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 Talys wrote:
Well, by that metric, GW is also in the animated feature and computer game business too. And clothing and music and...

I wouldn't count non-core business, because I don't think they have a lot of control over it (other than who they license to). Maybe a creative veto? I don't even know about that.

But sure, you can count GW as a full-fledged participant in the "overall hobby business" if you want. I still think, however, it's more useful to compare them to games/hobbies in the miniature wargames space rather than, for instance, Pathfinder or Magic. Or even Tamiya motorcycles or Revell tanks. I think that from the day MtG hit the shelves in my favorite hobby store, it stomped miniatures and models of all types in sales by a wide, wide lead. People were pouring in spending a hundreds, even a thousand bucks a shot, every day. Cases of boosters were spoken for before they arrived, and people were taking them by the tens (of cases), limited only by what the store would allow them to buy. There was never that kind of fever for any GW product, ever.

The only useful comparison is against any product that can reasonably be assumed to be competing for "A.N Hobbyist's" cash when they walk through the door of their local independent hobby shop.

It would be tough to argue GW is competing against cheese, but any product that can generally be found sitting on shelves in close proximity in a typical hobby store is fair game IMO.

 Talys wrote:
Well, by that metric, GW is also in the animated feature and computer game business too. And clothing and music and....

They are. If you license out the rights to that industry and profit from products made for it, you are indeed "in' that business to a degree. I don't recall the exact numbers (maybe you can look them up?) but didn't the licensing income increases keep the company profitable last year or the year before and without it they would have been in the red? I believe that increased licensing was specifically mentioned as one of their key goals to make more money.

 warboss wrote:

 Talys wrote:
Well, by that metric, GW is also in the animated feature and computer game business too. And clothing and music and....

They are. If you license out the rights to that industry and profit from products made for it, you are indeed "in' that business to a degree. I don't recall the exact numbers (maybe you can look them up?) but didn't the licensing income increases keep the company profitable last year or the year before and without it they would have been in the red? I believe that increased licensing was specifically mentioned as one of their key goals to make more money.

Well, I'm not going to argue with you about how you choose to classify GW

I don't think it's an important semantic, and you can either look choose to look at GW as a miniatures/wargame manufacturer that's licensed out its IP, or a company that wants to be into as much as it can possibly in. I'm sure they highly value their IP and would be very happy if someone would toss three hundred million dollars or so into a film and grab JMS for his next feature

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
Amusingly, the model used for releasing and selling Pathfinder was the one that the original owners of WotC had planned for Dungeons & Dragons, back before selling out to Hasbro.

Turns out that the old WotC had known what they were doing....

The Auld Grump - who admits that he took great joy in the demise of 4th edition....

Considering Paizo ( which publishes Pathfinder) was founded by Lisa Stevens -- an old WoTC'er who was quite involved in the TSR purchase-- and all the senoir people at Paizo are old WoTC'ers, this should not be a surprise. Perhaps they took the money they made from the Hasbro sale (they were all shareholders) and went to start Paizo with some of it?

There is no "perhaps". I went to a gencon panel a decade ago almost when Lisa Stevens was talking about the lean times in the beginning of Wizards prior to MTG when they were sued by Palladium Books and money was in short supply. They were paid occasionally in these mythical "stock" things (her words) that turned out to be a good thing.

 warboss wrote:

 Talys wrote:
Well, by that metric, GW is also in the animated feature and computer game business too. And clothing and music and....

They are. If you license out the rights to that industry and profit from products made for it, you are indeed "in' that business to a degree. I don't recall the exact numbers (maybe you can look them up?) but didn't the licensing income increases keep the company profitable last year or the year before and without it they would have been in the red? I believe that increased licensing was specifically mentioned as one of their key goals to make more money.

I believe the numbers were 5% of revenue, 2% of profit.

So, no, licensing income didn't keep the company profitable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Talys wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 Talys wrote:
Well, by that metric, GW is also in the animated feature and computer game business too. And clothing and music and....

