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The idea of a model "making back its production costs" is a very narrow and incorrect way of looking at the situation. Whether or not a particular model earns a profit is irrelevant, what matters is if GW as a whole makes a profit. To analyze the success of a product line you have to look at the product line as a single unit and ignore its various components. For example, it's ok if a space marine HQ kit makes less profit (or even loses money!) if that HQ is a necessary component in the space marine army and helps to drive sales of the product line as a whole. It's why you can't take things to an extreme and discontinue everything but the single kit that has the highest profits, nobody is going to play a game of 40k where the only model is the space marine tactical squad box. You have to maintain a certain level of diversity in the 40k product line to keep the game interesting and appealing, even if it means investing in specific kits that are individually less profitable.


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Also, in analyzing per-unit profit vs. sales volume don't forget that GW is not a normal business. They aren't just selling a product in a one-time transaction like many businesses, they're selling a social hobby that depends on having a certain critical mass of market share to maintain its existence. A box of space marines has essentially zero value if you don't have anyone to play 40k with. This means that doubling their per-unit profit at the cost of halving their market share would be suicide, it would likely start a death spiral where finding people to play 40k with gets harder, so people stop buying, making it even harder for the remaining customers to find players and keep buying, and so on until GW dies.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Er, ok?

Not sure anyone was arguing that wasn't the case.

Uh, what? Look at the top of the page, for posts arguing that the prices have to be high because each model has to make back the cost of its individual molds. And on the previous page you can see JohnHwangDD defending setting prices as high as the market will bear, with reduced sales volume as an acceptable tradeoff.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Yes, every model should absolutely be priced in order to give it the best chance of recovering it's capital investments, otherwise you'll inevitably end up making a loss overall.

Again, this is not necessarily true. Consider something like the old push-fit 5-man squads GW used to (still does?) do as newbie starter kits, or the stripped-down version of 40k they were trying to get into mainstream retail stores. You don't care if something like that recovers its capital investments directly because you're using it as a loss leader to get customers to buy your other products. The total value added by making the loss leader is positive, so you do it.

It's also pretty unlikely for GW given the length of time much of their product remains on sale, a kit would have to be spectacularly unpopular to not ultimately break even.

This is true. GW is pretty much guaranteed to break even eventually on any product they sell, simply because the molds last so long. But this is just another reason that the idea of a kit "making back its mold costs" as a factor in pricing is not relevant, so I'm not really sure where you're disagreeing with me.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Yes, unpopular based on actual sales. Yes, GW can sell things to both of the Sisters players still out there, but nobody else is buying them.

Don't mistake irrational fan support for actual sales potential.

And don't mistake lack of sales of an all-metal army with nonexistent rules support for lack of sales potential. SoB aren't going to sell well right now no matter how many people would love to buy an army because metal sucks to work with (cleanup is hell, assembly is difficult and requires tons of pinning, converting the monopose models requires hacking them apart and sculpting it back together, even getting them to stay painted is a pain) and once you've invested the ridiculous amount of time and effort to build your all-metal army you're stuck with ancient rules and constantly questioning if your army is going to continue to be legal. Of course not many people are going to buy into an army in that state. If you replace SoB with C:SM you'd see space marine sales crash as all but the most hardcore space marine fans stop buying.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Dude, the End Times models absolutely were "boutique" centerpieces, and sold as such.

By what standards? I don't remember them being any different from the rest of GW's product lines. Sure, some of them are big, but so are Baneblades. They were more detailed, but that was less of a change in business concept and more of the inevitable result of improvements in sculpting technology compared to the 20+ year old sculpts that were still around in WHFB. They were still mass-produced plastic model kits for your standard tabletop army, and nothing special from the point of view of the miniatures hobby as a whole.

And back in the day, GW definitely pushed volume as a strategy, for which sales and such were a part of their push. It baffles me that you don't understand that, or are willfully denying it.

Back in the 80s is so far back in the day, in such a different world, that any strategy used back then has nothing to do with modern GW and its business choices.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Really? I've got something like 200 metal Imperial Guard, and another 300 metal Eldar. 100 is nothing.

You are clearly the exception to the rule. For most people metal models are a huge negative and dealing with 100+ of them is a strong reason to avoid an army even if they otherwise like it. Add on the lack of rules support and it should be obvious why even players who would be interested in a plastic SoB army stay far away from the current version.

