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-Loki- wrote:

Samwise158 wrote:Yeah, I think the issue with the game was that it didn't have enough potential for expansion and collectability.

It wasn't meant to have it, they never said it would have it and never planned to do it. It's a boxed board game, like Space Hulk, Space Crusade, Hero Quest, etc.

All those had at least two expansions and supporting White Dwarf articles.



Anyway those saying that GW would rather destroy than have a sale that devalues their 'brand image' they are probably right. GW are obsessed with branding, it's common to many big companies. Except GW aren't all that big really, but the likes of Kirby want to give out the impression, or are genuinely deluded into thinking, they are running Apple.

GW used to have sales to shift old stock just like most shops. So the company certainly has changed, setting their prices as the level they do, refusing to discount any items and the constant talking themselves up as the 'world's finest miniatures producer' just seems all part of the same corporate delusion they are operating under - that they make boutique fashion accessories solely for the wealthy, not toys for a niche hobby market.

To explain further on brand image.

Those that originally bought dreadfleet in the initial release, we can consider them as the customers that GW makes money off.

Anyone that buys dreadfleet later now, are not the same type of customer base.

GW will not risk pissing off the alpha customer base to sell a few dreadfleet or else what do they do with the future releases right?

LunaHound wrote:

but dreadfleet never had the chance in the first place to sell like space hulk did.

Right. A game that rekindles an old passion and can even supplement their major line with its included miniatures, or a game that tries to find the niche that was Man 'o War at a price point that makes it difficult to justify the purchase, especially since it doesn't supplement anything? Give me Space Hulk.

nor did the people it was selling to ever even know of man-o-war

puma713 wrote:

newbis wrote:
I don't think anyone outside the company really knows just how well it did, and I find the gleeful dancing on the supposed grave of the game distasteful. It's like people took dreadfleet as a personal insult. Did it spit in your cereal? Meh.

No, but when a company is putting out over-priced, over-hyped games instead of tending to their major lines, it is going to draw the ire of people who are waiting for entire waves of their armies to be filled in (tyranids, anyone?). Some people may feel, 'Why are you scultping boats that no one wants to play with when you could be sculpting Thunderwolves?" or "You could be sculpting [insert your miniature here]."

Instead, they put full focus on this game and, from what I've gathered from forums and websites, it turned most people off.

I guess I just don't expect GW to cater to me.

The correct terminology is 'Dreadfleet scuttled'

It sounds like a GW ruse to make people buy it IMO.

newbis wrote:

I guess I just don't expect GW to cater to me.

I wouldn't consider it "catering to you" by them completing a codex worth of miniatures. That is not catering to anyone, that is fulfulling their obligations to their released rulesets.

George Spiggott wrote:The correct terminology is 'Dreadfleet scuttled'

It sounds like a GW ruse to make people buy it IMO.

Good luck selling it then . At the price they are asking I can get much better WW2 naval war systems with entire US Navy, IJN and RN battlefleets.

M.

PS: I concede that this real wargames are way more complicated than beer and preztles Dreadfleet, but if I want uncomplicated I already got 40K

LunaHound wrote:

newbis wrote:It's like people took dreadfleet as a personal insult. Did it spit in your cereal? Meh.

More like this result is already foretold the first day it was launched.
Its like yes i told you so GW ( not that they'll ever hear it )

but dreadfleet never had the chance in the first place to sell like space hulk did.

Again you have to wonder if those running the company understand the customers. It's like they said "Space Hulk was a board game that sold, lets make another board game".

But instead of just re-releasing an old game again they did something new that many people didn't want. Furthermore it seems, from some accounts, that they produced Dreadfleet in higher numbers than Space Hulk. But the difference is obvious, Space Hulk had huge nostalgia value, it was always going to sell. Even people who had bought it before were buying it again. But Dreadfleet was new, it had to sell entirely upon its own merits which is a bigger ask, it always is for any new game on the market. GW seemed to think people would buy it just because it has their brand name on it. Those people that bought it seem happy with it, but it was just never going to be a runaway success like Space Hulk particularly when GW stuck such a high price on it. Again thinking that because Space Hulk sold for £70 Dreadfleet would too. But nostalgia value has a habit of pushing people to spend more.

