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On the topic of some items being sold out and others being offered on discount, the over and under ordering was actually mentioned on the last financial news release where they admitted they got some of the predicted numbers wrong - so may be just that.

As for the death of Alan Bligh, it wasn't just 'one guy died'. From what I have read he was the creative heart and soul of the project and those people, whatever the creative industry, are very hard to replace. You have to think of the knock-on psychological effect on the people with him too. I've been in the position of having a close work colleague suddenly pass away, and you can't understate what an impact that can have on a tight-knit team. It can take time to get over, someone pick up the reigns etc.

And in more general terms, I think the game being front and centre on GWs homepage tells us everything we need to know about their hopes and prospects for the system. The fact that the game subsisted with the miniatures just on the FW page, those eye-watering prices, shows to me that it has got legs. That it is now much more accessible, much cheaper, has such cross-over appeal makes me think it is going to succeed.

leopard wrote:
definite +1 for dedicated assault bodies, ideally with the same torso width so all arms become interchangeable

I'd agree totally.
However, if/when they release them, I'll be worried they'll all be leaping forwards on 1 foot or stood on tactical rocks/pipes/rubble.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

leopard wrote:
definite +1 for dedicated assault bodies, ideally with the same torso width so all arms become interchangeable

I'd agree totally.
However, if/when they release them, I'll be worried they'll all be leaping forwards on 1 foot or stood on tactical rocks/pipes/rubble.

would be happy with running poses but I suspect you may have a point, or if they come with jump packs you will get a silly fragile clear plastic peg for them

Aecus Decimus wrote:

leopard wrote:
they may also have not had anyone they could shift into that role who had the required skills but also passion for the project, could explain why it took a while to come back around

Who cares about passion? If your product is making you $millions/year you tell someone "you're managing this now and if you don't get a 20% increase in revenue every year you're fired". The only reason passion is relevant is if it's a low-profit vanity project with no real business importance and you aren't willing to invest real resources in it.

You realize passion is #1 requirement?-) They have openly said they don't hire for talent but passion.

Also GW doesn't keep games just because they are profitable. Game can exceed 450% over their own expectation and still be killed off. And nobody greenlights project that outsels producers own expectation by that much and still doesn't make profit...

tneva82 wrote:
You realize passion is #1 requirement?-) They have openly said they don't hire for talent but passion.

And they are routinely mocked for saying something that profoundly stupid. But I suspect the reality is "we hire for passion" is a nice marketing buzzword that only applies at the minimum wage retail level, where it translates to "we prefer to cut costs by hiring fanboys who will take less money for the privilege of being associated with our company instead of having to attract normal people with competitive wages". If GW is hiring financial analysts and production engineers and such it's a safe bet they're hiring people with the required skills to do the job.

Also GW doesn't keep games just because they are profitable. Game can exceed 450% over their own expectation and still be killed off. And nobody greenlights project that outsels producers own expectation by that much and still doesn't make profit...

I'm not sure what you're saying here? Opportunity cost is a thing, yes, and a product that is making a small profit may still be cut because its resources could be used on something that will make a larger profit. But I'm not sure why this is relevant here? 30k 2.0 hasn't been around long enough for GW to make a keep/kill decision on it, they're still in the phase where they might as well release the kits they've paid to put into production and see if they have a viable product line. Even if sales were below expectations we wouldn't see it killed off yet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pacific wrote:
As for the death of Alan Bligh, it wasn't just 'one guy died'. From what I have read he was the creative heart and soul of the project and those people, whatever the creative industry, are very hard to replace. You have to think of the knock-on psychological effect on the people with him too. I've been in the position of having a close work colleague suddenly pass away, and you can't understate what an impact that can have on a tight-knit team. It can take time to get over, someone pick up the reigns etc.