They are. If you license out the rights to that industry and profit from products made for it, you are indeed "in' that business to a degree. I don't recall the exact numbers (maybe you can look them up?) but didn't the licensing income increases keep the company profitable last year or the year before and without it they would have been in the red? I believe that increased licensing was specifically mentioned as one of their key goals to make more money.

Well, I'm not going to argue with you about how you choose to classify GW

I don't think it's an important semantic, and you can either look choose to look at GW as a miniatures/wargame manufacturer that's licensed out its IP, or a company that wants to be into as much as it can possibly in. I'm sure they highly value their IP and would be very happy if someone would toss three hundred million dollars or so into a film and grab JMS for his next feature

Typically in business strategy if you're looking at the performance of a company you're looking at its core business units, not the extensions of it through licensing, so I'd have to agree with Talys here. Otherwise formulating business strategy would be neigh-on-impossible if everyone was in everyone else's markets. Sure, you could make the argument that they are indeed in those industries too because money is being spent on it, but frankly, the licensing kickbacks for them are so low that any logical analysis of their strategy would leave them out.

 Enigwolf wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 Talys wrote:
Well, by that metric, GW is also in the animated feature and computer game business too. And clothing and music and....

They are. If you license out the rights to that industry and profit from products made for it, you are indeed "in' that business to a degree. I don't recall the exact numbers (maybe you can look them up?) but didn't the licensing income increases keep the company profitable last year or the year before and without it they would have been in the red? I believe that increased licensing was specifically mentioned as one of their key goals to make more money.

I believe the numbers were 5% of revenue, 2% of profit.

So, no, licensing income didn't keep the company profitable.

Shouldn't that be the other way around?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Although, glancing at the yearly report, royalties were at 1,442,000 pounds, while total profits were 12,396,000, making licensing a total of 11.6% of their profits (1.17% of their total revenue).

It depends on how you count profit.

As mentioned in the preceding post, the royalties considered by themselves amounted to a significant chunk of the whole company profit.

You can look at this two ways; as a fat cherry on top of the icing on the cake, or as the tiny payload capsule of a satellite rocket that uses thousands of tons of equipment and fule to get only a tiny package into orbit.

In other words, the licensing profit is all very well but it would not remotely be possible without the enormous amount of resources invested in the regular tabletop game, retail chain and so on. Which leads to the conclusion that if the tabletop game failed, the licencing revenue would follow.

 Laughing Man wrote:

 Enigwolf wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 Talys wrote:
Well, by that metric, GW is also in the animated feature and computer game business too. And clothing and music and....

They are. If you license out the rights to that industry and profit from products made for it, you are indeed "in' that business to a degree. I don't recall the exact numbers (maybe you can look them up?) but didn't the licensing income increases keep the company profitable last year or the year before and without it they would have been in the red? I believe that increased licensing was specifically mentioned as one of their key goals to make more money.

I believe the numbers were 5% of revenue, 2% of profit.

So, no, licensing income didn't keep the company profitable.

Shouldn't that be the other way around?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Although, glancing at the yearly report, royalties were at 1,442,000 pounds, while total profits were 12,396,000, making licensing a total of 11.6% of their profits (1.17% of their total revenue).

I will not deny that I blindly cited someone in the other GW finances thread that's going parallel to this one.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It depends on how you count profit.

As mentioned in the preceding post, the royalties considered by themselves amounted to a significant chunk of the whole company profit.

You can look at this two ways; as a fat cherry on top of the icing on the cake, or as the tiny payload capsule of a satellite rocket that uses thousands of tons of equipment and fule to get only a tiny package into orbit.

In other words, the licensing profit is all very well but it would not remotely be possible without the enormous amount of resources invested in the regular tabletop game, retail chain and so on. Which leads to the conclusion that if the tabletop game failed, the licencing revenue would follow.

