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Back to the OP.

From my point of view, the price of the hobby is getting expensive now.

Hardcore people will continue to purchase the game regardless of their income.

The problem is what about the average person?

They might want to try the hobby and -then- realize that the price is just too high for them and their kids.

GW had an opportunity to keep the AOBR at a reasonable level but they got the "Corporate Stupid" disease.

Howard A Treesong wrote:They are already too expensive fro my tastes, I have the very occasional treat from GW like a christmas present. Everything is bought second hand.

There won't be a cut off for most, people will just adjust their purchases accordingly. I don't know what GW's thinking is with repackaging the Orc boyz. Do they expect people will now simply pay almost twice as much and buy two boxes just to get the number of figures they could a month ago? I don't think it will work like that, most people just accept getting less for their money. GW may be some people's crack, but most don't instantly start pouring in substantially more money to keep getting the same fix, they will accept getting less for the same expenditure.

Their pricing makes it difficult to collect swarm armies, it's no wonder space marines are popular.

We'll see in a year's time.

Either the GW pricing strategy will be vindicated by a triumphant return to increased sales volumes and revenue, or they will suffer another year on year decline.

Its already crossed that point for me.

I *am* a hardcore gamer, but the price of the models makes no sense - I don't really get the hobbying portion of the game, I appreciate the gaming portion of the game. So paying $4-5 per plastic model that I have to cut off the sprue myself, assemble myself, paint myself....is obscene. $50 for *maybe* $1 worth of plastic is horrendous.

I either trade for what I want, or get what I want from tournament winnings. I look at the price of these toys, and compare them to the cost of toys you buy at Walmart - the kind that are already painted and assembled, have moving parts, a remote control....and they cost so much less than the sprues of plastic from GW, and that's what does it for me. I hate having to put my own toys together, I just want to play with them.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:They are already too expensive fro my tastes, I have the very occasional treat from GW like a christmas present. Everything is bought second hand.

There won't be a cut off for most, people will just adjust their purchases accordingly. I don't know what GW's thinking is with repackaging the Orc boyz. Do they expect people will now simply pay almost twice as much and buy two boxes just to get the number of figures they could a month ago? I don't think it will work like that, most people just accept getting less for their money. GW may be some people's crack, but most don't instantly start pouring in substantially more money to keep getting the same fix, they will accept getting less for the same expenditure.

Their pricing makes it difficult to collect swarm armies, it's no wonder space marines are popular.

We'll see in a year's time.

Either the GW pricing strategy will be vindicated by a triumphant return to increased sales volumes and revenue, or they will suffer another year on year decline.

I'll place a bet now, share holders will ask searching questions after a new 40k release year of financials still show a flattening of sales. Expect a new CEO in the next few years as Kirby 'has taken the company as far as he can and leaves a firm foundation for the future'.

It stopped being too expensive for me when I stopped buying at retail prices.

Now, if there's something I want, I'm prepared to wait for up to a year for it to hit 2nd hand markets.

Generally, with the codex release cycle and "new shiny" factor, models get dumped onto that market relatively quickly once the novelty wears off.

I'm paying less than OS rates for product as a result. Good enough for me (and I don't generally buy 2nd hand plastics - just metals).

Just costed my Orc and Goblin army at todays prices- £620. Holy crap. That is crazy.

A fair chunk of that can be put down to the sheer crazyness of the current core troops pricing.

I was in the shop yesterday looking at kits, and I just couldn't justify any of them to myself. The River Trolls are lovely but I balk at paying over £25 for them. It's not that I can't afford them, they're just not good value for money to me.

Well Orkyben has a 40K thread detailing his imperial fists on a budget. I designed a firends SW army for ~£100

But I know for fantasy that It's turned into a block slamming contest... doesn't matter how much you kill as more minis = stubborn! woot!)Again all commercially driven. Older editions were not so much so. I never heard fans asking for this nor, aside from sheer commercialism (read :'greed') can I think of a reason for this.

