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I think Corregidor are on borrowed time, Neoterra I don’t know you would think that each faction would have one core sectorial that was safe but with CB who knows.

There “Business” decisions are sometimes a little strange to say the least.

I mean sometimes it would not surprise me to find out that a faction was removed due to Carlos losing a game against them heavily.

It's strictly business... their business decisions aren't strange they don't have the space in store to keep all the SKUs and it keeps production costs down which keeps the price of these models down a lot of people are very selfish a lot of people have a real hot mouth but they don't have any actual business knowledge to back the things they say and that's the funniest thing I find about some of these comments here when they refer to CB's business decisions....

Lot of armchair businessmen in here that probably have never ran a business in their life... silliness in its purest form

 5deadly wrote:
It's strictly business... their business decisions aren't strange they don't have the space in store to keep all the SKUs

They don't have a storefront. Corvus Belli has a webstore and that's their only real direct connection to customers outside of conventions where they are in attendance.

and it keeps production costs down which keeps the price of these models down a lot of people are very selfish a lot of people have a real hot mouth but they don't have any actual business knowledge to back the things they say and that's the funniest thing I find about some of these comments here when they refer to CB's business decisions....

Lot of armchair businessmen in here that probably have never ran a business in their life... silliness in its purest form

It's always silly when people assume that you need to be some kind of business veteran to have any insights as to things that could be done better or what might be more customer friendly.

Many of the more vocal people concerning CB's business practices? They've worked for independent hobby shops or were the ones that the people who do the ordering look to for guidance when it comes to what they should/shouldn't have as "regular stock" and what they should be prepared to order for customers in a pinch.
They're also the people who introduce players to the game and keep the communities going(or try to).

I can't keep people interested if the releases aren't consumer friendly or if they buy in and then a month or two later the stuff they just bought was "removed from sale"(which to most reasonable people seems to be the company ceasing to support the product in question, not "retiring it temporarily").

 5deadly wrote:
It's strictly business... their business decisions aren't strange they don't have the space in store to keep all the SKUs and it keeps production costs down which keeps the price of these models down a lot of people are very selfish a lot of people have a real hot mouth but they don't have any actual business knowledge to back the things they say and that's the funniest thing I find about some of these comments here when they refer to CB's business decisions....

Lot of armchair businessmen in here that probably have never ran a business in their life... silliness in its purest form

Hi my names Sean I was a retail store manager for around 10 years for a national chain in the Uk my individual store had more staff than The whole of CB, we carried around 20000 individual skus in store and had around 300000 skus on system that we could order in. The store was fairly large by high street standards but by no means huge, at any given time I could find a individual SKU know how many we had in inventory and where they happened to be and how many we had sold and would need to restock.

I have now spent 10 years as a technical support analyst for a bank which is a fancy way of saying I process data and forecast trends keeping it simple.

Unless CB are still ran out of a garage or a spare bedroom then the stuff they spout about SKUs is pretty funny unless they are still using paper ledgers. As for stores don’t like excessive SKU’s then there is an easy solution to that sell boxes with whole units in rather than spreading them over a couple of boxes and then blisters as well(they won’tbecause that would cut into there profits more than they would like) CB are ran in a pretty archaic fashion and seem to have one aim maximum profit from minimum effort to the point that they are probably stifling there growth and limiting there success.

I like infinity and love the setting but the game seems to survive perpetually on the edge of becoming more successful mostly due to CB themselves.

There is the Spanish Tax Code too. CB cites it as a reason to stay small.

Rumor: QK goes on production hiatus when Ramah releases.

For Pan-O, I'd guess that MO takes a vacation, Not Neo-Terrans. The Bolts sell far too well for CB to ever take them out of production.

Uhm, I should add /S to that, eh? Or use the comic sans font.

There is also the mysterious promise that CB will introduce a new way to play infinity soon. Interesting times are coming.

