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ive always wondered why games workshop never releases all army updates at once, so once every new rulebookedition they have all the codexes ready to go with it as well, kind of like what privateer press does, I find that every army that they released is better than the last, and some armies are often forgotten about, i find it just makes more sense in that way. what does everyone else think?

Because that's now how GW like to have their sales. They want a consisitent stream of releases so there's not one giant bubble at an edition release and a slow trickle of sales until the next release.

While it was their practice as a private company as well, now as a public company it's magnified. Shareholders don't want a giant bubble once every 4 years, they want consistent increasing sales every year.

In addition to the reasons Loki posted (all very accurate and reasonable) it's not really feasible. They're working on 2-3 codices at a time, along with model releases and so on. It's also their apparent policy now to release new models immediately since so many third party companies are making their own "not-Thunderwolves" and "not-Tervigons" and the like. There's some legal reasoning there about how if GW's model comes later, the third party company can claim GW stole their designs and so on.

It's honestly not something I have a problem with. It's always been this way, with the exception of the stopgap 3rd ed army lists that were all rolled into the rulebook.

Yeah, the only thing I'm glad they changed was wave releases.

They sucked hard because some armies (yes, I'm a bitter Tyranid player) waited up to 2 years for their second wave, containing units that were, simply put, the best units in the book.

The new method of 'release everythig with the codex' gets rid of this problem. While it would be nice to have all books at an edition launch, I have to say GW have stepped up their game on release pace. We've been getting a book or supplement every month for either 40k or Fantasy since 6th editions launch. If they keep it up, 6th edition will have every army updated with over a year left in its life.

If the interwebs and rumours are to be believed (and it kinda makes sense), GW had these new codexes and models ready for some time now. I guess they are releasing in waves because of the reasons -Loki- wrote.
I'm very happy tbh. I only started playing in the 6th edition and this new way of doing things is really good, allowing people with several armies to save up some money before the release of another codex and units they really want. Not only that, soon there won't be more 6 (?) year old codex or some crap like that. After Eldar, I dearly hope Black Templars get an update, I think they are the ones with the oldest codex after Eldar? (And SoB better get an official codex )