BryllCream wrote:
Prices should at least be vaguely linked to points costs, so much money for such a cheap speeder is just absurd.

 btr75 wrote:
I think part of it is to cover the operational expense of running all the retail stores instead of selling to FLGS or online sales. Just a guess on my part.

clively wrote:

Spoiler:

The main driver of pricing an item is its perceived value weighed against the number of people who will buy at a given price point.

Contrary to your statement, it's not a simple bell curve. More often than not, you can take something, anything and attempt to sell it for $1. However, the perceived value of that item will be negligible and you won't sell many. You can then turn around and put $10 price tag on it and people will start thinking it's worth more and you'll sell more. The trick is to continue raising the prices until the price exceeds the perceived value by an amount large enough to reduce sales.

Or at least, that's what a lot of people thought a few years ago. In recent times, companies have learned that you don't stop there. Instead you need to keep going in order to maximize profits from a given quantity produced. So the company takes a look at production counts vs revenue. For example, if they produce 1000 units and bring in $50/unit then their revenue is $50,000. If they product 750 units and bring in $75/unit then their revenue is $56,250. If they produce 500 units at $90, then their revenue is $45,000. Obviously the pricing sweet spot then is somewhere between $75 and $90. Of course, once you have market dominance then your perceived value is already high as people believe your crack must be better than the next guys simply because they know people buying it. It's a little more complicated than this as you have to also consider production costs; however, at the quantities GW sells a production quantity difference of 30 or 40% isn't going to change per unit costs by very much.

It generally takes years to figure out those numbers. Worse, they change to some extent depending upon external economic conditions. So, you may be able to sell 750 units at $75 this year, but if the economy crashes you might only sell 400 at that rate. Adding to the complexity is that each sector is impacted differently with hobby spending is one area that doesn't follow the norm very closely. In our case, the people who can generally afford to pay $50 for 5 little plastic men today will probably still afford it at $60 or even $80...

With that said, each price increase makes it a bit easier for other companies to start taking a bite out of GW's market dominance. There are several ways to attack a market leader but they all boil down to making a product with a higher perceived value. In this market there are several ways of doing that all based around quality/price/quantity. Quality is a bit nebulous as it somewhat depends on the buyer; price and quantity though are much more easily controlled. Point is they just need to lower one of those points to increase value to the customer. It might be producing at the same (or better) quality, keeping the same price but delivering a game that requires fewer miniatures to play. Another might be the same/better quality, slightly lower price, same quantity.

Regardless, it's a tricky thing for competitors. If they price too much lower than the market leader then perceived value will kill them. In the meantime GW, as the market leader, can respond by trying to raise quality (Finecast - whatever else you might think, it has destroyed the perceived value of metal models) or to change the game requiring new types of models other games don't use (Flyers) or by lowering model count (Grey Knights).

In any event, if GW loses market dominance then radical changes will come to the industry. Whether good or bad, it will be radical.

tldr; don't hold your breath about prices going lower. They won't.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There have been "busy" models since the first edition metal Terminators.

I don't know how much worse it has got as a general rule.

Stranger83 wrote:

To me "the hobby" also includes the collecting, building, converting and painting of the miniatures – indeed as I’ve got older this has become the “main” part of the hobby to me and gaming actually comes second –

if you factor all that in you can get a lot more stuff to build/convert/paint with £100 from GW than you can with £100 from anyone else.

Stranger83 wrote:
[q
I had this discussion earlier and using Warmahordes, Infanity and Malfaux (all the "cheaper" companies) as examples were more expensive on a box set by box set basis (though GW need more box sets to make an army so are more expensive) Can you give me examples of companies which release similar scale models (i.e 28mm) that are cheaper than GW?

Stranger83 wrote:

OK, maybe "sci-fi hovering tank" wasn't the best example - as I've said I've had a long day. I was trying to say something that you can't get from a historical figure company. Maybe a better option would have been "non human humanoid models" as then I can include the Malfaiux, infinity and Warhamhordes that I've already mentioned.