Those excuses only matter for a product that isn't making much money. If you have a product making $millions/year you don't have the luxury of complaining that you aren't in the right mood to work on it. Your manager appoints a replacement and like it or not you're in charge of the product and you're expected to get 20% more revenue and profit each year or lose your job. GW is a for-profit company making very large amounts of money, not a garage hobby project by people who just think their toys are cool. The only way they're going to let a product line sit idle is if the lost revenue from that idle period is so small that nobody really cares about it and it's not worth bumping someone off a more profitable team to get things moving again.

And in more general terms, I think the game being front and centre on GWs homepage tells us everything we need to know about their hopes and prospects for the system. The fact that the game subsisted with the miniatures just on the FW page, those eye-watering prices, shows to me that it has got legs. That it is now much more accessible, much cheaper, has such cross-over appeal makes me think it is going to succeed.

Hopes, maybe. Whether those hopes translate into actual sales remains to be seen.

It's amazing how ignorant you are on the topic of Bligh despite people telling you exactly what happened.

 Gert wrote:
It's amazing how ignorant you are on the topic of Bligh despite people telling you exactly what happened.

People have said what they think happened but that doesn't make their conclusions about the events correct. Profitable companies don't let their employees sit around being sad instead of working, if GW allowed the FW staff to sit idle because they were so upset about him dying that they just couldn't go on it was only because 30k was such a low-profit side project that nobody in GW management cared enough to get it moving again. You don't get to be the dominant market leader with a value of hundreds of millions of dollars by feeling sentimental about how cool someone's hobby project was at the expense of increasing shareholder value.

Bloody hell.

Tell me you don’t understand effective sales strategy without tell me you don’t understand effective sales strategy.

GW’s staff have always been hired for their passion about the hobby. Indeed in the modern day, I think we just have to accept the sculptors they have are sculptors precisely because of the hobby.

As a former Till Monkey? I was knowledgable about the games. I knew how to teach people, and how to actively sell. And as such, I was Good At My Job. Much like Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, you sell the sizzle - not the Sosig.

That includes helping the Clueless. For instance, Granny and Grandad come in. They say grandson likes the Blue Robots. Whilst you can never be completely sure? They most likely meant Space Marines. Sell them something, and confirm provided it’s sealed and grandson has the receipt, swapsies are not a problem. If they say Orks? Well. Is that Orks, Orcs or Orcs? See above. Sell according to their best description - swap if necessary.

And invite people back. Make them feel welcome. Sell the community, and the products sell themselves.

Same with the Design Team. Each and everyone is active within the hobby. Not necessarily gaming, but there’s more to it than just rolling the dice, isn’t there?

AD has a curious axe to grind here.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
stuff

What does any of that have to do with this topic? GW's financial analysts and upper managers are not working in the retail stores and helping customers. Whether or not you were good at minimum wage retail doesn't change the fact that there's an immense difference between hiring for passion in a job where you can teach any idiot off the street how to run the cash register and hiring for passion in a job where specific technical skills are mandatory for success. GW is not handing over control of hundreds of millions of pounds of revenue to someone with weak skills but lots of passion for space marines.

Unless you think the GW lawyers that ruthlessly send C&D letters to anyone who threatens their market share are passionate fans of the hobby and dedicated to killing third-party conversion parts because they love space marines?

Yeah, that's not what people have said at all. The project continued but losing the lead dev who nobody could match in terms of passion or knowledge was a serious blow. Nobody is claiming the team sat around doing nothing.

 Gert wrote:
Yeah, that's not what people have said at all. The project continued but losing the lead dev who nobody could match in terms of passion or knowledge was a serious blow. Nobody is claiming the team sat around doing nothing.

They pretty much did. Look at the pace of releases, models were slow and new rulebooks stopped with no ETA on when they might ever resume. People were seriously wondering if 30k would continue at all, or if it would be an abandoned game like the 40k FW books became. That kind of thing doesn't happen with a highly profitable product line. Passion and knowledge are irrelevant, someone gets told "this is your project now and we expect X/Y/Z metrics to be met" and if the new stuff doesn't match the original author's vision of how things were meant to happen then too bad, he's gone and all that matters is that you contribute to shareholder value. Loss of knowledge only matters if the money involved is small enough that sitting around saying "we don't know what he intended to do here" has a minimal effect on the quarterly financial report.