SeanDrake wrote:

 5deadly wrote:
It's strictly business... their business decisions aren't strange they don't have the space in store to keep all the SKUs and it keeps production costs down which keeps the price of these models down a lot of people are very selfish a lot of people have a real hot mouth but they don't have any actual business knowledge to back the things they say and that's the funniest thing I find about some of these comments here when they refer to CB's business decisions....

Lot of armchair businessmen in here that probably have never ran a business in their life... silliness in its purest form

Hi my names Sean I was a retail store manager for around 10 years for a national chain in the Uk my individual store had more staff than The whole of CB, we carried around 20000 individual skus in store and had around 300000 skus on system that we could order in. The store was fairly large by high street standards but by no means huge, at any given time I could find a individual SKU know how many we had in inventory and where they happened to be and how many we had sold and would need to restock.

I have now spent 10 years as a technical support analyst for a bank which is a fancy way of saying I process data and forecast trends keeping it simple.

Unless CB are still ran out of a garage or a spare bedroom then the stuff they spout about SKUs is pretty funny unless they are still using paper ledgers. As for stores don’t like excessive SKU’s then there is an easy solution to that sell boxes with whole units in rather than spreading them over a couple of boxes and then blisters as well(they won’tbecause that would cut into there profits more than they would like) CB are ran in a pretty archaic fashion and seem to have one aim maximum profit from minimum effort to the point that they are probably stifling there growth and limiting there success.

I like infinity and love the setting but the game seems to survive perpetually on the edge of becoming more successful mostly due to CB themselves.

Not very many would disagree with this.

It's understandable for CB to have limited skus in distribution but kind of odd that they don't offer direct order for discontinued stuff even if they do a kind of cast on demand type of thing (cast up orders at the end of the month). The question was even read in their own video and he didn't answer it.

 Monkeysloth wrote:

SeanDrake wrote:

 5deadly wrote:
It's strictly business... their business decisions aren't strange they don't have the space in store to keep all the SKUs and it keeps production costs down which keeps the price of these models down a lot of people are very selfish a lot of people have a real hot mouth but they don't have any actual business knowledge to back the things they say and that's the funniest thing I find about some of these comments here when they refer to CB's business decisions....

Lot of armchair businessmen in here that probably have never ran a business in their life... silliness in its purest form

Hi my names Sean I was a retail store manager for around 10 years for a national chain in the Uk my individual store had more staff than The whole of CB, we carried around 20000 individual skus in store and had around 300000 skus on system that we could order in. The store was fairly large by high street standards but by no means huge, at any given time I could find a individual SKU know how many we had in inventory and where they happened to be and how many we had sold and would need to restock.

I have now spent 10 years as a technical support analyst for a bank which is a fancy way of saying I process data and forecast trends keeping it simple.

Unless CB are still ran out of a garage or a spare bedroom then the stuff they spout about SKUs is pretty funny unless they are still using paper ledgers. As for stores don’t like excessive SKU’s then there is an easy solution to that sell boxes with whole units in rather than spreading them over a couple of boxes and then blisters as well(they won’tbecause that would cut into there profits more than they would like) CB are ran in a pretty archaic fashion and seem to have one aim maximum profit from minimum effort to the point that they are probably stifling there growth and limiting there success.

I like infinity and love the setting but the game seems to survive perpetually on the edge of becoming more successful mostly due to CB themselves.

Not very many would disagree with this.

It's understandable for CB to have limited skus in distribution but kind of odd that they don't offer direct order for discontinued stuff even if they do a kind of cast on demand type of thing (cast up orders at the end of the month). The question was even read in their own video and he didn't answer it.

I don’t really mind if any sectorials are discontinued.
As long as they remain valid for normal play, who cares? You can still get all these SKUs online.

For now.

When the stock runs out, you're reduced to secondhand market.

Exactly!

It was getting a little too 'Got Mine' in here for a bit!

 Kanluwen wrote:
For now.

When the stock runs out, you're reduced to secondhand market.