Though I would say that if tanks were in these games then - based on their price structure - I would expect them to cost more than the GW ones

 BryllCream wrote:
Completely new to this thread but I felt like doing some fact checking.

Eilif wrote:
Perry

Google couldn't find any trace of this.

Eilif wrote:

Eilif wrote:
EM4

Okay these just look like pure crap:

Spoiler:

Eilif wrote:
4 A miniatures

One dude selling pre-painted models on a website...

Eilif wrote:
Reaper

Website is un-navigatable so can't comment.

Eilif wrote:
Ral Partha

Actually very high quality...except more expensive than GW (at least, the models seem to be). So that's a myth - busted.

Stranger83 wrote:

Eilif wrote:
Being "completely new to this thread"..
You apparently didn't check the context of my post and as such much of you'e fact checking is either false or misleading. Quality of miniatures was stated by the member I replied to as NOT being a factor, merely price, and he did not specify sci-fi and fantasy until after he was backed into a corner with evidence provided by myself and others about less expensive figure manufacturers. So trying to shoot down parts of my list based on quality (Mantic, EM4, WGF) or historicals (Victrix) is not applicable.

Yes, I didn’t articulate my point very well, but I still maintain that there is a difference between the people who hobby for historical and the people who hobby for Sci-Fi/Fantasy. And GW are in competition with the latter, not the former. Even if you play both 1 set will, usually be your “preferred” type of game, for example I mainly play/paint historicals but do sometime dable in Sci-fi/Fantasy

Here is an interesting experiment, the next time you go to a gaming club/store/event (where there is likely to be people playing both historical and sci-fi) take a look around at the people without looking at the board and see if you can guess who is going to be playing an historical game and who a Scifi/Fantasy. I’d put money on you being right at least 80% of the time.

Stranger83 wrote:
[

carmachu wrote:


Actually no, the game ISNT only a small part. Its what most people actually DO with the miniatures. If I wanted minis for my D&D game, GW isnt the first place I go to for, reaper, iron winds have a much better selection. Even if its just for painting and sticking on a shelf hosts of other company have better minis to do that with. For space opera games? Other manufactures have jsut as good or better, for small scall RPGing

The "hobby" is a mythical part of gaming that GW lays out, only problem is they only want to include themselves. If their going to claim hobby there is a much much bigger world out there.

Ah, but here is the rub of it are the minis you buy for D&D cheaper - on a mini per mini basis than GW? (And that will all depend on where you buy it from - but GW are not the mst expensive on a model per model basis). Now the game is a part of the hobby, I'm not saying it isn't - but this isn't "Has GW priced you out of wargaming?" It's Has GW Priced people out of the hobby?" And as such, as it was defined to me, I feel that that means we should also look at how much stuff you get to do everything that isn;t gaming with for the money.

.

Stranger83 wrote:
[
As I've already said, if all you want is a cheap wargame why not pick Risk? My guess is because you want something that means you can pick, build, paint and convert, and GW will give you more models to do all that with for your £10 than any other "big 3" company.
.

Stranger83 wrote:

Eilif wrote:
Stranger 83,
You've backed yourself into a corner where the only way you can win your argument that the best place to spend your £10 is GW is to ONLY compare GW price-per-miniature to two of the most expensive miniature makers out there. And those are games who don't require nearly as many miniatures as GW games.

You've formed an argument based on discounting the dozens of other miniature wargaming options whose price per-figure AND price per army are drastically cheaper than any of the "Big 3". And you've discounted them soley because they don't fit into your point of view.

Give it up man. You've LOST!

But my point is still the same, if GW are not the most expensive why do people not compalin about the more expensive companies pricing people out of the market? Again, the fact that there are other companies cheaper than GW doesn;t make them the most expensive. By all means complain that you find GW too expensive, but if you do the, on the stand point of the fully hobby (i.e. not just the game) then you should find the compaines more expensive than them to all be too expensive and complain about them just as much.

And for price per model IS important when you inclde both "Build" and "Paint" into the hobby, which I was told by the thread OP is what was meant by "The Hobby"