Even so, GW themselves only lists their licensing costs as about 370 thousand. And at this point, the IP is pretty much self sustaining. Sure, it wouldn't be worth a damn without the games behind it, but at this point I think 40K is embedded well enough into geek consciousness that GW could die and FFG could do a pretty good job keeping it running with the RPGs alone. Which, honestly, might actually be better for the setting when I think about it...

GW itself however would not survive on licencing alone. It is the 98% of their sales of rules and kits that makes it possible to continue as a business and then take the 2% in licensing. That is what I mean.

 Laughing Man wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It depends on how you count profit.

As mentioned in the preceding post, the royalties considered by themselves amounted to a significant chunk of the whole company profit.

You can look at this two ways; as a fat cherry on top of the icing on the cake, or as the tiny payload capsule of a satellite rocket that uses thousands of tons of equipment and fule to get only a tiny package into orbit.

In other words, the licensing profit is all very well but it would not remotely be possible without the enormous amount of resources invested in the regular tabletop game, retail chain and so on. Which leads to the conclusion that if the tabletop game failed, the licencing revenue would follow.

Even so, GW themselves only lists their licensing costs as about 370 thousand. And at this point, the IP is pretty much self sustaining. Sure, it wouldn't be worth a damn without the games behind it, but at this point I think 40K is embedded well enough into geek consciousness that GW could die and FFG could do a pretty good job keeping it running with the RPGs alone. Which, honestly, might actually be better for the setting when I think about it...

I'm not sure it would. How do we know that the main buyers of the licensed stuff aren't primarily GW gamers and would move on if GW closed?

The shovelware using the IP isn't going to be of any interest to non-fans, because you can get versions of the same games with a generic skin for far less. Total War; Warhammer might remain popular though, because of the strength of the TW brand. FFG seems to be doing less and less with GW IP since they are so busy with Star Wars.

 Talys wrote:
I'm not downplaying XWing. I'm just saying that as a fraction of the sales at the stores that I visit, it's not a huge chunk. I mean, NOTHING close to Magic -- of this I'm certain. And yes, I agree: Fantasy sales are dismal. Anecdotally, Fantasy doesn't appear to be moving at all. If anything, I would have to guess that 40k sales must have increased quite a bit to pick up some of that slack.

Do you realise that 40K sells nothing close to Magic either ?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azreal13 wrote:
The only useful comparison is against any product that can reasonably be assumed to be competing for "A.N Hobbyist's" cash when they walk through the door of their local independent hobby shop.

It would be tough to argue GW is competing against cheese, but any product that can generally be found sitting on shelves in close proximity in a typical hobby store is fair game IMO.

Indeedy. Kirby's problem is that not only does he not consider the likes of CCG's, RPG's, Board game etc competition, he doesn't consider other miniatures games competition either !

MaxT wrote:

 Talys wrote:
I'm not downplaying XWing. I'm just saying that as a fraction of the sales at the stores that I visit, it's not a huge chunk. I mean, NOTHING close to Magic -- of this I'm certain. And yes, I agree: Fantasy sales are dismal. Anecdotally, Fantasy doesn't appear to be moving at all. If anything, I would have to guess that 40k sales must have increased quite a bit to pick up some of that slack.

Do you realise that 40K sells nothing close to Magic either ?

At this point in time, that's just plain rhetorical. Worldwide in this industry, nothing sells close to Magic.

 Enigwolf wrote:

At this point in time, that's just plain rhetorical. Worldwide in this industry, nothing sells close to Magic.

That's the point; you can't use Magic as a frame of reference for how well something is selling.

With X-Wing, whilst it's a relatively low buy in, it's available in a lot more places than any other tabletop game, and it seems most gamers have some. It's sales are only really restricted by production capacity (which they've been ramping up as quickly as possible). As mentioned, because demand outstripped supply for so long, used items were being traded for well above RRP.

X Wing is the closest thing I've seen to plastic crack. Its absolutely hit the sweet spot of getting a game that can be sold in bookshops to parents looking to keep little jimmy quiet, and quickly building up to a hugely competitive tournament game.

