meaningful production decisions in advance of the launch date. And as well, it needs to not be based on hindsight. The fact that we know now that there was greater demand, does not mean it was something that could actually be known in advance.
The funny thing is that you are talking about market research as if it is an arcane spell they can cast and suddenly know to ignore their previous sales numbers and make more of something just because of our current position of hindsight. You are asking for a magic trick.
Starfarer wrote:I think it may be a case of the 8th edition release in a few months killing the chance of a full reprint. They can get the digital rules up next week, but if it takes a few months to get a full reprint, then you're edging into the 8th edition release, and GW can't have a fully separate, stand alone game competing with their flagship product.
This. I believe Mikhaila's trade sales rep who said this was a tiding over project before the new edition.
It sucks, but if you ignore the terrain aspect of the box set, it's still a super low buy in for a game. You're looking at hopefully a $20-30 digital rulebook, free faction rules, and pretty much $30-50 for a faction, depending on what faction you pick. Obviously you need lots of terrain for this game, but presumably people will already have this, or can play at their local store otherwise.
This is the cheapest buy in to 40k available in decades and has tried and tested rules that still hold up, over 20 years after their initial release. For all the negatives about availability, let's keep in mind 2-3 years ago no one would have imagined you could get into a GW game for that price point.
It's actually really quite shocking how good of a value the whole thing is. If you make your own terrain (remember when that was part of the hobby?) or go in on it with others or use club or store terrain, then this is one of the cheapest ways to do
40k in the history of the game.
Galas wrote:I don't know why people its so surprised that
GW failed to do proper market research for this.
They haven't done it in 20 years, they are still learning how to do it
See my questions above on what kind of market research would be needed to actually know to make more of these boxes in advance.
H.B.M.C. wrote:I think it is rather odd how we still have people saying that this debacle is some sort of ideal situation and a triumph of risk management.
It's not a "triumph of risk management." Risk management is an explanation of their decision making process. And it goes to show you that without hindsight and results oriented thinking,
GW's process is sound in this area. They did the right thing given what they could have known and now have to deal with the reality of having gotten their assessment of the demand wrong, but without any real means of knowing what the real demand would be without trying. Without releases a product like this to test the waters and see.
When the biggest stores in the country have used up over half their allotment 5 minutes after opening, something is wrong.
Yes. They got their demand assessment wrong when it comes to a game where there was no real way of knowing what it should be without trying a product release out to see what the demand is really like.
Some of you are making this out to be some sort of calculated move, or something that any business would be proud of. Are you insane?
The only insanity I see is people expecting
GW to be psychic. Or to cast some sort of "market research" incantation to somehow know what they should have done. From a position of hind sight. That's the only delusion here. Are you insane?
Misleading your stockists (let alone your own retail stores)
Being wrong is not misleading your stockists. They actually thought their production run would be sufficient or they would have made a larger one. No one lied to anyone.
and engendering anger in your customer base that missed out (because they never thought it'd be limited)
How would they have gotten it if they knew it was limited? It would have still sold out in preorder exactly the same. Or maybe even faster. This makes no sense.
But this was GW's "master plan", and it is something that they should do more of/should be proud of.. get outta town. That's nonsense.
It is never nonsense to consider your margins and return on capital when launching a product. It is never nonsense to consider the sales numbers of other products in your line when making a new product.
GW has their sales data of both their stand along games and their terrain kits to take into consideration.
The product designers, the rules team, the marketing team and the 3d designers who worked on the terrain should all be proud of what they have accomplished.
I would even go so far as to say whoever made the decision to make the smaller print run should also be proud of themselves. They made the right decision with the information they had. Even if some angry people on the internet with 20/20 hindsight can point out they made too few. You need to be disciplined when it comes to product runs. Especially when the majority of your revenue comes from the splash period of a new release. Why?
I really don't think it's true that everyone who missed out on this product now has a bunch of money that
GW will somehow
never get. If they want
GW's products so bad that they feel angry about missing out on something that was so popular, something tells me
GW can come up with something that will meet their demand. It's been a fething weekend. The release date for this game was earlier today!
What they do going forward is going to be about how much gravy they can get. How much of that missed demand (over and above their goals for the product) they can still capture. And how to factor this release into their plan for new40k. They can still get the digital rules out, maybe make a print run of books, make some terrain bundles, whatever. And they can also make sure they do the same thing in terms of marketing, social media usage, and so forth when it comes to new40k. As well as taking into consideration how positively people responded to the rules that support a lower model count when making their game that also needs to scale up into a larger model count.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Manchu wrote:They should really sell the tokens and rulebook at the very least!
If and only if the turn around time will have it not conflict with a new40k release later this year. If it would, they are better off making sure to include small model count play as a feature of new40k and accomplish what this game does within new40k itself.
If they can find a printer (preferably one with an existing relationship) to rush print and ship their additional books and counters, then by all means I think they should do so. And since they then have those, they may as well run off some boxes and sprues and make more of the game boxes to sell. But only if it doesn't disrupt production for a future product and certainly not if it drags this game into new40k hype season as a distraction.
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