If they wanted another Space Hulk they should have done Warhammer Quest. People would have handed over £70 for that no problem. GW are probably going to convince themselves that Dreadfleet failed because of the economy, or because people don't want specialist games, or some other bulls--t meaning we won't see any more boxed games for a while.

Dreadfleet probably sold as well as it could considering the high price, the fact it's an unknown game, and the fact that GW did their usual "we're not going to have any publicity" trick - because that *always* works. Again the comparison with Space Hulk, the game sold partly on nostalgia value, many people knew roughly what to expect, if you want to sell a new game you have to 'sell' the game mechanics. None of the promotional material for Dreadfleet did this in any sort of detail. The just had lots of pretty pictures of ships and lots of talking about 'broadsides' and other nonsense jargon to sound cool, and then expected people to be fighting to give them money for it. The 'review' video on their own website was garbage.

Howard A Treesong wrote:GW are probably going to convince themselves that Dreadfleet failed... ...or because people don't want specialist games, or some other bulls--t meaning we won't see any more boxed games for a while.

Would be my fear as well, that the grey suits use this as the self fulfilling prophecy of specialist games not being popular and that they can use this costly venture to shut down any future efforts to produce new or stand alone games.

I'd personally love it if they rented out Epic, BFG, Seas of Blood and especially Blood Bowl to FFG. Let a company that they already enjoy a strong relationship with take those franchises and run with them.

mikhaila wrote:I'd take this with a grain of salt. They could just as easily be sending recalling them for mailorder to sell, rather than keeping them in stores.

This is from a GW store, so it's not false. But as I said at the start, it could be a GWOZ only thing, or just a GW thing, and not impact non-GW stores at all.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

mikhaila wrote:I'd take this with a grain of salt. They could just as easily be sending recalling them for mailorder to sell, rather than keeping them in stores.

This is from a GW store, so it's not false. But as I said at the start, it could be a GWOZ only thing, or just a GW thing, and not impact non-GW stores at all.

From my region they are "gone" from the GW Stores.

Adam LongWalker wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:

mikhaila wrote:I'd take this with a grain of salt. They could just as easily be sending recalling them for mailorder to sell, rather than keeping them in stores.

This is from a GW store, so it's not false. But as I said at the start, it could be a GWOZ only thing, or just a GW thing, and not impact non-GW stores at all.

From my region they are "gone" from the GW Stores.

Same as my GW, but I know they are being sent back to the warehouse where ever that is or means

ShumaGorath wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:Last I heard it had sold out elsewhere. Oz seems an area where GW's not doing as well, for perhaps understandable reasons.

My FLGS has like four copies on 20% off.

Sure, but your FLGS isn't a GW. GW already sold them. There's no doubt that DF didn't sell out near-instantly the way Space Hulk did, but no one expected it to. SH obviously had a built-in market and cross-game applicable minis.

I suspect that any copies left unsold at GW stores are being recalled to be sold out of the warehouse. It seems strange to me that they'd destroy them in Oz, but it might have to do with shipping costs to send them back to Blighty.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

H.B.M.C. wrote:

mikhaila wrote:I'd take this with a grain of salt. They could just as easily be sending recalling them for mailorder to sell, rather than keeping them in stores.

This is from a GW store, so it's not false.

Huh? Does that mean that Oz doesn't have the tradition of GW store staff passing out (deliberately or in ignorance) misinformation the way the rest of the world does?

coyotius wrote:

-Loki- wrote:

Samwise158 wrote:Yeah, I think the issue with the game was that it didn't have enough potential for expansion and collectability.

It wasn't meant to have it, they never said it would have it and never planned to do it. It's a boxed board game, like Space Hulk, Space Crusade, Hero Quest, etc.

