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d-usa wrote:What benefit does any ebook have over a physical book?

Benefits? Hmmm.... do I carry around a huge nerd-pile of codices on top of my 6th Edition rulebook or just carry around my iPad?

Breotan wrote:

d-usa wrote:What benefit does any ebook have over a physical book?

Benefits? Hmmm.... do I carry around a huge nerd-pile of codices on top of my 6th Edition rulebook or just carry around my iPad?

I think the bigger question would be why you'd carry around your entire codex collection in the first place to a game. Are you providing all the armies and reference material to a 4v4 game every single time you play? Or are you just being ridiculous to make a point that an ipad (which has many uses besides just for 40k rules) that you may carry with you regardless can do that duty also for some modest weight savings as well?

Breotan wrote:

d-usa wrote:What benefit does any ebook have over a physical book?

Benefits? Hmmm.... do I carry around a huge nerd-pile of codices on top of my 6th Edition rulebook or just carry around my iPad?

It was mostly a rhetorical question in reply to "what makes it better than a regular Codex".

I'd really like to see the main rulebook put up for sale. That'll cinch my tablet choice, assuming GW keeps it up. It'll probably be a while as they'd rather not canabalize their hardback sales.

warboss wrote:

Breotan wrote:

d-usa wrote:What benefit does any ebook have over a physical book?

Benefits? Hmmm.... do I carry around a huge nerd-pile of codices on top of my 6th Edition rulebook or just carry around my iPad?

I think the bigger question would be why you'd carry around your entire codex collection in the first place to a game. Are you providing all the armies and reference material to a 4v4 game every single time you play? Or are you just being ridiculous to make a point that an ipad (which has many uses besides just for 40k rules) that you may carry with you regardless can do that duty also for some modest weight savings as well?

I have many times appreciated the fact that i have a digital copy of every codex with me when I'm gaming. it's useful.

You know your a 40K addict when your willing to buy a $500 Ipad to view digital versions of codex that's available in print, and you most likely already own.

I have 2 thoughts on the matter

1.) Having Ipad only alienates at least half of the Tablet Market.

2.) It would have been cooler if they followed suit with the DVD market and have future book purchases include a code for the downloading of a digital copy.

adamsouza wrote:You know your a 40K addict when your willing to buy a $500 Ipad to view digital versions of codex that's available in print, and you most likely already own.

I have 2 thoughts on the matter

1.) Having Ipad only alienates at least half of the Tablet Market.

If by half you literally mean half including formats that can't support interactive or media rich ebooks and thus are largely pointless in this conversation. The iPad ebook format dwarfs the Android market. Android users are self important for their "alternative", but they're a bit of a minority in the high end.

And not to bang this gong to death but again, its not like GW made a file that can work on any platform and then just randomly chose Apple to deploy it on. The actual tools and protections provided by authoring in Apple's ibooks format almost certainly have a large role in GW choosing to go ahead and put out digital books. Again, I'm not a programmer, but from what I've heard, authoring rich interactive books like these are much, much easier to do in ibooks 2.0 than any other format, so again the fact that such a format exists with such protections against piracy and an easy to use secure store is likely responsible for GW to decide to actually go ahead with the project in the first place.

In other words, without the apple store, the ipad and the ibook 2.0 format, GW likely would have just continued on without putting out any digital products for who knows how much longer.

I don't know what's worse the GW Fainboi mentality or the Apple Fan Boi mentality.

Ibooks 2.0 Format isn't magic. It's a deliberate proprietary format to force you to use Apple Hardware.

Apple has been really succesful targeting the masses that don't know the difference between an Ipod and an MP3 player.

GW is practically the APPLE of the gaming world, so it makes sense they would form an unholy alliance.

Truthfully, answer the following question.

Most Warhammer 40K players own ?
A.) An Ipad
B.) A PC
C.) A Tablet manufactured by anyone other than Apple(that would handle PC format files)

If you answered A your delusional.

GW entered the digital arena catering to the minority that have money to burn on a brand name niche product.

adamsouza wrote:I don't know what's worse the GW Fainboi mentality or the Apple Fan Boi mentality.

Ibooks 2.0 Format isn't magic. It's a deliberate proprietary format to force you to use Apple Hardware.

Apple has been really succesful targeting the masses that don't know the difference between an Ipod and an MP3 player.

GW is practically the APPLE of the gaming world, so it makes sense they would form an unholy alliance.

Truthfully, answer the following question.

Most Warhammer 40K players own ?
A.) An Ipad
B.) A PC
C.) A Tablet manufactured by anyone other than Apple(that would handle PC format files)

If you answered A your delusional.

GW entered the digital arena catering to the minority to have money to burn on a brand name niche product.

