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You have to realize the aspect of running a business, and the changes that GW has made.

The price of a miniature in the 80's did not have to cover the thousands of employees GW has now. It did not have to cover there huge building expenses.
As a public company they have to invest money into stock annalist and other things of that nature. They have interest and pay off debts. They have to throw out some dividens.
They also have to pay the millions in "free shipping" (shipping is not free for them) across the globe. The price of metal has risen dramatically in the past 20 years don't compare metal models to plastics.

Also the term price gouging needs to be defined correctly, raising prices is not price gouging. These prices are not unfair and most GW profits don't even come from the models, its the licensing for the video games.

This isn't inflation at work, just good old fashioned price gouging.

No, it's "price correction". At no point did GW claim that their across-the-board 50% price hikes were because of inflation. As for gouging, I think you've taken for granted how cheap it was for so long. Yes, I said it, GW has been keeping their prices LOW all these years, thus the increase now.

As mentioned, everything else in the world has gotten a lot more expensive over time. The price of rice has quadruped in the last 5 years, the price of gold has tripled, the price of gas has doubled. The fact that GW went for 5 years without much rise in prices and then only increased by 50% actually makes their price hike CHEAP in comparison to everything else.

Yeah, hiking the prices all at once may or may not have been a good idea, and yes, increasing price will make it harder for people to start new armies (so will things like the global recession). That said, it's hard to balk at spending $90 on a starter set for your child when it costs you and your spouse and your child $30 to go to a movie nowadays.

Rice has nothing to do with the cost of miniatures, neither does gold, now gas or better, oil does. But not enough to compensate for a in some cases a 600% increase in 20 years. Not everything has gotten more expensive, computers are way cheaper than they were in the 80s and 90s. As for movies in 1990 first run movies were $7.00 where I lived so $10 now 20 years later is not so bad its about 30%. And while the price of white metal and plastic have gone up, i'm pretty sure that plastic is still cheaper than the lead they used to make the minis out of. Yes i know to produce the actual molds for the plastic is much more expensive, but at the volumes that GW is pumping out its close to nothing. Can you even imagine how many cadians there are in the world?

Its like when forgeworld gives the resin excuse. Well here is the story with resin. Its crap, its heavy, it warps, its toxic, it has bubles in it, but its pretty cheap. Go into any craft store, everything is made of resin. That leprechaun nick nack that is the size of a warhound titan, resin $4.00.

They can charge what they want, it is a free market after all. People pay it. Hell people will pay $20 for 10 forgeworld bolters. I stopped buying years ago, except something from EBAY here and there. But as long as people pay without letting GW know its enough they will just keep raising the prices. Every time I hear some fanboy stand up for the prices I get douche chills. There is no reason for it, why would anybody support a price hike? I don't know, maybe they are banking on their minis being a retirement fund one day.

Well I guess gold does have something to do with it. Now that GW is a public company i guess their executives need golden parachutes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

You have to realize the aspect of running a business, and the changes that GW has made

The price of a miniature in the 80's did not have to cover the thousands of employees GW has now. It did not have to cover there huge building expenses.

I understand running a business, I own 2. A good one is I own a bar. Now if I was the only bar in town i could charge whatever i want. That is pretty much what GW does.

80's minis didn't cover the cost of employees? Sure it did. They didnt have as many employees sure, but they didn't sell as many minis either. I bet the ratio between minis and employees is much higher now than it was in the late 80's, 90's or even the 00's. While lager does not always equal more efficient. I would bet that GW's manufacturing process as a whole is much more efficient now than it has ever been in the past. These costs were always figured into the price of the goods, the cost of manufacturing per piece does not go up as volume increases, in fact the opposite happens.

As a public company they have to invest money into stock annalist and other things of that nature.

WhAAAAAAAAAAT! Redonkulous! As a ratio per mini these "thinks of that nature" which you speak of must amount to a fraction a a cent for each mini.

They have interest and pay off debts. They have to throw out some dividens.

Yes....so does everyone else, they generally don't do it with a 600% price gouge. See Dividends are paid to share holders, shares (for the most part) are bought giving the company capital to invest. So here is their base of capital, additional loans may be necessary. Responsible companies manage their money and put MODEST strain on the end users, by strategically recouping costs over a production run. What they shouldn't do is raise prices every 6 moths or so on the same product. Destroying whole markets for said product.

They also have to pay the millions in "free shipping" (shipping is not free for them) across the globe. The price of metal has risen dramatically in the past 20 years don't compare metal models to plastics.

