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happydude wrote:

Commisar Von Humps wrote:Quite simply, its Leze Faire(i think thats how its spelt...lol), they can charge whatever they want because we will pay almost anything for our plastic little men.

And truth be told, they make an obscene profit, i heard somewhere thats its like 77%(which im sure is an exageration )

It is a 68% Markup in reality from what I have been told. I decided to push the company away for good they do not deserve the money any longer. PP here I come!

Good luck with that!

you can make an 1850 40k army for a tourney as cheap as you can make a 50pt PP army for a tourney.


If you compare PP model prices vs GW model prices they are both high.

$30 for a Warjack some up to $60

Infantry can run into around $33 per 6.. Thats $5.50 per model. (PP)

a Tactical squad is ..........$3.75 a model (GW)



I spent more money playing PP then i did 40k.. As when i get a unit painted, i want another unit to paint and work on.


Not to mention the new battle engines that are like $85 each..



Just saying... don't expect other well established games with a large player base to be cheaper..

Solorg wrote:My idea (not original):

If I buy a box of Orks with 11 guys in there for $25, it will take me a night to assemble them and probably 5 more nights to paint them/finish them. So I got 6 nights of entertainment already. Now let's say I play 4 games which include them. That's ten nights of fun. For $25. In other words:

It cost me $2.50 per night of fun. If I wanted a night of fun at the movies, it would be $10. If I wanted to eat out, it would be $5 - $15 depending on how frugal I feel. Bowling would be $7 for one game. And so on.

Plus if you stay in the hobby, models are free to play with once you've finished them. They continue to provide nights of fun even if you decide you don't have time to paint or model anything else.

So try to think of it in terms of the hours of fun you get for your money. Can you get models from other ranges for less? Maybe. But the GW line offers amazing variety and excellent quality for games that everybody plays. I don't consider other games anymore because for my time and money, I'd rather paint something that I can play with rather than a game I have to beg people to get into (and that never really works all that well usually).

I buy a sketch pad with 100 sheets of paper in it. If I can entertain myself by making one drawing a night, is the sketch pad worth $250?

^ Some of them are

asmith wrote:
I buy a sketch pad with 100 sheets of paper in it. If I can entertain myself by making one drawing a night, is the sketch pad worth $250?

I hate drawing, so no...

asmith wrote:I buy a sketch pad with 100 sheets of paper in it. If I can entertain myself by making one drawing a night, is the sketch pad worth $250?

It's worth what people are willing to pay for it. : ) In fact, that's really the only way that worth is objectively determined.

But it does bring up a good point. When you buy GW miniatures, what are you paying for? Just the cost of the plastic? Are you not also paying for fine art? For many of us, are we not also paying a premium for imported goods? For the technology which has been designed to produce them, some of which has been pioneered by Citadel? For an established team which can afford to hire the best?

I'll admit, the prices are a bit high. It's still worth asking - high compared to what? Other lines often produce either a) inferior models or b) have less variety available. That said, it is always possible to purchase your minis for 40K from another line. You may get more value for your money - but it depends on how you define value. For me, the (very) high quality plus the ability to customize the look of anything from a lowly Ork to a powerful Battlewagon that GW produces makes it worth it to me to pay a little extra per model.

Surely you mean subjectively determined? So your view is that worth is completely unrelated to the amount of work it takes to produce something? That's one way to look at it.

asmith wrote:Surely you mean subjectively determined? So your view is that worth is completely unrelated to the amount of work it takes to produce something? That's one way to look at it.

No, I mean objectively. There is only one universally agreed-upon way to determine the (monetary) worth of something. And that is: what people are willing to pay for it. If it is priced higher than that, it will not sell. If priced lower, well, the price will rise soon enough.

Someone might ---feel--- that something is worth more because they spent a lot of time on it (ie my badly painted Ork Mob) but just because I feel it has high worth, that is subjective... until I successfully sell it, that is, at which point its worth has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt (I have the money in my pocket to prove it).

EDIT: I can't say that the work required to make something is completely unrelated - it certainly is if you have to pay people by the hour in order to produce something. But at the end of the day if you pay your people and the item does not sell, you will still be forced to drop the price on the product... even if you end up losing money on the deal!