Also, Sisters are basically mono-pose minis with backpacks. Easy-peasy to assemble, and Dakka's Gallery shows that cleanup is entirely optional.

IOW, "SoB are easy if you just accept having mold lines everywhere on your very expensive army". Do you honestly think this is a compelling defense?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Can't say I've had too much trouble cleaning up mould lines on metals. I'm no great painter, my gallery is evidence that I favour speed over quality (well, on anything that isn't destined for my display cabinet) but I still clean off mould lines, fill gaps, etc and I never noticed a massive overhead on metals vs plastics in that regard.

Honestly, I can't see how you could say this unless you really don't spend much time on either. Even a well-cast metal miniature is going to have at least as much material to remove on mold lines, except it's metal instead of plastic/resin so you have to file it off and very carefully avoid damaging the rest of the model instead of quickly scraping it off with a knife blade. And god help you if you get a metal miniature with mold slip, which requires a lot of repair work and rarely (never?) happens on plastic kits. IMO metal is almost as bad as finecast in how much of a pain it is to deal with, and I won't touch either.

Also if you're the sort of person who cares that much about how your models look I don't see how metal is a huge difference in how you handle them. If you care about how they look you aren't throwing them loosely in to a box regardless of what they're made from.

Even if you're careful with metal models you still get a lot more edge chipping. Just touching the model can rub off paint from the edges, and then there's stray dice, bumping a model accidentally, etc. And if you do remove paint it leaves a bright silver spot that is impossible to miss, instead of a bit of gray that often blends in with the remaining paint. Plastic and resin models are much less vulnerable to that kind of damage.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
4 small plastic toy soldiers that come unpainted for £52.50

Shrug. $75, but for how many hours of entertainment? Considered per hour that compares pretty well to a lot of other things.

I'll say it again. 4 small plastic toy soldiers for the price of a brand new top range PS4 title.
And we wonder why there's less kids coming into the hobby.

Well yeah, if you're looking for zero-effort entertainment (as many kids are) of course you're going to buy the video game. But that isn't a very relevant comparison since it's something so far outside of the GW market. You might as well say that those toy soldiers are really cheap because you can buy two boxes of them for the cost of renting an airplane for an hour and still have some cash left to get dinner on your way home.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I get that not everybody likes to prep metal, but 1-piece metal infantry, or even 2-piecers with backpacks really aren't that much work, because you don't have to that much gluing compared to multi-part models like the 3E Eldar Guardians and 3E Dark Eldar Warriors. It's different work, but once you've cleaned that Sister, she's basically good to go. Go build a pile of those 9-piece Eldar plastics and report back on whether they're really easier than 2-part Sisters of battle.

On the other hand, now you're comparing monopose metal models (which are often awkward in design because of having to be a single piece) to multi-part models with far greater customization potential. One-piece plastic models would be much easier to clean up, if you're willing to settle for all of the disadvantages of having one-piece models.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Well, you're obviously not going to get sub-hairline alignment like with hard plastics, but GW metals are generally pretty good. Almost always well under 1mm alignment.

Clearly spoken by someone who never had to deal with the old Tau stuff. They were bad overall, but the sniper drones were so absolutely terrible that I cut the unit out of my army plans entirely rather than have to deal with that garbage. And replacing defective parts doesn't really help when the whole inventory is trash.

 Albertorius wrote:
Are they somehow more entertaining that the same amount of money and time spend on, for example, Perry Miniatures plastics sets? Because that kind of money will net you about three plastic boxes there, so... 60-70 minis, I guess? One would think you'd be spending more time being "entertained" with those.

Does it really matter if I spend $1 per hour or $2 per hour when either miniatures option is still cheap relative to my other hobbies? Whatever miniatures I happen to buy next it's a rounding error in the overall budget compared to the $170/hour I'm spending on tomorrow's airplane rental. I might as well spend a bunch of time worrying about whether I should fly in to the airport with the $10 burger or the one with the $12 BBQ plate.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
We get it. You have money. How about we discuss how the other 98% deal with sticker shock? For some people, minis are not just a tertiary hobby to distract us from how lonely our horses must feel when we jet to Dubai.

I'm not exactly in the 1%, and I'm hardly alone in that level of budget. I know plenty of people making not all that much money who think nothing of regularly blowing $50 in a night of drinking. Even the cliche of dinner and a movie is getting up to the $50 per person level. The simple fact here is that 40k models are not all that expensive relative to other things people spend their entertainment money on.