Also the term price gouging needs to be defined correctly, raising prices is not price gouging. These prices are not unfair and most GW profits don't even come from the models, its the licensing for the video games.

Shipping isn't free, you know what is? website sales that include free shipping. By not selling through a distributor they are more than doubling their profits. By owning their retail stores they more than doubling their profits (in theory).

Now if you are speaking of shipping to independent retailers, the "free" shipping that you speak of is in essence a volume discount only offered on orders of quantity that more than offset the cost.

I wasn't comparing plastic to metal, metal is more expensive always has been. The fact is that the new plastics are more expensive than my old metal ones. The excuse being that metal is expensive? OK, GW has even made plans to charge as much for plastic as it does for metal.

You sir are drinking the cool aid and have come down with a case of the blind jingoisms. Its not often fatal, but will leave you bankrupt, monetarily, emotionally and spiritually

Again, why would anyone volunteer to pay more? It makes less sense than GW wanting to charge less. At least there is reason there. Increase sales volume, introduce product to more people, create customer loyalty...hell old vets might even buy some stuff, for the games that they haven't discontinued. Cough epic!

agnosto wrote:The problem with them having only one such set per new edition of rules is that they lose out on sales to people that could care less about the two armies they're trying to pawn off on us.

If you are new to the game you probably don't have a strong idea about which armies to play.

Anyway, AoBR contains two of the most popular armies. I don't know about the WHFB set.

AoBR is £55 in the UK. That doesn't seem like a terribly high price compared with high quality board games like Agricola, given you get a lot of plastic models in it.

Tzeentchling9 wrote:I know it's a great deal in comparison to all that you get out of it, but 100 USD is an awful lot to drop at once for a parent/teen just introduced to the hobby.

Yeah, seriously. I mean when i started and i saw the price of a space marine squad i was like "OMG $40 for some random bulky space dudes!!!". This is the sort of thing that scares off beginners in the first place.
What i think should happen is they release more AoBR type packages except get different units (because i don't like space marines ) like IG vs Tyranids or Tau vs Eldar.

Ultimately (as Andrew1975 so eloquently explained), GW charges what they do because they are a big fish in a small pond.

What will be interesting to me is to see how they fare with some serious competition. People have said you can't compare GW to Mantic because the GW multiparts are better. That may be true, but in a 200 model strong fantasy army are you really looking at the individual pose of every Empire State Trooper or Skaven Clanrat? Add into that the fact that Mantic are *GASP* talking to their customers and finding out what people want, not to mention the neat touches like every box of models being its own carry case and all of a sudden Mantic is looking better by the minute - and for a quarter of the cost!

All it will take is for one company to seriously challenge GW in the marketplace (something that, for a whole range of different reasons PP, Rackham et al have failed to do thus far) and you will see GWs current structure overhauled to the benefit of all players.

Mantic may well be able to make that breakthrough and I wish them every success after the start they have made.

Then we'll see if GW has what it takes to survive in a competitive environment...

AoBR in Australia went up to $150 in the last hike - that's $135USD. $90USD won't even get get you a Battlewagon/Land Raider over here.

Maelstrom Games is your friend - at Australian exchange rates it's about $86, or $78USD, with free postage. Pretty much buy two-for-one and pretend the extra $20 was postage.
Redbeard was absolutely right, though, when he says that even at full RRP it's cheaper than two new release video games for a pair of kids.

How will they 'recruit' new players?

They'll update an old method.

Dreadsock for belaying pin.

Sign em up and not tell them that there is a penalty for getting out (but it WILL be written in 2pt type on the bottom of the contract of sale).

If they don't read before signing, that's their own bad luck.

kastellan wrote:$165 in Australia. Wow thats gonna take me a while to save for lol. Stupid GW and there ridiculous prices. Yet I'm still going to buy it -.-

Why are you buying it in Australia when you can get it for around 40% off from lots of other places. From one Aussie to another - never buy locally. We pay +40% over what the US and UK prices are. Buying here is a complete rip-off.

And if, for some reason, you find yourself needing to buy direct from GW, buy from GWUK. You still get a 40% discount (compared to local prices) and shipping from the UK is quite good (as opposed to the US, where it's ultrastupidexpensive).

davetaylor wrote:I think back to the GW store I ran (in Sydney, Australia) 15 years ago. We'd regularly sell 20-30 "starter sets" of 2nd Edition 40K and 4th Edition Warhammer each month. Those boxed sets were $140 each.

You think wrong.