Its got a very tight ruleset, excellent support from FFG and its prepainted nature means you can be playing in minutes. Most of my local FLGs in London sell out of it in days when in stock, meaning FFG do need to improve their distribution a bit. But thats a great problem to have!

If you compare one local store which opened as a warhammer store but gets maybe 2-4 warhammer players a week versus 20-40 xwing players (overwhelmingly ex GW fans) and you quickly see that X Wing is where most people are going - cheaply accesible and huge fun to play. The pricing is sensible as £10-£12 per ship is pocket money prices and means I don't think twice about buying a new ship. When you only need two or three ships to play a tournament game, you realise its a licence for FFG to print money.

If GW had any brains they'd be looking at the scary success of FFG and become very afraid.

Herzlos wrote:

 Enigwolf wrote:

At this point in time, that's just plain rhetorical. Worldwide in this industry, nothing sells close to Magic.

That's the point; you can't use Magic as a frame of reference for how well something is selling.

With X-Wing, whilst it's a relatively low buy in, it's available in a lot more places than any other tabletop game, and it seems most gamers have some. It's sales are only really restricted by production capacity (which they've been ramping up as quickly as possible). As mentioned, because demand outstripped supply for so long, used items were being traded for well above RRP.

When X-Wing first came out, I could buy some at the local Books-A-Million!* - something that I have not been able to do with WH40K since the very early nineties.

The Lord of the Rings box was available, at Waldenbooks. (And sold well.)

And, yes... Magic was and is still available at BAM! - but I have no idea as to how much it makes for them or how well it sells. (Mostly because I do not look. I can see how the various RPG books are doing because I pop in every Tuesday to see what is new.)

X-Wing, Magic, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic the Gathering, and even Settlers of Catan get more exposure in the book store than WH40K. The stores have BL books - but they are spined.

The Auld Grump

* BAM! would still have X-Wing, if they could get it.....

jim30 wrote:
When you only need two or three ships to play a tournament game, you realise its a licence for FFG to print money.

If GW had any brains they'd be looking at the scary success of FFG and become very afraid.

Careful now, if you're starting to talk about tournaments, you'll realize that pretty much any FFG LCG is set up to require you to buy 2 to 3 core sets in order to have a competitive list. It's pretty much always been this case. And that becomes prohibitively wasteful, because people like me don't want to buy 3 core sets just to have the number of upgrade cards I need, while I toss out the rest of the stuff I paid for (or join the rest of the world in trying to ebay it off at meager prices).

You're framing that as a criticism when in fact it's the reality for most any game played in a competitive environment within the wargaming sphere, and X Wing is simply somewhat better in that regard (although not hugely, FFG are very good at including upgrade cards in ships that aren't optimised for them and often lists require multiples of one card available in one or a few boosters - and there's no proxies in sanctioned events.)

The competitive scene of pretty much any activity requires greater investment than just to do it casually.

Even then, the cost of 3 core sets (or hell, 3 core sets and 5 other ship types) is still a feth ton cheaper than a 1500pt 40K list with attendant rulebooks and codices.

No swears please chap.

3 XWing core sets is a similar price to DV by the way and gives you a pretty limited range of options (good luck at that tournament! ), I mean it doesn't even include all the options for the XWing or Tie..

As Enigwolf points out you are then in the additional booster territory which as my own collection of Xwing ships will attest, is not a ton cheaper than any system.

How many xwing ships can I buy for the cost of brb and codex for 40k?

If you have DV you don't need to.

 notprop wrote:
No swears please chap.

3 XWing core sets is a similar price to DV by the way and gives you a pretty limited range of options (good luck at that tournament! ), I mean it doesn't even include all the options for the XWing or Tie..

As Enigwolf points out you are then in the additional booster territory which as my own collection of Xwing ships will attest, is not a ton cheaper than any system.

Why would you wan't to buy 3 x-wing core sets?

