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 insaniak wrote:
They didn't 'lose' the licence. They chose not to renew it, and FFG subsequently picked it up.

Star Wars Miniatures was anything but a flop. At it's height, it was supposedly outselling D&D. But like any collectible game, maintaining interest is key to keeping it going... and the change to 40-figure sets killed that, since it made it too easy to pick up a whole set in one hit. That combined with WotC's continuing trend of fleshing sets out with characters nobody cared about, or new versions of previous set models while there were still 'key' characters that people were clamouring for saw people start to drift away, and when sales started to drop WotC decided to refocus on their 'core' of MtG and D&D.

Sounds like WotC got out when the getting was good. It's not what gamers like to hear when they get into a game, but cmg games have a pretty limited half-life. There's only so much you can do within the confines of a CMG -especially a licensed property- before it get's stale, runs out of material, or just doesn't keep up the massive sales necessary to stay on store shelves. Heroclix is an exeption of course, but are their any others that have survived?

I'm sure WotC didnt consider SW a failure. Simply a game they made, made a profit on and then put to bed.

I actually really like dead games, because then the the game becomes "mine" in a way that can never happen when their is an "official" version out there.

After it dies, I can do whatever I want with it!

Edit: Wasn't there an undead wild west one, like Railroad Wars but it had a different name?

 Easy E wrote:
Edit: Wasn't there an undead wild west one, like Railroad Wars but it had a different name?

Deadlands?

 Easy E wrote:
I actually really like dead games, because then the the game becomes "mine" in a way that can never happen when their is an "official" version out there.

After it dies, I can do whatever I want with it!

Edit: Wasn't there an undead wild west one, like Railroad Wars but it had a different name?

Yes, that is a definite point in favour of "dead" systems. No more buying new edition rules and army lists.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
People have never been hesitant about trying non GW games. And GW has never had a monopoly , virtual or otherwise.

My anecdote doesn't agree with yours unfortunately. Back when I spent a lot of time in game stores, I noted that many people played 40k as 'their game' and would try other games (even WHFB or Specialist Games such as Blood Bowl or Necromunda) but were very hesitant to move beyond a demo game to actually buy in because 'not enough people play it'... Which was a vicious cycle. Things seem better today from what I see: a lot more people have branched out to other games, but there's still 'network effect' making ti hard for a new game to get traction.


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 Grimtuff wrote:
Problem with Ex Illis is it was ahead of its time. in about 5-10 years time the rest of the industry will have caught up (we could have said the same about companies being 100% online and releasing entire rulebooks and expansions on pdfs 10 years ago) the whole computer program thing was too "out there".

The turn-off to me was that the review I heard of it (D6 Generation, maybe?) made it sound like the minis were very much secondary. The actual game was described as effectively computer-moderated and used 'regions' for movement (Think the areas on a Risk board or similar) instead of inches, which I don't think had a great feel for a individual-soldier-level wargame to many.