The fun:cost ratio.. I think that will be the biggest factor. It's probably why they axed necromunda, gorkamorka and mordheim - too much value for money?
40k had 'CHEAP TANKS!' (in pts)

They may pull a warmahordes and gimp everything that's good this edition to make people buy different things.

feth my car's worth less than £620.

Achilles wrote:But your argument cuts both ways. I just as easily COULD play with a GW starter set forever.

No you couldnt. There's not one single GW player out there that stops at just the starter said. Ever.

If there is, show me. But every one gets the starter.....then adds to it.

The starter sets are good value if you play the armies in them.
My dwarves and O&G both benefited from BFSP, and my orcs did well out of the 6th edition starter.

But if you don't play a starter army, you're easily looking at upwards of £300 to get a "full" army.

You could buy a bag of marbles and play forever.

A realistic minimum set up for GW is rules, your own codex, and maybe 1,750 or 2,000 points.

I buy my minis/models slowly over time. But even still, Ive been seeing things lately that just make me think "there is no way in hell I would pay that" I also have found myself looking at other companies for counts as or to build off of. I can tell you, Im never EVER going to buy GW fantasy line thats for sure. Mantics got some pretty nice looking minis, and that new Fantasy game they came out with not too long ago seems like the prices are just right and Ive heard the game is pretty good. I think GW will eventually price themselves out of their own market for sure.

Da Boss wrote:Just costed my Orc and Goblin army at todays prices- £620. Holy crap. That is crazy.

.

I'm afraid to do the math for my collection, I would probably sell it all and buy a vacations house

Mantic have certainly come out with their orc line at the right time.
£25 for 30 Mantic orcs or £54 for 30 GW orcs.
There is a difference in quality, but honestly, it's not worth DOUBLE the cost. At least not to me!

Out of interest,, how do the mantic dwarves compare to GW dwarves in size? The models are nice, and compared to gw, cheap!

Look at it this way, in gw you can get 40 orks for £72, at mantic you can get 100 orks for £75, the price difference is immense!

The mantic dwarves are slightly taller and broader than the current GW ones. The difference isn't that huge- I use a lot of older dwarves in my army, so there's plenty of size variation anyway (many of the older dwarves have much larger heads and hands, and some are shorter while others are a bit taller).

They would definitely fit into WFB as an entire army, and would fit into a GW army for anyone but a nitpicker.

Hi all.
The GW hobby (tm) priced me out years ago.
As I have found much better value for money elsewhere, they could been seen as doing a favor to the gaming community in general.

GW plc spends over half its pre tax profits on B&M stores recruiting new gamers.
But spends so little trying to retain customers ,most of the long term gamers move to other companies .

(Mantic are absolutly ace IMO. )


TTFN

I don't play fantasy, so that's a cost saving there.

I also don't play EVERY 40k army nor want to collect all of the new shiny - so that's the other way.

For example:
While it's a probable cert that GK will be getting the SR in the new codex, I'm scratchbuilding one from plasticard, spare jet turbines and weapons from my bits box.

It will have a front and rear ramp (although both will be glued closed anyway) as well as two side hatches (rhino sized) and a magnetic setup to hold a dreadnought but it will NOT look like the thunderguppy.

Vrakk wrote: If playing with little plastic army men is what keeps you from going postal then make sure you dedicate some time to it.

Then I hope for the people in Charleston that GW products never get even more expensive haha..

As Navarro says, I think the threshold will differ for everyone. Although it's not a very good comparison, I would say look at what has happened in the UK with increasing prices of cigarettes. I used to know a number of people who said, "moment a packet reaches 5 pounds, I will quit". So, that time came and went (and then some, IIRC!) The point is many of those people didn't quit, but a few of them did. And a hell of a lot less people smoke nowadays, and I'm sure one of the main reasons for that is the prohibitive price. With the price increases and diminishing numbers of miniatures in a set, it's essentially an ever tighter circle that GW is pulling itself into.