Solorg
A Ork

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:I ain't so you are wrong

The big kits are still overpriced imho.
(compared to equivalent amount of plastics in all but a few of the scale models)

Oh look someone is going to say it's a niche luxury car in this sort of thread again in 5, 4, 3, 2,...

Yeah, I can get 6 Ogre Bulls for less than 5 Terminators.

And don't make me trot out the razorgore pic....heck, I'll be lazy because I'm sure someone else'll do it.

Solorg wrote:

asmith wrote:Surely you mean subjectively determined? So your view is that worth is completely unrelated to the amount of work it takes to produce something? That's one way to look at it.

No, I mean objectively. There is only one universally agreed-upon way to determine the (monetary) value of something. And that is: what people are willing to pay for it. If it is priced higher than that, it will not sell. If priced lower, well, the price will rise soon enough.

Someone might ---feel--- that something is worth more because they spent a lot of time on it (ie my badly painted Ork Mob) but just because I feel it has high value, that is subjective... until I successfully sell it, that is, at which point its value has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt (I have the money in my pocket to prove it).

EDIT: I can't say that the work required to make something is completely unrelated - it certainly is if you have to pay people by the hour in order to produce something. But at the end of the day if you pay your people and the item does not sell, you will still be forced to drop the price on the product... even if you end up losing money on the deal!

Solorg
A Ork

I disagree that it is universally agreed upon . I think you'll find that most definitions of value will have the the word "fair" in them. Just because you can find one person to pay money for something does not mean that it is worth that much. If that were so you couldn't have painters bilking old ladies out of their savings, and it would be ok to charge $1000 a gallon for water in a disaster area. Generally you'll find that fair value is the cost to produce an item plus a reasonable markup to make the business go. For a high profile example of this in action look at the ongoing struggles with pharmaceutical companies and drug pricing.

Making old ladies pay inflated prices for their GW minis, I will agree, is just plain wrong.

EDIT: Your point is well-taken, though. Even so, the theory goes that if the price is not worth it, people won't pay. If they do pay, that must have been its worth, right? (Why would they pay if it wasn't worth it?) I see how it is possible to disagree with this (sometimes we don't have a choice but to pay - ie medical expenses, water, etc) but then again, it is probably not possible to determine the (monetary) worth on items/services we must absolutely have. And of course, models, much though we love them, probably don't fall into the category of things we absolutely must have.

EDIT 2: Except for that awesome Squiggoth from FW! That thing is MINT.

I havent read the whole thread but I always cry bloody tears if people who seems to clearly have no clue about economic systems and such stuff goin crazy on some companies. Take any other miniature manufacteur and show me what they do for their customers. I gladly pay the extra bucks for my GW minis and will sink a lot more money into GW simply because I can play at their stores all day long, use there painting equipment and get bitz if I need some and all that for free. If GW would have such prizes without the above mentioned stuff I would agree that GW is a little pricey but as it stands now the company is just awesome. Not just in terms of customer service they act like a good example company in mostly all parts of economic rules.
Yeah, I am a GW fanboy for sure and no I dont work for them no I get paid for such comments. I just love the company and have had a lot of awesome moments including some GW Trolls, stores and such stuff.

Gorbad wrote:I havent read the whole thread but I always cry bloody tears if people who seems to clearly have no clue about economic systems and such stuff goin crazy on some companies. Take any other miniature manufacteur and show me what they do for their customers. I gladly pay the extra bucks for my GW minis and will sink a lot more money into GW simply because I can play at their stores all day long, use there painting equipment and get bitz if I need some and all that for free. If GW would have such prizes without the above mentioned stuff I would agree that GW is a little pricey but as it stands now the company is just awesome. Not just in terms of customer service they act like a good example company in mostly all parts of economic rules.
Yeah, I am a GW fanboy for sure and no I dont work for them no I get paid for such comments. I just love the company and have had a lot of awesome moments including some GW Trolls, stores and such stuff.

You realize that there are entire swathes of the world without a GW store within a day's driving distance, right?

GW have been expensive for a long time, but I'm seeing now that they are really expensive, it strains my credulity that they can still shift sufficient models at these prices. But obviously they do and make some sort of profit from it.