2nd Ed 40K and... at the time... 4th Ed Warhammer (I believe... 5th was with Lizardmen/Brettonians IIRC, so it must've been 4th Ed, High Elves/Orcs), they were $100 ($99.95 probably), and were like that for quite some time. I remember getting Necromunda for the same price, and only a while after was I shocked to learn that it was now at $120 (). Plus, as I said, Aussie prices are far higher than the US and UK, so any sort of comparison you make between what was then (in Australia) and what is now (in the US) is basically moot.

Hell I still remember tracking prices over several years with the old Death Company blister packs.

$11.50 when I started. Then $12.95. Then $13.50. Then 'White Metal' came around and suddenly those 3 Death Company per blister became 2 Death Company per blister, 'cept now they were $14.95. Then $15.95 a year later. They went from being $3.80 each to $7.97 in about 5-6-ish years. That's a pretty decent increase.

Bookwrack wrote:Because EVERY new player buys the starter box with no previous exposure to any miniature game or kit ever.

I didn't.

And I reckon most 11-12 year olds getting it for their Birthday/for Christmas have the same sort of experience.

So lose the attitude pal.

H.B.M.C. wrote:
Why are you buying it in Australia when you can get it for around 40% off from lots of other places. From one Aussie to another - never buy locally. We pay +40% over what the US and UK prices are. Buying here is a complete rip-off.

And if, for some reason, you find yourself needing to buy direct from GW, buy from GWUK. You still get a 40% discount (compared to local prices) and shipping from the UK is quite good (as opposed to the US, where it's ultrastupidexpensive).

Coz the my local gaming store needs more people to buy from it to keep it open and as its the only store nearby that allows you to go in and use their tables for free I'll still probs buy from there, even if it is a crap load more expensive.

Unlikely GW is making a loss at this price either, so it just proves how much of a mark up there is on the stuff.

Ailaros wrote:

evilsponge wrote:This isn't inflation at work, just good old fashioned price gouging.

No, it's "price correction". At no point did GW claim that their across-the-board 50% price hikes were because of inflation. As for gouging, I think you've taken for granted how cheap it was for so long. Yes, I said it, GW has been keeping their prices LOW all these years, thus the increase now.

As mentioned, everything else in the world has gotten a lot more expensive over time. The price of rice has quadruped in the last 5 years, the price of gold has tripled, the price of gas has doubled. The fact that GW went for 5 years without much rise in prices and then only increased by 50% actually makes their price hike CHEAP in comparison to everything else...

A simple definition for price gouging is to raise price through monopolistic practices above their market value. GW makes up such a large portion of the tabletop wargame market, the arguement could easily be made they have a monopoly. Thus any price rise not driven by a material price increase or inflation or legal dictates by GW is gouging by definition.

While prices of food have drastically shot up, the price of other reasources have not.

Ailaros wrote:
The fact that GW went for 5 years without much rise in prices and then only increased by 50% actually makes their price hike CHEAP in comparison to everything else.

GW has increased prices almost every year.

Its all about perception.

No-one here who plays the games can have a rationale perception of what a new player will think of the GW pricing.

It will come down to the individual.

Some parents will baulk at paying that price for 'toy soldiers', while others wont care.

GW will do what they have always done - charge what the market can bear. They will keep raising prices till they start losing sales at a rate that causes concern.

Until that happens, why would any business not charge as much as they can for a product?


As for the 'hobby' being expensive, what a load of rubbish. The 'GW-Hobby' (whatever that is) may be expensive but wargaming isnt. With regards to historical gaming you can enter it for a very low start up cost if you want too. Plastic figures abound these days. And yes, you can get decent figures for cheap - Perry Figures sell for £1 a figure. For the price of the WFB box set I could get a whole bunch of Perry metals! Of course I would end up spending a load more... But thats cos I suffer from 'ooooo Shiny' syndrome.


As a primarily historical gamer, I dont think its a bad price to be honest, and while some of the latest GW plastics have been awful to my eye, these plastics seem rather tasty and I may well get a set to use in my fantasy gaming.

But just cos I think its good value, dont mean a parent, with their first exposure to the game involves being thrust a £50 - £100 proce tag will feel the same...

Only time will tell what the ceiling is for GW products, and they will keep raising it till it falls in.

After playing the Dawn of War games, I pre-ordered the Assault on Black Reach starter set. It was the first 40k thing I ever owned, and it was $65.

I might not have gotten it were it $90. I know it's not a giant boundary, but there is an invisible line there between "inexpensive toy I can tack on to the bills this month" and "something I should save for, but never will, because I suck at saving and so will just never get it". $65 is a relatively easily digestible chunk.

To put it a different way, at $65 I'd get my stepson a starter set to see if he likes it, and at $90 I'd get him some clothes or sneakers instead.

