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GW, the Nintendo of Wargames.

"Ey guys here you have, a nice box with a giant amout of terrain at a good discount."
"Oh, great, thanks GW!"
"We have made 500 units for all of the world."
"W-what?!"
"Let the hunger games begin!"

 jabbakahut wrote:
I was hoping 8th would be a death knell for them.

Is my sarcasm detector broken, or what?

Wow:

beast_gts wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I find it slightly bonkers that in the modern day UK, a factory can genuinely run out of power.

I know it's entirely possible (trunks and lekky and cables and that), it's just not something one hears of very often

It might not be a case of running out of power, but getting it to the part of the factory that needs it. Working in IT I've lost count of the number of times something new has been plugged in and it's blown everything else out.

(But re-reading the article it does seem they're using more power than they should or the local grid can cope with).

Umm I'm fairly local.

The area has a new tram line installed in past few years across whole city. The business around have grown and consume more power. The local power station I belive is only active for peak demand not 24/7 power supply.

All in all. The areas power demand will be alot higher than before. It's infrastructure is has limits and a max level of power they can deliver to games workshop and others.

The substation is meant to be getting upgraded but it takes time to install a new transformer etc. It's not a one week upgrade.
(according to one explanation)

It's almost like they're doing it right. Like communicating with the fans, giving them what they want, and meanwhile also giving them things they don't seem to want but buy anyway (more space marines for example) seems to be working.

 dan2026 wrote:
This might explain what happened to the Myetic Blight Crawler.

If you mean the Myphitic Blight Hauler, I think you're probably right. GW needs to get their production problems sorted out before they can release more new models. And they're going to be in a bit of a pickle with Christmas coming up if they can't get their factory working right again...

These names! Ffs.

I hope they can fix this soon.

I'd hate tor them to become the Icarus of companies who fell because they flew too high.

Though I guess drowning in profits isn't the worst way to go.

Baron Klatz wrote:
I hope they can fix this soon.

I'd hate tor them to become the Icarus of companies who fell because they flew too high.

Though I guess drowning in profits isn't the worst way to go.

Being a GW hobbyist is a game of patience. Waiting for your chosen army to get a codex, waiting for a model to get updated, and then having the patience to build, prime, paint, and then have the patience to play a 2-4 hour game.

We can wait for GW to play the catch-up game with demand. If the demand is high enough, they'll start installing more machines to make more molds to deal with their growing fanbase.

GW stuff is going out of stock? You know what means, +5$ increase on all products over the next year

 takonite wrote:
GW stuff is going out of stock? You know what means, +5$ increase on all products over the next year

I am certain they don't want to do anything to stifle demand. You saw all the games companies go out of business this year, right? Another couple years like this and they will control the market.

GW stock is still pretty cheap compared to earnings. I am sure they can raise money somehow without hitting the players too hard.

SeanDrake wrote:
Last rumor I heard was less that power was an issue, more that they have for the 1st time since lotor used more capacity for stuff outside the 2 big ranges.(Well the big range and AoS anyway)
Again also from what I heard the "other machines" thing was a deflection to the investors to stop them asking "why" there is an issue.
GW have only 1 remotely modern hips machine which is in itself light years behind the newest tech as used in China to make KD, Malifaux etc. It's a testament to there engineers that they get the results they get.

<citation needed>

I can tell you, Anecdotally, how this is affecting people in our circle
1: A guy cant seem to get a hold of models for his DE becausr they dont exist.
2: One dude who hates recasting has considered buying some just so he can get the models he wants(Eg Basilisks
3: My store not getting in product, and therefore not selling as fast.

Chikout wrote:
http://www.tga.community/forums/topic/217-the-rumour-thread/?do=findComment&comment=141091
This was originally shared over on tga but I thought it was interesting enough to post here too.
Essential GW is experiencing very high demand for its products since 8th edition launched.
They have some problems with ramping up demand the way they want and so many of the larger kits which take longer to manufacture will be unavailable until next year.

yea on there website some much stuff from all armies are out of stockjavascript:emoticon('');

drbored wrote:

Baron Klatz wrote:
I hope they can fix this soon.

I'd hate tor them to become the Icarus of companies who fell because they flew too high.

Though I guess drowning in profits isn't the worst way to go.

Being a GW hobbyist is a game of patience. Waiting for your chosen army to get a codex, waiting for a model to get updated, and then having the patience to build, prime, paint, and then have the patience to play a 2-4 hour game.

We can wait for GW to play the catch-up game with demand. If the demand is high enough, they'll start installing more machines to make more molds to deal with their growing fanbase.

Patience is nice and all, but when its about shopping season, you need product. They may have huge profits, but if they cant fix it by early DEC, they will be missing out on a very large amount of money.

no news

is

good news

 techsoldaten wrote:

 takonite wrote:
GW stuff is going out of stock? You know what means, +5$ increase on all products over the next year

I am certain they don't want to do anything to stifle demand. You saw all the games companies go out of business this year, right? Another couple years like this and they will control the market.

GW stock is still pretty cheap compared to earnings. I am sure they can raise money somehow without hitting the players too hard.