For their LCGs, this is pretty much the norm (even though I did win a Netrunner 2014 regional tournament and I only ever bought a single core set), but for X-Wing you don't get any advantage in buying multiples of it. You are much better served buying expansion packs.

Most people buy multiple X-Wing starters, for the extra Tie fighters and dice, or to swap with a friend.

MaxT wrote:
Even then, the cost of 3 core sets (or hell, 3 core sets and 5 other ship types) is still a feth ton cheaper than a 1500pt 40K list with attendant rulebooks and codices.

3 X-Wing starter sets at RRP comes in at only a few bucks more than the the worst case 40K BRB + Codex: Marines. (£90 Vs £85), before you even touch a mini. Of course, that drops by £25 if you get the mini book, or goes up if you need more than 1 Codex (allies or a supplement).

Going back slightly tho, I think most agree that the tabletop games industry is expanding, and GW are stagnating/shrinking. There's plenty enough circumstantial evidence of the first and GW's accounts show the second.

So, what are GW doing about it? Why haven't they tried to take a piece of the pie of these other related areas? Why haven't they got gateway games into book/boardgame/toy shops alongside X-Wing? They stopped selling in Hobbycraft not so long ago. Why on earth are the licencing out their IP for buttons to FFG who're then making money selling games of of it? Surely they can make more than a couple of hundred k making and selling those types of games themselves. Why don't they have a range of pocket money models with a simple game attached? Why aren't those in every newsagent alongside Lego men bags and trading cards? Why don't they have a range of board games in wider distribution channels?

Sigh.

Herzlos wrote:

With X-Wing, whilst it's a relatively low buy in, it's available in a lot more places than any other tabletop game, and it seems most gamers have some. It's sales are only really restricted by production capacity (which they've been ramping up as quickly as possible). As mentioned, because demand outstripped supply for so long, used items were being traded for well above RRP.

This is a legitimate point. I've found X-Wing starter boxes in all sorts of places, from bookstores to Wal-Mart. I think that reduces some intangible barriers to entry: things like general accessibility to product, awareness of the product, etc.

MaxT wrote:
Going back slightly tho, I think most agree that the tabletop games industry is expanding, and GW are stagnating/shrinking. There's plenty enough circumstantial evidence of the first and GW's accounts show the second.

So, what are GW doing about it? Why haven't they tried to take a piece of the pie of these other related areas? Why haven't they got gateway games into book/boardgame/toy shops alongside X-Wing? They stopped selling in Hobbycraft not so long ago. Why on earth are the licencing out their IP for buttons to FFG who're then making money selling games of of it? Surely they can make more than a couple of hundred k making and selling those types of games themselves. Why don't they have a range of pocket money models with a simple game attached? Why aren't those in every newsagent alongside Lego men bags and trading cards? Why don't they have a range of board games in wider distribution channels?

Sigh.

Because that would require thinking and effort.

 MWHistorian wrote:

MaxT wrote:
Going back slightly tho, I think most agree that the tabletop games industry is expanding, and GW are stagnating/shrinking. There's plenty enough circumstantial evidence of the first and GW's accounts show the second.

So, what are GW doing about it? Why haven't they tried to take a piece of the pie of these other related areas? Why haven't they got gateway games into book/boardgame/toy shops alongside X-Wing? They stopped selling in Hobbycraft not so long ago. Why on earth are the licencing out their IP for buttons to FFG who're then making money selling games of of it? Surely they can make more than a couple of hundred k making and selling those types of games themselves. Why don't they have a range of pocket money models with a simple game attached? Why aren't those in every newsagent alongside Lego men bags and trading cards? Why don't they have a range of board games in wider distribution channels?

Sigh.

Because that would require thinking and effort.

And Marketing, and money... and actual development talent.

Money really isn't an issue, they paid out ~£11.5 million in dividends in January, if they'd instead reinvested that in the business they'd have had plenty of dosh for the development of related areas.

Thinking, effort, marketing and talent on the other hand.....