Speaking as someone still filling out the gaps in a Confrontation collection, this is not fun.

It is an assumption that sectorials will not be rotated back into circulation, an assumption stated as false from the beginning.

Not sure how we know without a doubt that some promised future event that hasn't happened yet will definitely be happening though.

While longtime players certainly have a soft spot for old models, I don't think its a huge concern as long as CB keeps doing a great job creating new entry points for the series. Most of the growth I've seen from the series since N3 has very much been rooted in products that are easy to get started with.

 LunarSol wrote:
While longtime players certainly have a soft spot for old models, I don't think its a huge concern as long as CB keeps doing a great job creating new entry points for the series. Most of the growth I've seen from the series since N3 has very much been rooted in products that are easy to get started with.

We're having very different experiences then, because I'm seeing LESS interest not more thanks to their constant fumbling and the continued refusal to actually let unit boxes be unit boxes.

Well I shop for corvus belli at local gaming stores and they don't have a huge allotment of shelf space in any gaming store I've ever seen.... so cutting down there SKU make sense to me.. you can run the biggest store on West Coast gaming all you want you know you could have the biggest store for gaming brick-and-mortar style in the entire world... if each store only has X amount of space to carry your product you need to make space so that that store with its -limited- Infinity space can carry New Products...

You can try to sound as smart as you want man, but I understand why they do it because I've never seen a store with a wall full of infinity myself personally. If one of you have seen a store with a wall full of Infinity let me know... as far as I can see corvus belli has done this to be able to keep new items in stock... I've never seen a store with a space dedicated to Infinity anywhere near Games Workshop I've seen stores with more space dedicated to Reaper Miniatures then Infinity and that's what I don't understand if they don't want to become mega-successful for whatever their interpersonal reasons are that's on them.

You can't sit here and tell me and I won't let you try to sit here and tell me that they can keep piling new products into stores that don't have shelf space for them I know that to be true and after you read this you will too. Your store is not going to make any more space for Infinity because Infinity doesn't sell like Games Workshop.. CB apparently doesn't want to make that jump from being a smaller gaming company to being a big Global thing like Games Workshop and maybe that keeps them from going under which keeps Infinity on my gaming table...

You can put on Smarty Pants dance hat and try to retort to what I said but at the end of the day brick-and-mortar stores don't have the space for every single SKU...

I was watching JSA Army boxes sit weirdly on top of shelves because there's just not enough shelf space in my local gaming store for their product.

I don't know what you're talking about but that's what I'm talking about...

If you have a retort that please do.... If doing this is what keeps them in profits and able to meet new models every single month more power to them most of you guys won't even walk into a game store and Order Miniatures I watch the way people Hawk for discounts I walk into the store and pay for my Miniatures because that's where I play if I don't go into the store and buy models there.. I won't have a place to go play....

Go ahead comment back on that... I'd really like to see somebody say something smart they could actually counter what I just said

points
* it's obvious they don't want to grow any bigger than they already are for their own personal reasons (we've been over that in this rumor discussion before) even though we're fans we all know that they're not the biggest game company in the world that are very small company and they want to keep it that way
* because they aren't a huge company like Games Workshop they don't have the Shelf space inside of the retail stores to be able to contain all of the SKU the corvus belli could possibly have...

So are you guys who just commented and quoted me I would really like to see your counter argument for that.. Not being them not growing in size or Blablabla about your want for Box sets... the FACT that CB has very little space in Brick and Mortar Stores...

and

Kanluwen... for a very active FanBoy...you sure are one SALTY dude...

It feels kind of strange to artificially restrict each faction to just 50 SKUs, especially with how many blisters Corvus Belli sells but it makes sense if they are going to slowly eliminate old blisters and repackage them into boxes. Removing 4 or 5 SKUs and replacing them with 1 makes a lot of sense. The boxes also work better for most stores when it comes to storage space and showcasing product (I mean how many times do people walk up to a wall of Reaper minis and just look at the minis that are facing outward, never looking at the ones behind the front-facing ones?).