I am sure of the opposite. Demand is high production is low price increases. This is the kind of thing GW strives at doing creating reasons to increase prices *cough* fine crap *cough*

Imateria wrote:Not exactly a surprise, it was mentioned at the general meeting last month that they'd basically maxed out their current production capacity and had plans to expand it. Until it expands this will continue as they physically can't make more.

I’m honestly not surprised. From what I heard they had changed their production management to “just in time” when they added the new machines to accommodate the future needs of Specialist Games and canabalized warehousing space to do so. The goal is keep less on hand and run many more small production runs, but the constant list of unavailable kits shows they were always playing catch-up and never being anticipatory. Then in the first quarter of this year fully 1/3 of their products prematurely sold out; this isn’t good because GW has said in the past the profitability of a kit is almost entirely determined by that first 3 months worth of sales; a lapse of availability means lost revenue and diminished profits. When people wanted more Shadow War: Armageddon starter sets, GW didn’t say they wouldn’t make more but that they “couldn’t”. All this is indicative of a production line that is stressed to capacity. 8th edition and it’s overwhelming success has in a sense broken them and this was inevitable. My guess is they thought demand would stay relatively or eventually die down but it’s been a surge of demand.

Coming from a manufacturing background, if I were GW I would be looking for someone to contact some of the production out to until an expanded line is available. What happens too often is the capacity expansion is done too slowly out of caution and in the intervening time you shed customers that are too frustrated with a lack of available product, and so the risk of over expansion gets higher the longer it takes. I think that frustration has begun setting in. I see in different groups more and more open conversations about people considering making “chinacast” purchases due to a lack of a kit’s availability.

I don't get the impression the market is suffering from GW's current capacity. While the website is out a lot of items, I haven't seen the overall market - e-bay, FLGS stock, etc. reach a point where lack of product is noticable (Granted, I haven't been keeping my eyes on this too sharply, but other than this thread, I haven't seen anyone crying about not being able to find something "anywhere" on the order of the issues during the Tau & Eldar releases a few years back).

With many things GW, it's difficult to ascertain whether the stock levels currently on the website is due to packaging switchover, bleed-down on old models that will soon be phased out or flat stock shortages. I very much doubt the latter, and am more inclined to believe they're involved in a mass 8E repackaging for the holiday rush - and that we'll be seeing AOS-level discontinuation of finecast/metal models after January.

I don't believe the info in the op is from GW, seriously which company offers internals like these to a shop/customer? If there isn't an official statement or a newspaper article I will not buy it. They have had problems with their inventory for years, only producing small numbers of product to save space in their warehouses, and now they are back to good sales numbers they can't keep up with demand. This started with the shampoo business manager who ran the company together with Tom Kirby ca. 2009. Their production numbers have been too 'conservative' for years, people forgot new Tau models being unvailable after a few days, how they ran out of Blood Bowl starter sets, etc.? 40k 8th edition was very succesfull and players started new armies from all factions at a time, then GW ran out of kits within a few months.

But I don't believe Nottingham's energy production could not keep up with demand of such a small factory, this sounds like a joke. Anyway the source is not reliable enough imho.

There was a profit warning recently, so let's see if GW will offer more information later on. As a public company sharing this with a shop but not your shareholders is not unproblematic.

It is something to bare in mind.

So far, the rumour is (to the best of my knowledge) unsubstantiated.

Yeah, since when do we believe random Korean gaming store facebook pages?

Also, the Vane Blade/Storm Wave? What kit is that? The Baneblade? It says it uses slide moulding, since when does GW use slide moulding, especially on such an old kit?

If GW is using slide moulding that'd be bigger news to me than any supply shortages

GW have been running low stock for a while, I had just assumed they were trying to cut overheads. Maybe they are running short on manufacturing capability though.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Yeah, since when do we believe random Korean gaming store facebook pages?

Also, the Vane Blade/Storm Wave? What kit is that? The Baneblade? It says it uses slide moulding, since when does GW use slide moulding, especially on such an old kit?

If GW is using slide moulding that'd be bigger news to me than any supply shortages

GW have been running low stock for a while, I had just assumed they were trying to cut overheads. Maybe they are running short on manufacturing capability though.

No actually they do use slide molding on the baneblade kits. They had a whole article how it was the greatest thing since sliced bread and how they invented it....years after companies like Bandai, Dragon, etc had been using them....

They use it on very few kits as It's a pita to use/clean/maintain. I am suprised they don't use it on more kits...but then again this is the company who thought they could spin cast resin with old metal molds cut with way more channels. Shrugs.

Yeah I've not bought any GW kit that has used slide moulding, they mustn't use it very often.

Googling around and looking at the Baneblade sprues, it seems they just used it to make predrilled barrels and you can see on the sprues where the sliding sections of the mould went. It looks more primitive than the slide moulding I've seen on other kits (like when aircraft kit manufacturers use it to make a 1 piece cowling or some such).

I wonder if it was just them integrating a manual slide moulding system in to an existing design rather than automated slide moulding.