Nope, no delusions here. The answer to your question is clearly 'B' and is obviously not the market that GW is interested in pursuing.

Now, GW likes to make money, so why would they go after a digital market that is clearly much smaller than the overall PC market even though they're cutting themselves off from a huge chunk of people by doing so?

Because the authoring of ibooks is easier, because the format is locked and proprietary and because I'm sure they feel that if they're going to go down this road they want to make a superior product to their print books, which this format on this platform lets them do that (or at least lets them believe they do that).

adamsouza wrote:I don't know what's worse the GW Fainboi mentality or the Apple Fan Boi mentality.

Ibooks 2.0 Format isn't magic. It's a deliberate proprietary format to force you to use Apple Hardware.

Apple has been really succesful targeting the masses that don't know the difference between an Ipod and an MP3 player.

GW is practically the APPLE of the gaming world, so it makes sense they would form an unholy alliance.

Truthfully, answer the following question.

Most Warhammer 40K players own ?
A.) An Ipad
B.) A PC
C.) A Tablet manufactured by anyone other than Apple(that would handle PC format files)

If you answered A your delusional.

GW entered the digital arena catering to the minority that have money to burn on a brand name niche product.

Let me post this one again.





There is no monetized ebook format for non mobile devices so the PC argument is entirely irrelevant. They're not going to give it to you for free, stop wanting it for free. Android users don't buy things. The market is a mess, it's heavily fragmented in OS (there are at least five major regional north american markets) and the device fragmentation features literally thousands of different devices with different hardware. No one goes android first, it's a loss leader. Android users don't buy things and the copy protection is almost nil.

Yackface, I agree with your assesment of the situation, and will let the subject rest, but I still stand by earlier thoughts on the subject.

My question is this: why digital comes at the same price to the client? (more expensive indeed, you need to buy it from GW, and GW dont offer any reatil discount)

It should be cheaper, due to value agregated, to physical form and the very production cost per unit sold...

As it is not, i will not bitch about it, i will not buy. I alredy feel very strange paying for what is an advertising book (they sell miniatures, everything else is just an excuse to sell miniatures). And if in some time it start to affect game play (like "digital owners have new units" or "digital owner can buy mini books with new units") i can just quit the game, like i have done with magic.

GW miniatures increase their value by 20% per year... It is like storing gold

adamsouza wrote: -SNIP-
GW entered the digital arena catering to the minority that have money to burn on a brand name niche product.

I would think that this answer your question right there. Money to burn = where GW wants to be.

If they were available for the kindle fire, I'd be interested. I understand why they started small, these codexes are probably rather expensive to develop with all the interactive features they have. And being instantly updated is probably a pain, too, but very cool.

But just remember, when the battery goes out on the iPod, are tou still left with a usable codex? No, probably not, unless you bought the actual book.

Where is everyone getting these ipads for 500 dollars?
Bestbuy - $399.99

Shoot, I just got one off of ebay for $250.

I think what most people are not getting (well, as few have indeed pointed this out) is that its not about "market share" or "who has money to burn" ...its about "what format can we publish to that wont end up on a torrent in 20 min later...".

Personally, while I think the current version is cool...it is not what I want or need...I would be happy with a basic book with the rules that I can easily look at. This format (the ibook) and presentation (you have to select a rule to see it) gives them an amazing amount of copy protection.

Note that I hate copy protection (have for years), but here it makes sense for them. Honestly, I would love to see a real digital dex (as opposed to these multimedia "showcases") but given the state of the net, would they make more off them?

I would love to see them take a chance, and hope that the number of people who would actually buy one (I would) that is reasonably priced would offset the actual lost sales...

But therein lies the issue...I would have to be a "reasonable price" ....which makes the scenario even less likely.

I have never owned an iPhone and dont intend to, i prefer Android....for phones.


Lets be honest, if you could go out and buy any tablet, most people would probably buy an iPad. I know i would.

unfortunately, buyign one purely so i can get these digi-dexes is not really justification enough for me....or the wife.

I don't know.

I'm actually interested in getting these now.

davethepak wrote:But therein lies the issue...I would have to be a "reasonable price" ....which makes the scenario even less likely.

Depends where you live. For Australians, the iBook codices are cheaper than the physical books. About 25% cheaper.

I'm impressed that they updated the Space Marine one for free. The old boys are starting to make me happy again (I like the new rules too.) If they release them for 2 or more of the armies I collect, I'll go out and get an ipad. I hate having to use a rulebook, a codex, AND a FAQ to see how the rules work. Checking 3 documents for one rules query is ridiculous.

Here's hoping they do the same for all the codices. And update them whenever something new is descovered (lets not forget that eventually the FAQs will be updated 5 times over).