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
It is an assumption that sectorials will not be rotated back into circulation, an assumption stated as false from the beginning.

A nice promise, but nothing that players can count on. No timeline given either.

CB is not the healthiest of miniature companies, given that they are constantly struggling with some basic business sense and have bad production priorities. Thus players can’t really accept their word that it will happen. We don’t know if CB will remain around to keep this promise or that if they do stick around that they will keep the promise. We wouldn’t trust GW, a huge company that isn’t going anywhere, to keep a promise like this. Why would we trust CB?

If a date was given for a limited production run of discontinued miniatures it might not be as much of an issue, but a vague “someday” is worth nothing.

CB makes a great game and better miniatures, but they are crap at the business side of it and at listening to their customers. Especially when the reasons they give are clearly issues of their own making and not really obstacles.

 Red_Five wrote:
It feels kind of strange to artificially restrict each faction to just 50 SKUs, especially with how many blisters Corvus Belli sells but it makes sense if they are going to slowly eliminate old blisters and repackage them into boxes. Removing 4 or 5 SKUs and replacing them with 1 makes a lot of sense. The boxes also work better for most stores when it comes to storage space and showcasing product (I mean how many times do people walk up to a wall of Reaper minis and just look at the minis that are facing outward, never looking at the ones behind the front-facing ones?).

We're not actually seeing a large amount of blisters->boxes though. Not before the damage is actually being done.

The Corregidor Bandits, for example, could have been a double model blister release from the outset. The new Echo-Bravo? That's one of four distinctive profiles(there's no repeats!). Same goes for the Zulu-Cobra Hacker in February/March and the Jammer that got released after the VIRD box or the Kamau Hacker and any future Kamau models.

There's ways for them to prevent SKU bloat from being an issue. It has been brought up to them so many times. But they NEED to keep up the "drip" method of releases, because effectively they're a CCG methodology of a game.

I just find it funny that people expect every company to be like the biggest and not every company can be like the biggest whether it's Financial or Regional tax laws or whatever...

I'm not arguing about them growing I'm not arguing about what kind of products they make or how they make them I'll continue to buy the products I like and not buy the products I don't.

I'm strictly talking about SKU and brick-and-mortar store shelf space and at the end of the day that's what this is actually all about if you want Veruna in Store... something else has to move off the shelf like I said I walked into a store they had a very very small amount and this store is a huge huge local gaming store. And they just don't have the space they didn't have space for JSA Army boxes...they're sitting on top of shelves in a funny way that it's not flattering to the product and it's not even good for the boxes. The boxes were beat up because they can't sell the five-year-old Combined Army models did they still have in stock....

That's all I'm trying to say...
you want Invincible Army inside your local retailer
you want Veruna inside your local retailer
You want the new Shasvastii Army coming soon inside your local retailer...
You got to make some room now I know some of you don't care because you only order online because you go for maximum discount and I understand that 100%
But for guys like me who want to support our local brick-and-mortar stores who actually go out and support our local brick-and-mortar stores I want new products in the store so that new players see the new stuff and buy it hence Infinity community grows everything else is just a bunch of complaining people blah blah blah complain complain complain because what they don't meet the level of retail The Games Workshop does...

I'm a 43 year old man Games Workshop has been making stuff that's been reaching me since I was 10 years old..
That's a lot of time to build up a huge fan base a huge presence in local stores...

I think a lot of people expect more out of CB can give them..
If you actually went into a brick and mortar store every once in a while you would see how much space Corvus has inside these stores..

Now I'm dying to see all the "quoters" and their retort for this...

 Kanluwen wrote:
There's ways for them to prevent SKU bloat from being an issue. It has been brought up to them so many times. But they NEED to keep up the "drip" method of releases, because effectively they're a CCG methodology of a game.