I looked around their store recently, and the most common price on blisters with single figures in is £8.20. That seems to be the benchmark for most blisters now. I thought single figures at £5-6 was getting to be a lot but seeing this "£8.20" all over the place is just depressing.

That's a lot for a single 28mm figure by any measure. People saying the other companies offer lower quality or less variety or whatever seems grossly unfair. It's not like GW offer quality beyond that of other manufacturers. There are loads of other companies out there offering large ranges of quality miniatures like Reaper, and rare is the single 28mm figure that costs £8.20 from them.

Many of the GW characters are £12-14, I don't know when it became common that all these characters suddenly cleared the £10 mark by so far, I guess I don't go in GW often enough. That's hellish expensive IMO.

There's hardly any blisters in GW anyway from my last few visits, really sad that so much has gone 'direct only', you can't even go in their own shops and buy stuff, you have to order it and return a week later. What sort of "Games" shop is that? It's not like their ranges are bigger now than they used to be, if anything they had wider product ranges years ago and the stores had it all. Now they just have a million boxes of Grey Knights or whatever is flavour of the month.

The right word here is competition. GW owns the rights of a nice scenarie, and have a big history with it.

Their models are the better, and almost unique, plastic sci-fi ones, and they just know that people will buy from them, because only them sell it.

Thats why i hope for another comapany to come and do sci-fi plastic miniatures, in a Space Opera style. Maybe Mantic, maybe Wargames Factory, maybe another one...

But even them, people will say "no" to them, because they will not be GW, or they will be Ugly, or cheap.

Resuming? GW have absurdly high prices just because we, their costumers, let them price their products high. But what we can do? We dont have alternatives... yet.

Oil prices are climbing due to tensions in the Middle East which translates into more expensive plastic toy soldiers.

Brother Ramses wrote:Oil prices are climbing due to tensions in the Middle East which translates into more expensive plastic toy soldiers.

If this is true (and I sincerely doubt it) I gladly await the day when those anonymous forces leave 'I-don't-know-its-name-ifshtan' and GW lowers their prices.

Since, you know, they love us so much because of who we are and not because we happen to have plenty of disposable income that we decide to spend on their plastic and resin crack.

agnosto wrote:

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:I ain't so you are wrong

The big kits are still overpriced imho.
(compared to equivalent amount of plastics in all but a few of the scale models)

Oh look someone is going to say it's a niche luxury car in this sort of thread again in 5, 4, 3, 2,...

Yeah, I can get 6 Ogre Bulls for less than 5 Terminators.

And don't make me trot out the razorgore pic....heck, I'll be lazy because I'm sure someone else'll do it.

Wait?!?! What's that?! Did someone mention the sports car of wargaming again??!?!

Brother Ramses wrote:Oil prices are climbing due to tensions in the Middle East which translates into more expensive plastic toy soldiers.

in so many ways, no, no it does not. Like I said, the price in plastic didn't jump 100% in 10 years for simple polystyrene.

You think popcorn prices at the movies when up because corn doubled in price?

This is a great example so I'll run with it.

In 2001 I worked at a theater. A LARGE popcorn ran $4.50 and a small was just $2. The cost on the large was $.10 for the corn and about $.03 for the bag it was in. Fast forward 10 years, a small popcorn is now $4.50, a large is $8 and corn prices
have actually gone down in the last 10 years due to the government subsidizing surplus harvesting of said crop.

So why on earth would theaters charge almost double the price for the same product 10 years later? Because people will still pay it. In the end people(at least in the US) are consumers at heart, and a few dollars isn't going to stand between them and what they want.

I 100% guarantee that price differences in polystyrene have no impact on GW's pricing structure. If it did, then Empire Greatswords would cost the same as State Troops, as by that logic they have the same amount of plastic and therefore the same cost. This is very much not the case. The plastic greatswords cost just as much per model as their metal predecessors did, regardless of being produced in a less expensive material.

methinks the way to lower prices is a wordwide boycot.....................................................................

Paul wrote:
It says to me not that GW are money grabing, but that they have ethics about who they will supply to. It says to me that they don't want the small hobby shops pushed out of the market.

As Ugavine says, its not that expensive a hobby anyway. A set of tyres for my motorbike cost about £300...

I know. It's great that GW didn't spend upwards of ten years planting GW stores in the same neighborhood of successful local retailers.

Wait.