"Get the tournament scene to drop the Citadel Only rule. When players start shopping at other companies for orcs and elves and Shock Troops, and get them cheaper, then GW will have to change its business practices. "

That would do it alright...

Phototoxin wrote:"Get the tournament scene to drop the Citadel Only rule. When players start shopping at other companies for orcs and elves and Shock Troops, and get them cheaper, then GW will have to change its business practices. "

That would do it alright...

Yes, I could definitely see that idea being kicked around with great success at a board meeting. "Hey, you know what our problem is? We're making too much money. Here's what we should do - at the events that we sponsor, which already cost us money, lets let our opponents product be used in those games. Not only will the extra market though exposure share hurt us (while we directly pay for them to do so), but we'll also be forced to lower our prices (while not our costs) to compete!"

depending on your location, the tournament scene might be completely independant of GW.
Some of the independant events STILL require GW only models, despite no help from GW. Weird, eh?

H.B.M.C. wrote:

davetaylor wrote:I think back to the GW store I ran (in Sydney, Australia) 15 years ago. We'd regularly sell 20-30 "starter sets" of 2nd Edition 40K and 4th Edition Warhammer each month. Those boxed sets were $140 each.

You think wrong.

2nd Ed 40K and... at the time... 4th Ed Warhammer (I believe... 5th was with Lizardmen/Brettonians IIRC, so it must've been 4th Ed, High Elves/Orcs), they were $100 ($99.95 probably), and were like that for quite some time. I remember getting Necromunda for the same price, and only a while after was I shocked to learn that it was now at $120 (). Plus, as I said, Aussie prices are far higher than the US and UK, so any sort of comparison you make between what was then (in Australia) and what is now (in the US) is basically moot.

H.B.M.C., thanks for cutting a tiny snippet from my post, letting me know what my memories should have been, then completely missing my point. Way to argue you on the Internet.

Now I remember why I steer clear of the Discussion sub-forums here on Dakka. Wait, let me use an orkmoticon so you know I'm just kidding

Cheers
Dave

If you're buying for two people, it's 45 dollars per kid.

Is it a lot? Yes. But really it's not terrible. I mean, some parents will make their kids pay for it themselves
or wait until their birthdays as a major purchase or reward.

Heck, the cable bill is probably more per month than those boxes.

Big P wrote:Perry Figures sell for £1 a figure. For the price of the WFB box set I could get a whole bunch of Perry metals!

Yep, you could get 60. Or you could get 64 plus five cavalry plus two big monsters plus two little war machines and an elf on a griffon in the IoB set.

And the historicals aren't expensive to get started in but GW is? I don't think you entirely thought that through.

The simple economics 101, is that supply and demand dictates, unless it is an inflexible demand, as prices rise so will demand drop. From GW perspective they are looking at this as an individual item, they will raise prices till the amount of extra money per box set they make is equal to the amount lost by drop in sales quantities. Make more for less effort.

So simply this price cuts down on the number of people who will get into the hobby. By how much, who knows?

This may be great in the short run, but the long term implications are unsustainable. The market reaction is one where as GW pushes their margin higher they make it easier for competition on a price point level to compete with them. This is why more companies are doing plastic miniatures now. They will eventually see migration to alternatives purely for that. You can't afford cocaine you buy crack.

The flip side is - will all the cool new stuff in the box make it seem like better value?

There is surely no argument that these minis aren't much better than the last box?

Andrew1975 wrote:The production that goes into a video game is massive. With GW products you do alot of the production, you have to pay for the paint, glue and other products . You get alot of playability with a video game, especially when you consider on line play. I know people that have easily racked up hours, days, weeks playing video games. How often do most people play more than a couple games of GW products a week? Comparing a video game to GW is apples and oranges.

Exactly, and that's why I hate threads like this. People who also make this comparison are extremely biased and seem to believe that all video games are $60+ (look somewhere else besides the new release section at Wal-Mart), and they never provide more than 4-5 hours of enjoyment, tops. It's bs and way more annoying to me than the constant bitching about price gouging.

I bought the Orange Box for $30 last month (yeah I know, I'm a little behind the times), and in that time I've put way more time into Team Fortress 2 than I have Warhammer 40k since 2007. More hours spent playing a game that I've owned for about a month than a game I've been into for three fething years. Saying all video games are expensive and short is like saying all GW miniatures look like the razorgor.