I maintain that products within impulse-buy pricing ranges make for the best entry into a new range, and the easiest way to introduce new players.

New players are an entirely different subject. 40k's prices aren't that bad as an ongoing hobby once you've decided it's something you want to do, but the time and money investment required to start the game is awful. But, rather than slashing prices to impulse buy levels (a decision that would require a massive explosion in the popularity of 40k to make up for the loss of revenue) what 40k needs is a smaller-scale entry option. Kill team is a step in the right direction, but the lack of support is a major mistake. Even if the per-model cost doesn't change much for starter sets having a way to play a real game of 40k for $100 and decide if you like it enough to invest more is the biggest thing GW could do to grow the hobby.


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 Albertorius wrote:
And this have something to do with something being or not objectively bad value against other options in the same hobby... how, exactly?

I am aware that stamp collection is much more expensive. It matters not when I'm talking about small monopose mandolls in relation with other small monopose mandolls.

Plus, you know, for some people the monetary difference might actually be important, even if it's a non issue for you.

Why is value so important? Do you really gain that much satisfaction from knowing that you have successfully optimized your grams of plastic per dollar? I can't see how anyone can find that approach enjoyable. Buy the miniatures you want, and if the cost per model is higher buy them at a slower rate. If you want 40k then the fact that some unrelated historical game you have no interest in gives you more grams of plastic per dollar shouldn't have much impact on your buying choices.

 Albertorius wrote:
I mean, I like Agressors, Inceptors and even these new goldboys, but I've chosen to buy 4 Gundam kits for the same price of any single one of those boxes, which incidentally are quite a bit more fun to assemble, and I even can play posing and reposing them, with no hint of glue used whatsoever! Because I've pondered all the options where I could have spent my month's hobby money on stuff I might enjoy, and I've decided that it made much more sense to me that way. I might even enjoy it more, because I'll have more stuff that I enjoy!

Sure, but it sounds like the primary reason for your decision is that you prefer the Gundam kits independent of price. And that's fine. I, on the other hand, wouldn't have even the slightest interest in those Gundam kits if they were free. What I object to is the comparisons like "look how many miniatures you could get from this historical company" when neither the person making the comparison nor most of the other people in the thread have any interest in buying those cheap miniatures. A high score on grams of plastic per dollar is not sufficient to justify a reasonable purchase decision.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
GW recognizes that retention is not important - once they get the first year or two's spend, it always tapers off, and GW doesn't need you, so they don't care if you leave. GW got it's money.

Which is an incredibly stupid business strategy for GW to have when paired with their strategy of doing zero marketing and depending on their customers to sell the game. GW absolutely needs veteran players to stay in the hobby because they need people showing off fully painted armies in their stores, people convincing their friends to get into the game, etc. If 40k had nothing but kids whining until their parents buy them a starter box of space marines and then promptly dropping the hobby it would be the start of GW's death spiral.

 Denny wrote:
For me the X-wing model is low detail and dull compared to the equivalent GW moel.

I don't understand that at all. IMO the X-Wing model is at least as detailed as the GW model, if not better detailed. On things like detail sharpness, minimum feature size, etc, the X-Wing model just trashes the GW stuff. It's an excellent representation of the "real" ship, with few flaws that I can find. The only thing it's lacking is the GW-style skulls and purity seals copied over every possible surface, and that's much more clutter than detail.

Also:

 Denny wrote:
especially as my OCD side would need to strip that paint off before I start, so that's more work

You really don't. The paint on X-Wing models is thinner than the average primer coat, and fills the same role. You can paint directly over the stock paint without any problems. So essentially you have a GW model that, instead of being bare plastic while you're waiting to paint it, is tabletop ready until you get to doing a better paint job on it (and functional indefinitely if you don't care enough about that particular model to improve it). This is purely a win for FFG.

 Denny wrote:
I think Star Wars ships are (in general) low on detail and kind of boring. Most spaceships are when you really look at them IMO. They are giant sealed environments floating/cruising in space. Details are not required.

That's a rather unimaginative way of looking at things. I mean, we're talking about the Star Wars ships that were a pretty substantial revolution in starship design, especially in a film context, for their elaborate detail work. If the only thing you can think of for painting them is just painting the whole ship white then that seems like much more of a problem with you than with the ship.