I don't think it's correct to think that skirmish games (such as those which have been mentioned) are in anything like the same ballpark of GW stuff in terms of either time or money investment. You may end up spending more if you try and collect several factions, but the point is you can collect an army of your choice (as opposed to being forced into one option by a starter set) for relatively little. I'm starting an Infinity force for that reason. GW choosing to actively ignore this sector of wargaming may well prove to be costly, now that other manufacturers are gaining ground and popularity, and like many have said on here, a good number of us got into the game and the strength of GW's older skirmish systems. That will be an avenue forever denied to them from now on.

Walrus wrote:when the money im spending no longer gives me enjoyment from playing the game.

GW can double their prices and people will keep buying if its something they like.

preach it tusk man!

In response to the OP it is getting close for me. I try to buy my stuff first hand from the LGS to try and keep them in buisness but it is getting harder and harder to do. My fear is that people will stop buying at stores, the stores close, nobody knows or plays the games anymore and GW loses all buisness and sells to the highest bidder.

I see the same CEO stupidity at the company I work for and its insane. The need to drive profits by diminishing the company, product, then driving the cost of the product beyond market value is a temporary fix.

I have seen games like Malifaux become very popular and as soon as there is a national tourny scene for it I may black ball GW altogether for robbing me these last 3 years.

Since everyone have different threshholds for something been too expensive , it'll come eventually.

In my case i guess i snapped out of it. I used to spend almost 1k per year on miniatures, until recently my friends convinced me to get a PS3.
Then i realized how truly expensive warhammer hobby is compared to video games , or even a new LCD HDTV.

I have been buying GW for quite a long time now. Longer than I wish to admit.

I still do buy GW LotR stuff, but the cost for that range is not really that cheap either nowadays so I have have halted all GW purchases since before their last LotR release, around last february. And before that the spending was pretty sparse too.

GW charge as much as they think their 'price insensitive' consumers are willing to pay. Too bad they are not as 'price insensitive' as GW would have liked.

It appears to me that while there will always be someone who is 'price insensitive' enough to continue buying, there are a rise in numbers that I have seen locally on who are quite unwilling to follow GW's shortsighted marketing department's price structure.

Privateer Press carries most of the weight for my FLGS in terms of miniature wargame sales. Which is kind of a big deal because it has to be one of the biggest if not the biggest GW retailer in MN.

I'll probably stop buying things when I go off to college as I am certain there will be a lack of money.

I don't get the doublethink argument of you MUST always buy more than the minimum for GW games but NEVER have to buy over it for other games. Thats just BS. Every one of us will approach the hobby differerntly.

And to be clear, none of my above cost models were for going crazy and buying everything (outside the infinity/forge world comparison).

To the OP's quesitons. The cutoff for "too expensive" varies. I do agree with those who put a distinciton between the GW hobby and the wider miniature gaming hobby as a whole.

Like some others here, GW priced me out of their hobby "at retail" quite a few years ago. With a few rare exceptions, any GW product I buy is used and at a deep discount and I don't even buy much used GW.

As for the wider miniature gaming hobby, it will likely never be "too expensive" for anyone above the poverty line. There are so many inexpensive games and figures out there that miniature gaming will likely always be within my income.

I'm glad that my 40k armies will always be there (with a bit of tweaking between editions) for me, and I'll add a unit here or there. However, the truth is that GW has effectively priced me out of any of their new armies or games and pushed me into other more affordable miniatures games.

And that turned out to not be a bad thing.

Hellfury wrote:Privateer Press carries most of the weight for my FLGS in terms of miniature wargame sales. Which is kind of a big deal because it has to be one of the biggest if not the biggest GW retailer in MN.

Thats a big deal indeed I wonder how GW will manage to keep up the price structure if the major FLGS stop selling their goods and official GW stores are reduced to minimum staff etc... something tells me the Hobbit will have a big role for GW future.