H.B.M.C. wrote:I do love how these threads turn into those that want to discuss GW's pricing structure, and those that think that clever images and cute phrases constitute constructive rebuttal...

There simply exists no new data that can be added to these threads. There are only oh so many ways in which to say, "GWS charges what the market will bear".

If you think they cost too much, you should vote with your wallet. If enough people do so, they will stop charging so much, or someone else step up tol fill the void.

That's all there is to it. The end.

[/thread], in my opinion.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Excuses are so readily made to justify the addiction Ugavine.

I'm good at making excuses to justify my gaming
I spend just as much on RPGs as I do on 40K. And so far my 40K spending isn't close to what I spent on Star Wars miniatures. Now THAT is an expensive game. Since collecting 40K I have money to spare at the end of a month!

Like I said, some kit makers don't charge the earth.
They have far more complicated moulds to make for some kits, they have to do specific research and design and use plastic.

Then why don't people buy them instead?
Because Warhammer is better

Every industry is the same. The prices in some restaurants are high to make them exclusive, doesn't mean the food or service is going to be very good. So while 40K may not be better than the rest they have set out their place in the marketplace and that's where they're obviously staying.

Worglock wrote:

Paul wrote:
It says to me not that GW are money grabing, but that they have ethics about who they will supply to. It says to me that they don't want the small hobby shops pushed out of the market.

As Ugavine says, its not that expensive a hobby anyway. A set of tyres for my motorbike cost about £300...

I know. It's great that GW didn't spend upwards of ten years planting GW stores in the same neighborhood of successful local retailers.

Wait.

That's the sort of behaviour that makes them 'evil' if anything does, not prices. A lot of independent retailers seem to get a hard time dealing with GW, they need to take their product because it's so ubiquitous and will attract customers, but GW are then frustrating and difficult to deal with.

I've long disliked GW's attitude that they ARE the hobby instead of being part of a much wider community. They are certainly a big fish but there is a much bigger world of miniature wargaming. They are quite zealous about it, people in stores have on occasion heard staff claim GW is unique in making figures, perhaps these staff are genuinely ignorant or drinking the kool-aid. The way they treat their staff seems a bit dubious too, there are numerous horror stories by ex-staff about the pressure and absurd demands made upon them.

Lastly I find their claim to be a 'Games' Workshop a bit sad seeing as they only produce three games and the last other release was virtually a reprint of the much older Space Hulk. They've dropped so many of they product lines over the years rendering them useless. Not just whole armies, but the way people find weapons listings change so have to alter figures to meet new rules. And how many editions of the game do they need to release? New editions are slightly different but don't seem to offer improvement. Meanwhile there are loads of games that they do nothing to support even though they are on their own site. Though the Specialist Games are a small section you can still buy some stuff. Many of these ranges are a shadow of their former self, GW axed many Inquisitor figures mere months after release. You certainly can't play any if these games in their stores, genuine GW minis or not. It's just the big three. They appeared to only release Space Hulk on the understanding it wouldn't get a shred of support after the release period when they are pushing for people to buy it, and that's not support it's part of a sales pitch.

And if we're talking about their attitude towards Specialist Games we have to recall their ridiculous C&D storm the other summer when they went after multiple fan sites. Now had they explained their reasons for this activity then people may have been more compliant, but serving grous of your fans with aggressive legal letters just angers and upsets your customers. So what if some people use their eagles or have a bit of their IP in a web address, the net is a big place, you can just ignore it like you have for years. You're not going to lose your IP.

Their posessive attitude towards their IP is also a problem for me, their use of it stifles creativity. They make huge claims about what is theirs and use their size to scare off competition even in spurious cases of claimed ownership. Maybe some people at GW do believe their own propaganda that they are they only mini maker out there but frankly I think the hobby is much healthier with GW forced to eat some humble pie over this Chapterhouse thing.

Even despite being "gainfully employed", I find myself spending less and less on GW products. I'm afraid that neither the cost of potential other hobbies nor the fact that I won't starve should I buy an army makes any difference - there is definitively a limit on what I consider fair to charge for a plastic doll or ten.