I'm pretty much on your side of the argument, but the above is pretty much the business model of everyone in the hobby industry not GW. GW releases something in a big box with a big price, recoups their development cost then spins it out by itself. And even they are doing quite a bit of SKU cleaning...because they have new models coming out every month to keep interest in their properties.

A good healthy game would probably be the death of the company producing it. This Pokemon strategy of release something new every month (which even CCGs don't do) is what keeps the company and therefore the game alive. Is that an excuse for CB to sell me a starter, two expansion boxes and three blisters instead of a proper starter and two unit box--no. CB just doesn't seem to understand they can ship the same amount of metal but not string me along or more SKUs because one unit is broken into 3 boxes and a blister.

 Chairman Aeon wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
There's ways for them to prevent SKU bloat from being an issue. It has been brought up to them so many times. But they NEED to keep up the "drip" method of releases, because effectively they're a CCG methodology of a game.

I'm pretty much on your side of the argument, but the above is pretty much the business model of everyone in the hobby industry not GW. GW releases something in a big box with a big price, recoups their development cost then spins it out by itself. And even they are doing quite a bit of SKU cleaning...because they have new models coming out every month to keep interest in their properties.

Minor point: their version of "SKU cleaning" is spinning stuff back to Direct Only---LCTB is becoming a bit of a misnomer as the Twitch stream a few weeks ago had them saying that they are beginning to use LCTB to also mark low stock items. Which is weird...but whatever, I guess.

A good healthy game would probably be the death of the company producing it. This Pokemon strategy of release something new every month (which even CCGs don't do) is what keeps the company and therefore the game alive. Is that an excuse for CB to sell me a starter, two expansion boxes and three blisters instead of a proper starter and two unit box--no. CB just doesn't seem to understand they can ship the same amount of metal but not string me along or more SKUs because one unit is broken into 3 boxes and a blister.

The saddest part is that quite a few people have tried to make it clear to them that they would buy multiple boxes if we saw two arm sets in a box or things of that nature.

Say but will is always the question. I know a lot of people aren't super happy about the SWAST given the price hike between it and the single model HMG version coupled with the alt arm not really being an in demand profile. I think its easy to underestimate the difference between 1 model for $12 and 2 for $20. One of them is a better deal, but the former is in impulse buy territory. Particularly since outside of fireteams most units have a preferred loadout, its often not a great deal for the consumer for models to be packaged together.

 LunarSol wrote:
Say but will is always the question. I know a lot of people aren't super happy about the SWAST given the price hike between it and the single model HMG version coupled with the alt arm not really being an in demand profile. I think its easy to underestimate the difference between 1 model for $12 and 2 for $20. One of them is a better deal, but the former is in impulse buy territory. Particularly since outside of fireteams most units have a preferred loadout, its often not a great deal for the consumer for models to be packaged together.

I bolded the most important part there:
The SWAST isn't "just" an issue because it was more expensive...it's also because of the fact that it is NOT what you're under the impression it is.

It's a 4 model boxed set that builds:
A) Taskmaster with Red Fury OR Heavy Rocket Launcher
B) Tinbot A
C) 2x Crazy Koalas

The price difference is significant and a large chunk of it is not from the HRL arm as some like to insinuate but rather from the Tinbot and Crazy Koalas shoveled in.

Oh, I know you pay for the Koalas and tinbot. My point is just that while people say they'd prefer to have the options, they might not actually be willing to pay for it. Even stuff like going $12 to $16 is the kind of thing people tend to balk over.

 LunarSol wrote:
Oh, I know you pay for the Koalas and tinbot. My point is just that while people say they'd prefer to have the options, they might not actually be willing to pay for it. Even stuff like going $12 to $16 is the kind of thing people tend to balk over.

The problem is that the example you're giving is loaded with an issue that people were already frustrated over: Tinbots taking the place of actual models in boxed set "counts" and the prices of boxed sets not reflecting the presence of the Tinbot instead of a trooper.

People don't actually balk as much as you seem to think, provided there is demonstrable proof of the price raise reflecting an increase in quality or value.