All of those that have been here for some time know there is always going to be people jumping off, for tons of diferent reasons, but this time theres something diferent happening... Some flags are shifting to other companies goods and GW is not the main product to some of those anymore?... maybe people now have to think better on were to spend money due to the economic stress we are living, maybe competition is much more stronger, better and available everywere... maybe GW just outpriced themselves from their mainstream costumers... All in all I think the overall Hobby has never been this good and diverse and if thats a cause of GW prices then its a positive thing this GW fiasco

NAVARRO wrote:

Vrakk wrote:

Auxellion wrote:

As I've gotten older, I seem to have less time to put into the hobby, and the hobby itself is still as expensive. When I was a kid 300$ was a huge investment for an army. Now when an army is 500~$, even with a job that pays well I can't justify the cost. I'll keep the two armies I have and finish painting/working on them and enjoy the every other weekend I can get a few games in.

It's a great hobby, but not all that realistic to college kids/people working around the clock. I can definitely see myself playing more when I'm older. Then again I never factored in kids/wife. Such is life as a Wargamer

I'm 35 with a wife and a 10month old. I have one night a week that is game night and the guys come over to play 40k. About once a month I'll pop up to the FLGS on a Sat afternoon to get some games in. For me, dedicating one night a week does not take away from family time - in fact its better for them. I make sure I can get my nerd on and relieve stress. Now the wife wants me to do it because I am a happier person. If playing with little plastic army men is what keeps you from going postal then make sure you dedicate some time to it. When the wife and I first got together I quit all gaming - and became miserable. Life can be tough with its demands, but if you don't have any fun at all it can become crushing.

As far as the money portion, so what, its only money. I am constantly amazed to see people on this site bitch about GW prices - on items that they don't need. Where is the bitching about gas/food/electricity/insurance/interest rates/etc. These are things that are needed, you can't choose to not buy them like you can on GW products. You don't see a family planning on what bills they can pay late to be able to by a storm raven (at least I hope like hell you don't see this!), but you do see it when comparing the power bill and food on the table. If its too expensive then don't play.

If its too expensive then dont play, yes I agree that its the first advice you should give to someone who is having troubles in financing the hobby but unlike you, I do understand and Im not amazed with the "bitchin"... and reading your personal experience of quiting the hobby and feeling miserable about that and getting back on it , you should to... I mean you had the option to get back to the hobby you love if you wanted but many just dont have that choice anymore and being forced to abandon something they have done for years and loved its bitchin material if you ask me

I know I know its life...

I'm not saying I'm leaving the hobby by any means, I'm just not buying anything new in the coming months/years. I have my Tyranids, and my heavily converted/cheap DoC army which I've been collecting for a year or more.

The message/idea I meant to give was more along the lines of "Sure I'd want to start Guard, or another army. The game/hobby is great! Is it possible in terms of $$$? Not realistically at the moment."



No one should ever quit the hobby because of money (unless you actually are in deep financial trouble). Work with what you have. Don't dump your old models on Ebay. Keep them, spend some time painting or repainting them. Taking breaks from GW/Wargaming helps. I'm pretty much doing what dayve110 said. Working with what I have/trading

My wargaming hobby is dirt cheap for the enjoyment I get out of it.

At around .50p a figure, its cheap and I have armies that are 15 years old that are still 'valid' under the rules I play... Though its hard for a WW2 German to become outdated.

But my hobby dont involve any GW games...

So maybe you just need to look at the entire hobby for inspiration rather than 'The GW Hobby'.

Big world of gaming goodness out there... and some of it is cheap!

Of course the stuff might be cheap... But not in the quantities I buy...

I think it was getting too expensive back in 2000-ish when I first heard this question asked on Dakka. It's been too expensive everytime it has been asked since then. Yet, people still pay and they always will.

Fact.


I basically stopped buying minis (mostly because I have all I need at the moment). I will buy the occasional re-sculpt that I love, like the new Wraithlord, but that's about it. However, I still build terrain and buy materials for doing so. I am still spending money on the hobby, even with miniatures, but GW gets a teeny, tiny drop in the bucket of it.


King Ghidorah