If we want to go a different route and use actual fact-ish things instead of acerbic commentary and tortured arguments to justify foregone conclusions, we could look at Amazon.com sales numbers.

Now, obviously that will only give a rough estimate, because the knowledgeable or expert Warhammer connaisseur usually does not buy at RRSP when most games are readily available with large discounts from specialized outlets, but Amazon numbers should still be comparable within Amazon itself. That being said, without further ado, the Ranks of several GW games on Amazon.com. Lower numbers are better:

Age of Darkness Box: 45.109 in Toys&Games, 1527 in Boardgames
WarCry Heart of Ghur: 79.308 in Toys&Games, 2666 in Boardgames
Killteam Into the Dark: 13.207 in Toys&Games, 512 in Boardgames
WH40k Command Edition Starter Box: 57.276 in Toys&Games, 1932 in Boardgames
WH40k Core Book: 12.324 in Toys&Games, 486 in Boardgames
WH40k Votann Army Set: 35.683 in Toys&Games, 1245 in Boardgames

So by that numbers, the AoD box seems to keep up sales well enough, and about where you would expect: less than brand-new boxes for sidegames, less than core content for 40k, but more than older boxes of sidegames and about the same as current-ish 40k army boxes of a comparable price point that are not Space Marines.

rough guess shortly after he died someone senior faced a choice of what to do, someone presumably wondered if they could add some plastics and go a bit more mainstream as a teaser to see if more investment was worthwhile.

suspect the artists and others who made the 1st edition books what they were were kept busy with the rest of the GW line, and the guys running the actual casting were busy so I doubt anyone was standing around - maybe putting a few proposals together some of which will have gotten nowhere.

you do need passion, even at a higher level, otherwise what you get is for example the stuff hollywood is putting out now, zero creativity and low risk

I mean that would be like GW focussing entirely on just releasing more marines and

hang on..

then throw in the world going nuts for a few years etc, coupled with GW being a bit "special" in so many ways about how they have been run over the years and frankly just about anything is possible

truth is we don't know and likely won't for years other than what a few who worked there and saw part of what happened saying what they think of it and gradually framing it all.

what we have is here and now though.

AoD is likely selling well, because the state of the game is that you want more than 40 marines, and likely more than 10 terminators, a second dreadnought doesn't hurt and the Spartan is a nice model - i.e. how many have bought more than one box?

in a way the lack of alternatives pushes AoD sales to get the basic models at a fair old discount over individual boxes. as the range grows I'd expect it to diversify a bit

but then even if it does very well, its GW, they would drop it overnight for something they thought would do better

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Spoiler:

 Gert wrote:
Yeah, that's not what people have said at all. The project continued but losing the lead dev who nobody could match in terms of passion or knowledge was a serious blow. Nobody is claiming the team sat around doing nothing.

They pretty much did. Look at the pace of releases, models were slow and new rulebooks stopped with no ETA on when they might ever resume. People were seriously wondering if 30k would continue at all, or if it would be an abandoned game like the 40k FW books became. That kind of thing doesn't happen with a highly profitable product line. Passion and knowledge are irrelevant, someone gets told "this is your project now and we expect X/Y/Z metrics to be met" and if the new stuff doesn't match the original author's vision of how things were meant to happen then too bad, he's gone and all that matters is that you contribute to shareholder value. Loss of knowledge only matters if the money involved is small enough that sitting around saying "we don't know what he intended to do here" has a minimal effect on the quarterly financial report.

Or they were put full force on the design phase of the now being produced stuff??? Maybe before Alan passed, they were doing the preliminary groundwork for 30k becoming a mainline game? So then there was a period of normal preproduction uncertainty while they reorganized FW?