I'd pay for tinbots, fast pandas, koalas in their own blisters (or a set of 2 of each) as I like the 3d ness they add to the table. But I agree they should not be in most box sets if any, as really, it would be like including metal mines and repeters in other boxes. Let people that want to buy then buy them, if not just include them as the cardboard tokens on the packaging.

I do think though Lunarsol has a good point about having to have some low cost single blisters. That's a good way to get people buying figures to paint and get into the game but that can be solved by just having more named uniques then Infinity has then splitting up stuff into 1 box and a bunch of blisters.

I've kind of found the opposite. When it comes to new players getting into the game, the big box sets have really been where the game shines in my area. A lot of people honestly don't get too far past the pre-built 300 point starter, but they play that one army to death. From there, they seem to be happier buying random single figures that represent whatever new profile they want to add to the army. The SWC box sets are an annoyance as something where they feel like they're buying 4 models for the 1 one actually want to play. Those things really only shine when someone is playing a Sectorial and are literally looking to buy the fireteam as a single entity. Augmenting the prebuilt army with small purchases has gone over a lot better than free building based off a smaller starter. New players seem to go for the bigger bundles, but once people have played for a while they seem to migrate to the smaller singles.

 LunarSol wrote:
I've kind of found the opposite. When it comes to new players getting into the game, the big box sets have really been where the game shines in my area. A lot of people honestly don't get too far past the pre-built 300 point starter, but they play that one army to death. From there, they seem to be happier buying random single figures that represent whatever new profile they want to add to the army. The SWC box sets are an annoyance as something where they feel like they're buying 4 models for the 1 one actually want to play. Those things really only shine when someone is playing a Sectorial and are literally looking to buy the fireteam as a single entity. Augmenting the prebuilt army with small purchases has gone over a lot better than free building based off a smaller starter. New players seem to go for the bigger bundles, but once people have played for a while they seem to migrate to the smaller singles.

A large part of this is because you don't get any added value from these sets. I buy a Grunts box, I get 4 Grunts that can only ever be those specific Grunts.
Add a set of Rifle arms for everyone and/or gender-flipped arms for the SWC choices...all of a sudden, people might want more of these sets.

It's also worth noting that part of the "perception" is that Infinity really pushes the whole optimization concept from the outset from a decent chunk of the community. I rarely see "new" players that genuinely are new to gaming in general and aren't looking for an optimized list from the beginning.

Monkeysloth wrote:I do think though Lunarsol has a good point about having to have some low cost single blisters. That's a good way to get people buying figures to paint and get into the game but that can be solved by just having more named uniques then Infinity has then splitting up stuff into 1 box and a bunch of blisters.

This is supposedly what the disastrous "Bootleg" line was going to be about: "unique painting and modeling opportunities".

I should also add that while I left it out, we did actually see a Repeater added to a model. The Securitate with Boarding Shotgun is specifically the Repeater loadout as she has a piece on her back that no other Securitate has.

Hopefully I'll eventually get my damn Securitate box but it's in the pictures if you want to check.

If all you ever want to do is buy the specific models you want for one specific list, then you would never, ever want box sets since they force you to buy models you do not want.

However, blisters with individuals models are more difficult for stores to display and more difficult for stores and warehouses to store. Additionally, individual blisters are more difficult to manage on the warehousing side (since there are so many of them and they are all so small). Also, the less popular blisters often get stuck sitting store shelves for years.


So there will always be a battle between what is best for the customer and what is best for the company, the distributor and the stores.

I do think including more weapon options in the boxes would definitely make them more popular with the competitive "I only buy models I need" crowd.

I find a big part of it just a result of there not really being models for every option. The game develops a proxy culture pretty quick and most people are perfectly happy for their one model to represent whichever weapon. This seems particularly true when it comes to Combi Rifles and Boarding Shotguns, but it remains true for stuff like HMG/Spitfire/Red Fury/etc.