Perhaps it should have been sold through normal retail outlets then (i.e. Toys-r-us...or foreign equivalent). IIRC Space Crusade was a Milton Bradley partnership...why doesn't GW sell starter games through normal retail chains if they want to attract new players in the 8-14 age group? Sales are there, right? Heroscape being evidence of it...unless I'm wrong. (Should say Heroscape WAS evidence).

They have priced themselves out of normal retail chains. Space Crusade, Hero Quest and Battle Masters were produced in co operation with Milton Bradley and were pretty cheap by GW standards. I remember when Battle Masters went on clearance for like $25 all my friends were buying multiple copies because the amount of minis you got for $25 was ridiculous.

Large chains like Wal mart actually dictate price to their supplier, and in Wal marts case demand a decrease in price every year. GW would never give up than kind of control.

Seems like a strange thing to put out misinformation about, hey Mann?

Mannahnin wrote:It seems strange to me that they'd destroy them in Oz, but it might have to do with shipping costs to send them back to Blighty.

This sounds plausible.

Andrew1975 wrote:

Large chains like Wal mart actually dictate price to their supplier. and in Wal marts case demand a decrease in price every year. GW would never give up than kind of control.

+1 GW tried to position their starting kits in Hipercor, the largest spanish retailer some years ago. Everything was pulled out from all the stores just after the "traditional" price raise, IIRC the deal didn´t last a year. I´m guessing the mother company was not happy with GW´s new prices that blocked (not very cheap) stock in stores.

M

H.B.M.C. wrote:Seems like a strange thing to put out misinformation about, hey Mann?

Not if the person is confused, misinformed (possibly innocently; may have misunderstood a joke) or just messing with you.

When I worked for GW I remember asking a senior manager why we didn't have sales to get rid of old stock (There was hundreds of pounds of stuff in the basement that was out of date) or ship it back to HQ for recyling/repackaging.

I was told that the shipping was too expensive to make it viable (fair enough) but that the reason for not having sales was that 'Stores have sales to get rid of old tat. GW does not produce old tat, ergo we can't have sales'.


I lol'd hard

So.... wrong thread, heh. Sorry!

puma713 wrote:

No, but when a company is putting out over-priced, over-hyped games instead of tending to their major lines, it is going to draw the ire of people who are waiting for entire waves of their armies to be filled in (tyranids, anyone?). Some people may feel, 'Why are you scultping boats that no one wants to play with when you could be sculpting Thunderwolves?" or "You could be sculpting [insert your miniature here]."

Instead, they put full focus on this game and, from what I've gathered from forums and websites, it turned most people off.

I'm going to continue to argue that I think GW is quite happy
with the rate at which they update armies. I think anything else
they do is done by extra labor they would just fire or cease to
contract work to should they stop working on those projects.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt a cessation of board games will
lead directly to a speed up of release schedules.

Anyway, I realize you're not making this argument directly
but rather responding to a post questioning the ire of posters
in this thread, but I thought I'd get that out there.

Kroothawk wrote:Are you positive on them being destroyed? Sounds odd. Shipping them back to the UK warehouse sounds more realistic.

I got told that they are being destroyed. Furthermore, a dude at a store actually told me that every GW-employee has to have a Facebook account and that they had to promote Dreadfleet as being limited til the end of this month.

So the limited product was now EXTRA limited!

The same thing is being done to WDs as far as I know. Everything that doesnt sell within timeframe X will be recalled and destroyed. However, that doesnt seem to be true so far, our GW is filled with old copies...

Flachzange wrote:I got told that they are being destroyed.

This is true.

Flachzange wrote:every GW-employee has to have a Facebook account and that they had to promote Dreadfleet as being limited til the end of this month.

This is not quite true; Every store has a Facebook account, not employee.

-Loki- wrote:The thing that makes me sad about this is it might make them decide to scrap future non-core games.
.