The reasoning that compared to a BMW, a box of Greatswords or Terminators is cheap is simply ridiculous. I'm continuously surprised to see consumers taking the side of a company only. So whatever they charge is okay? Everything cool costs money? Are you being paid by some business union to write that? That must be the most absurd attempt to legitimate prices. Would you be jumping with joy if you had to pay 2 € per litre of gas? It's cool to be able to drive after all, so it could cost whatever...

infinite_array wrote:
The thing is, we've heard these threads before. And before then. And before THEN. The very thing man did when he finally evolved enough to articulate sounds into meaningful language was complain about GW's prices.

I thought the very first thing he did was to make and then to defend those prices. Anyways, considering the price of stones, their prices *were* high back then! Not to mention that people developed a hernia from carrying a 1k army of stone models...

Solorg wrote:
It's worth what people are willing to pay for it. : ) In fact, that's really the only way that worth is objectively determined.

Yep. Everyone who thinks its not worth it is just an irrational GW hater with anger control issues and should be banned from all fora.

ok, i have one point that doesn't seem to be mentioned yet, the cost of the stores. i mean, really, think about it. how much must GW spend on their stores, staff, and store events. that is one of the big reasons that their prices are so high. and i challenge you to find one store in the world that has a big 'Privateer Press', or 'Flames of War' over the entrance, these smaller companies can be cheaper because they are based primarily off of the internet, and independent stockists

Rogueyopants wrote:Why does Games Workshop i.e. "Evil Empire" charge so much money for their models (If you ask them, they will rant on about how it is some sort of special plastic WHICH i know is bloody horse crap, and they say they ship it from Europe and all this other bull i don't want to here (I never buy from games workshop cause of that reason which makes me buy from Maelstrom and other discount online stores)-a lot of their main player base is kids under 18, and their blowing their money away because simply they haven't herd of any other tabletop modeling game like DBMM or DBR, or Flames of war and etc. And they just plain rip them off (You know 1 Space marine will cost around $4.20 NZD which is flipping outrageous. If you go to Warlord games they charge a box of 24 hard-plastic models for only around $22 NZD (which is like a dollar per model) where as a box of 10 space marines or 10 orks cost $45 NZD

Its really a shame cause i like the Sie-fie idea and i love playing this game with these Skirmish based rules (I mean i have a alot of models but it has cost me over Thousands of dollars to get them (I have a job so its not to hard to come by but still...)

What do you guys think?

They charge so much because they need to cover non miniature costs with miniature sales. So all of those stores they have all over the UK cost them a lot of money to maintain so they need to raise the cost of their miniatures as compared to other companies to keep this type of business model going. You can see from their end of year business reports that they take in a lot of revenue but their profit margin is pretty small compared to the total revenue. Hopefully they change their business model soon because it doesn't look good for the long term.

If that's the only reason prices are high, then GW should close the stores. I would think that lower product prices will do just as much to increase sales as a red-shirt trying to hardsell a 12 year old on a box of marines...

agnosto wrote:If that's the only reason prices are high, then GW should close the stores. I would think that lower product prices will do just as much to increase sales as a red-shirt trying to hardsell a 12 year old on a box of marines...

You see there lies the issue
Its those stores that help them become successful, its what gave them the edge over competitors
Its now impossible to get rid of them because of how much theyre intergrated into how the company operates, regardless of whether or not its profitable

In fact does anyone know if even the more popular stores manage to break even on sales?

Asuron wrote:

agnosto wrote:If that's the only reason prices are high, then GW should close the stores. I would think that lower product prices will do just as much to increase sales as a red-shirt trying to hardsell a 12 year old on a box of marines...

You see there lies the issue
Its those stores that help them become successful, its what gave them the edge over competitors
Its now impossible to get rid of them because of how much theyre intergrated into how the company operates, regardless of whether or not its profitable

In fact does anyone know if even the more popular stores manage to break even on sales?

GW games are now so ubiquitous in the tabletop community now that there's hardly a point for the corporate storefronts anymore, especially in areas that already have a FLGS presence. Why should the company do the hard work of attracting customers when the FLGSs will do that out of self-interest? I'm telling you that lower prices would really do more to benefit GWs bottom line than anything else.

" Would you be jumping with joy if you had to pay 2 € per litre of gas?"

The way its going in the UK it wont be far off that we currently pay £1.30 a litre at the min. And some out of the way pump stations charge more.