Makes a helluva lot more sense than them standing around with their thumbs up their asses...

Not every company or organisation operates with that short-sighted ruthlessness either.

GW is quite notable in its long-term planning and investment. It also requires creative talent for its product quality. Choosing to be compassionate to a team of experienced creatives that know your product well rather than burning them out or replacing them with someone focused on immediate profits avoids a short-termist solution that quite possibly damages the company in the long run.

Tsagualsa wrote:
So by that numbers, the AoD box seems to keep up sales well enough, and about where you would expect: less than brand-new boxes for sidegames, less than core content for 40k, but more than older boxes of sidegames and about the same as current-ish 40k army boxes of a comparable price point that are not Space Marines.

Thank you for putting this into context. Let's remember that the original point I had been making that spawned this thread was in response to a claim that the 30k tanks could have more sprues per dollar than the Dorn because the Proteus would be expected to sell an order of magnitude more copies and spread out its mold costs over a lot more sales. This is clearly not true, as even the charitable interpretation puts 30k on par with a non-marine army in 40k.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haighus wrote:
Not every company or organisation operates with that short-sighted ruthlessness either.

Tell that to all the people who have received C&D letters and abusive lawsuits from GW.

Wait…

GW is protect their IP, therefore Heresy am fail get bin?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Wait…

GW is protect their IP, therefore Heresy am fail get bin?

It's almost like there's a section of quoted text above the comment that explains what it is a response to.

Aecus Decimus wrote:


Thank you for putting this into context. Let's remember that the original point I had been making that spawned this thread was in response to a claim that the 30k tanks could have more sprues per dollar than the Dorn because the Proteus would be expected to sell an order of magnitude more copies and spread out its mold costs over a lot more sales. This is clearly not true, as even the charitable interpretation puts 30k on par with a non-marine army in 40k.

Gotta give you credit for spinning it to win it, Bob. Not sure how a "charitable" comparison between a 2000 point 30k box set released a quarter before a ~500 point 40k box set allows you to say anything really about a 30k tank usable by almost every faction in the game compared to a 40k tank used by one faction in the game. It seemed like you got scared off from the 30k threads given that basically every point you made was obviously false and very easily rebutted, but here you are again, so kudos to you and your persistence.

leopard wrote:
definite +1 for dedicated assault bodies, ideally with the same torso width so all arms become interchangeable

Sounds like a winning recipe. Assault marines, Despoilers, Destroyers etc from the same sprue(s).

No idea. My FLGS has 4 HH players and can round up 24 40k players for an RTT.

So, there are obviously 6x as many 40k players as HH players.

I’m rather enjoying the kit formats.

Having lots of weapon options in kits is Pleasing Unto Nuggan. Having some of those sprues available as separate purchases is also Pleasing Unto Nuggan.

I can only hope that when we get the Sicaran turreted variants (Venator seemingly on the way, as it’s disappeared from FW) they get the same treat as the Leviathan. Packaged variants, but also the turret sprues sold separately. That would be Most Pleasing Unto Nuggan.

 xttz wrote:


A couple of simple factors may well be causing a slowdown in buying; a delay on chapter specific shoulder pads and assault marines would slow some people from starting work on specific legions. Those players also wouldn't be picking up too many heavy weapon sprues too. Plus the sheer volume of plastic in the starter box (which of course can all be used by one person), may discourage additional purchases due to the imposing mountain of grey plastic.

This is me. I had a whole Iron Warriors army planned out. Bought the box on release day, built the whole army box and painted up a couple squads. I made a couple lists and went on FW website to buy domitar, a couple legion dreads, some specific weapons that I wanted...except everything was sold out. I signed up for email alerts for several things and when they finally came 8 months later I had moved on to other projects. My 30k army sits at the bottom of my Battlefoam bag, has never been used, and may never be expanded beyond the starter box now.