That's my concern as well. Whatever people thought of Dreadfleet, it represented the only real effort for GW to do something different (and take a risk) for the first time in years. If it fails, then sadly it means we are even less likely to see them trying to do the same thing again (and who knows what the next project may have been).

I can't understand them destroying them though - why not give them in bulk to someone like Rise (a music/entertainment store here in the UK that gets stuff on discount) or Book Ends? Sell it for $50, everyone sold there is a chance a new person will be hooked into GW and wargaming. The company has become increasingly reclusive over recent years, I think it's a terrible shame they don't try and sell board games through toy stores and the like any more.

Pacific wrote:

-Loki- wrote:The thing that makes me sad about this is it might make them decide to scrap future non-core games.
.

That's my concern as well. Whatever people thought of Dreadfleet, it represented the only real effort for GW to do something different (and take a risk) for the first time in years. If it fails, then sadly it means we are even less likely to see them trying to do the same thing again (and who knows what the next project may have been).

I can't understand them destroying them though - why not give them in bulk to someone like Rise (a music/entertainment store here in the UK that gets stuff on discount) or Book Ends? Sell it for $50, everyone sold there is a chance a new person will be hooked into GW and wargaming. The company has become increasingly reclusive over recent years, I think it's a terrible shame they don't try and sell board games through toy stores and the like any more.

Read the responses in page 2 and 3 on brand images.

For GW to lower the prices is to concede they over estimate the product. And for a company that actively boast on their superiority this is a no no.

ArmorOfContempt wrote:and seriously, those who didn't get Dreadfleet are missing out. Dreadfleet, a few friends and some beers is a great way to spend an evening. It's a really, really fun game.

I believe you. It did look fun. The single, sole reason I didn't but it was it was just too damn expensive. $120 dollars!!

It has no expandability, no tie-ins to any other games. Therefore, by definition, it is a board game - yes? Like Monopoly ($17), or Risk ($25). OK, so the rules are a little more strategic, though, so let's say it's then competing with other niche board games, like Last Night on Earth ($30), or maybe the Dungeons & Dragons board games ($44), or space combat games (which really are naval combat anyway) like Battleship Galaxies ($50) - and the former 2 actually do expand into other games...but the problem is prices, plain and simple.

In my opinion, they cannot exceed $60 for a standalone board game of that type. The only way to do that successfully is by banking on a known good franchise (Space Hulk), which they did not. I'd have bought this game for $60, no hesitation.


So far as why destroy them, I leave you with this.

Risk and Monopoly are really fun and really cheap. If we want we can also paint them up!

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:GW are probably going to convince themselves that Dreadfleet failed... ...or because people don't want specialist games, or some other bulls--t meaning we won't see any more boxed games for a while.

Would be my fear as well, that the grey suits use this as the self fulfilling prophecy of specialist games not being popular and that they can use this costly venture to shut down any future efforts to produce new or stand alone games.

I'd personally love it if they rented out Epic, BFG, Seas of Blood and especially Blood Bowl to FFG. Let a company that they already enjoy a strong relationship with take those franchises and run with them.

Indeed, giving the games over to FFG would benefit everyone. That company knows how to make fun things. Shame that GW doesn't seem to see that.

Flachzange wrote:

Kroothawk wrote:Are you positive on them being destroyed? Sounds odd. Shipping them back to the UK warehouse sounds more realistic.

I got told that they are being destroyed. Furthermore, a dude at a store actually told me that every GW-employee has to have a Facebook account and that they had to promote Dreadfleet as being limited til the end of this month.

So the limited product was now EXTRA limited!

The same thing is being done to WDs as far as I know. Everything that doesnt sell within timeframe X will be recalled and destroyed. However, that doesnt seem to be true so far, our GW is filled with old copies...

That's pretty common with magazines. What else are you supposed to do with unsold magazines other than pulp them? When White Dwarf was a quality magazine you could buy back issues, but they were only limited in quantity. The same is often true of books, although discount stores often buy them up.