Given that it can't be that easy to update these digital books in all the different languages they publish in, I wonder if the presence of the digital books will actually slow the release of new FAQ updates?

It seems like it would. Because before all they had to do was get all the FAQs translated (which alone seems like it would be a bit of a hassle) but now presumably they would need to do the same for all the different language versions of the digital books.

And moreso, the process of updating these ebooks seems to be rather counterintuitive...the fact that GW had to put up an add on their site to help announce that the book had been updated is a bad sign. It means there is no easy pipeline for ebook updates in the apple ibooks store like they have for app updates.

That means everytime GW would want to update their ebooks they would have to put out a new advertisement on their site announcing it...because otherwise those that already own it have literally no idea that an update has been released.


So I'm kind of thinking this SM update happened because of 6th edition, not because it represents a regular plan to update the book...obviously the next time a FAQ update is released for the SM codex we'll see what happens.

ShumaGorath wrote:

adamsouza wrote:I don't know what's worse the GW Fainboi mentality or the Apple Fan Boi mentality.

Ibooks 2.0 Format isn't magic. It's a deliberate proprietary format to force you to use Apple Hardware.

Apple has been really succesful targeting the masses that don't know the difference between an Ipod and an MP3 player.

GW is practically the APPLE of the gaming world, so it makes sense they would form an unholy alliance.

Truthfully, answer the following question.

Most Warhammer 40K players own ?
A.) An Ipad
B.) A PC
C.) A Tablet manufactured by anyone other than Apple(that would handle PC format files)

If you answered A your delusional.

GW entered the digital arena catering to the minority that have money to burn on a brand name niche product.

Let me post this one again.





There is no monetized ebook format for non mobile devices so the PC argument is entirely irrelevant. They're not going to give it to you for free, stop wanting it for free. Android users don't buy things. The market is a mess, it's heavily fragmented in OS (there are at least five major regional north american markets) and the device fragmentation features literally thousands of different devices with different hardware. No one goes android first, it's a loss leader. Android users don't buy things and the copy protection is almost nil.

Although Apple currently leads the Tablet market, laptops and cellphones are far more prevalent.

The fact that some people are willing to buy ipads for the purpose of reading codicies shows why miniature wargames cost so much. Gamers are nuts.

-Loki- wrote:

davethepak wrote:But therein lies the issue...I would have to be a "reasonable price" ....which makes the scenario even less likely.

Depends where you live. For Australians, the iBook codices are cheaper than the physical books. About 25% cheaper.

Probably because they haven't realised yet. Best to keep quiet

Fosner1703 wrote:Where is everyone getting these ipads for 500 dollars?
Bestbuy - $399.99

Shoot, I just got one off of ebay for $250.

That's perfectly functional, but it's an older model with no cell data hardware, thus the reason it's cheaper.

Not that that is bad, just that a big use-case for tablets is 'email and web surfing while traveling' which works better with cell data service.

Balance wrote:

Fosner1703 wrote:Where is everyone getting these ipads for 500 dollars?
Bestbuy - $399.99

Shoot, I just got one off of ebay for $250.

That's perfectly functional, but it's an older model with no cell data hardware, thus the reason it's cheaper.

Not that that is bad, just that a big use-case for tablets is 'email and web surfing while traveling' which works better with cell data service.

FWIW, I don't have 3G on mine and I like it plenty. I've yet to travel very far at all without finding free wifi. The mall, the grocery store, airports, trains, hotels, fast food places... The only place it doesn't work is in the car, which doesn't bother me much.

Ours is without 3G. We use it at home (wifi), in hotels (wifi), anyplace where I would use my laptop (work, coffee shop, book store - all wifi). And if we do need to use it while we are anywhere without wifi then we can use our phone as a hot-spot.

Wi-Fi is so prevalent now that it is easy to get away with wifi only iPads.

And that is a much cheaper option as not only is the actual iPad cheaper, but you don't hav he monthly contract as well. We use ours 99% of the time at home so paying extra for 3G would've been a waste.

Written on my iPad.

Although Apple currently leads the Tablet market, laptops and cellphones are far more prevalent.

The fact that some people are willing to buy ipads for the purpose of reading codicies shows why miniature wargames cost so much. Gamers are nuts.

There is no monetized ebook format on PCs. Why do people keep thinking that the prevalence of PCs matters? GW would make no money and its products would be pirated heavily if it started releasing high quality PDFs of it's print books.

adamsouza wrote:You know your a 40K addict when your willing to buy a $500 Ipad to view digital versions of codex that's available in print, and you most likely already own.

Um, about that, I already own an iPad and plan to put my physical copies on eBay as I replace them.