Also, why does everyone keep claiming that this box has $300+ worth of miniatures in it? It doesn't. You're not buying those kits, you're buying inferior snap-together models with very limited poses. They look good for what they are, but don't lie and try to claim they are the same thing as the multi-part plastic kits. I'd say it's an okay deal for a starter set, but to try and claim that this is some kind of a steal because buying all the real models separately would cost three times as much is ridiculous.

and if the staff in GW stores are honest about the costs and potential enjoyment of getting into the hobby

LOL

I seem to recall the 2nd Edition boxed set was $100. Don't quote me on that, it was a long time ago. Maybe that's the cost of the Basic boxed set and Dark Millenium together.

Kilkrazy wrote:

agnosto wrote:The problem with them having only one such set per new edition of rules is that they lose out on sales to people that could care less about the two armies they're trying to pawn off on us.

If you are new to the game you probably don't have a strong idea about which armies to play.

Anyway, AoBR contains two of the most popular armies. I don't know about the WHFB set.

AoBR is £55 in the UK. That doesn't seem like a terribly high price compared with high quality board games like Agricola, given you get a lot of plastic models in it.

I was thinking about the new IoB set...skaven and high elves. Though both armies might be popular (I have no idea) neither appeals at all to me whereas the AoBR set would appeal to a broad market since many people own some flavor of marine or other anyway. I like these sets in that they are a comparatively inexpensive means at acquiring grunts.

I think GW might sell more if they made army specific sets of these inexpensive, non-posable, sets for every army. This would allow an entry into the game (as they certainly do not include every model you need to make a complete, strong force). I view them as a sort of gateway drug; the dealer gives you a small free sample and then says, "Hey kid if you liked that, I've got some really good stuff over here.."

Army specific bundles would be a great way to go. Imagine if you could just buy the AOBR marines, rules, templates and such with maybe the addition of another tac squad or assault squad for the same price as the original set. I would think, my opinion here, that many people don't buy the sets because they don't want the other army and don't want to go through the trouble of finding a trade or selling the extras on e-bay (which is a separate issue as GW is just needlessly putting money in someone else's pocket). I know it would appeal to me (but maybe I'm just crazy and most people want to buy a bunch of models they don't want/need).

On the price end of things. I agree with what some posters are saying here in that they, GW, charge what we are willing to pay; there's noone to blame here but ourselves if you don't like the prices. Of course as consumers we would love to pay less for something and we'll always gripe when prices inevitably go up; however, there comes a price point for all of us beyond which we are not willing to go. You can only place so much value on your hobby, whatever it may be, before you say "Well, that's it then, no new toys for a while."v

Scott-S6 wrote:

Big P wrote:Perry Figures sell for £1 a figure. For the price of the WFB box set I could get a whole bunch of Perry metals!

Yep, you could get 60. Or you could get 64 plus five cavalry plus two big monsters plus two little war machines and an elf on a griffon in the IoB set.

And the historicals aren't expensive to get started in but GW is? I don't think you entirely thought that through.

Er... Well they aint poorly sculpted plastic figs from the Perrys are they?

I would rather have 60 figs from the Perries... More use to me.

But then most of the figures I buy are in the .55p bracket. Or a tank for £6.50...

Can no GW player take a little bit of criticism about their Overlords?

I'm just pointing out that you said historicals were cheaper and then gave an example that wasn't cheaper.

This was from another thread that was locked:

"I'm probably too sleepy to get this right so bear with me... I think this is interesting. I think we can actually figure out a rough estimate of how much it costs them to produce a kit from this report. 59% of their sales they get to keep the full amount and 41% are to independant sellers @ a 50% discount. so 6 kits direct for every 8 kits to independant stockists. (6*60+8*30)/14=$42.86 (average sale price) on which they make a 72% margin($30.86 margin) so actual cost to them to make a $60 kit is $12. so GW gets $48 if you buy it from them and $18 if you buy it from an independant retailer (the retailer pockets the difference) "

These are from GW's own numbers in their report. (before the recent prices rises).

Scott-S6 wrote:GBP60. That's one and half xbox games. Seems pretty reasonable to me for what you get.

I think that is an excellent point...the price of the box sets, while not inconsequential, are in line with other hobbies and forms of entertainment. As such, I don't think the prices necessarily represent a hurdle to new players.

This will hopefully give people an idea of what it actually costs to make this stuff.

Edit: I think compared to most other things that people buy, which are either very complicated (electronic equipment) or well finished (toys), most people will think paying these prices for what you get (unfinished, unpainted, plastic, without the means to finish them in the box) is well out of line with almost everything else they buy.

Holy crap Aobr 90$ I remember getting it last year for 60$ and then it jumped to around 75$ at my FLGS, but now about 100$ that is a real put off.