 Denny wrote:
And when its an established canon I don't think painting a ship the colour the ship is is unimaginative. Its just the colour it is. The Millennium Falcon is off-white. The Tie Fighter is off-white. The X-wing is off-white. The Star Destroyer is off-white.
I could paint them a different colour, just like I could paint Superman green and purple, or paint British Grenadier's blue, or paint viking raiders with metal skin and glowing blue weapons.

But then you can't talk about having choices with 40k models. You have established canon color schemes, and all you can do is execute them according to the GW process. There are more colors involved, sure, but you aren't getting any more creativity. Except, of course, that you seem to be willing to break away from canon when painting 40k models, arbitrarily giving yourself more options. Don't you think this is kind of a double standard?

Also, your original statement was that the Star Wars model was "low detail", not that you don't enjoy painting that particular subject. Those are two very different things, and only one of them is relevant in a discussion of objective value for a model.

tneva82 wrote:
There's not single mention that there even might be red star destroyers or golden x-wings or whatever.

Uh, actually there is. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Errant_Venture

 Denny wrote:
I've only ever created my own Craftworld/Renagade Chapter/Kabal/Blood Bowl Team. So no, there is no establish colour scheme. And I don't execute them to GW processes and I don't have to break canon, because the background is deliberately written to give me virtually complete freedom to do what I want. My renagade chapter is made of a bunch of cast offs from other chapters. I've done this so I can have the freedom to build them from whatever bits I want. Painting a GW specified faction (say, Ultramarines second company) holds very little appeal for me. For the same reason I never got on with the Hobbit game, because I don't want to spend time trying to match the green of the elven cloaks.

So no, I don't think this is a double standard. I just think you are making assumptions.

But if you're willing to make up your own color scheme for GW games why can't you do the same for Star Wars games? It's a double standard because you're fine with making up your own stuff so it's interesting to paint when you're defending the game/models you like, but when it comes to the models you aren't buying you're restricted to only using the canon schemes and complaining about your lack of options.

By low detail I mean . . . there are no details.
I understand that some people read this as 'badly made' or 'lack of crisp lines' but I literally just mean there is very little detail to paint on the ship. A perfect sphere could be flawlessly cast to be seamless and utterly perfect in every way . . . and it would still have no detail, regardless of 'crispness'.

But X-Wing ships have plenty of detail. They just don't have lots of skulls and purity seals copy-pasted over every possible surface like GW models often do. Again, we're talking about the universe that revolutionized scifi design by having all the detail bits on the outside. An Armada or X-Wing model has tons of mechanical bits, panel lines, windows, etc to paint.

Unless you fancy some canon breaking freehand. But I can't picture Vader flying around with tribal tattoos symbols on his Tie Bomber.

Nope, we could definitely never have anything like that.

Mothboi666 wrote:
like how is that possible it is blatant profiteering

Not by any conventional definition of "profiteering".

 Azreal13 wrote:
If someone wanted £10 for a cup of coffee, I could afford it, I just wouldn't see value in it.

Sure, but if you had a choice between £1 for a cup of coffee or £1.50 for a cup of coffee you probably wouldn't care about the price. You'd just buy whichever one was closer, or you liked the taste of better, etc. That £0.50 difference wouldn't be enough to motivate you to change your behavior, or even pay attention to it. And for many of us GW is in the same position. The cost for miniatures of any kind is so low that differences in price don't really matter.

 Azreal13 wrote:
https://www.games-workshop.com/en-NZ/Primaris-Space-Marines-Captain

Except nearly £40 isn't £1 vs £1.50 is it?

It's "shall I buy a takeaway coffee or buy a fething bean to cup machine!"

Shrug. It's $35. I just paid $850 for airplane rentals this past weekend. Whether that captain is $35 or $25 or even $5 makes no real difference in my budget choices. I suppose in some abstract sense it has a high price per model, but a $35 purchase that will cover my painting for the next week or two is just too small a number to bother caring about. Whether I buy the $35 space marine or the $15 X-Wing ship is going to be decided by whether I'd prefer to paint a starship or an infantry model, price isn't going to come into that decision at all.

(Now, I'm not actually going to buy the model because I have zero interest in space marines, but if there's a single 28mm infantry model that I want that costs $35 I'm clicking "buy" without worrying about the price. Hell, I've probably paid more than $35 for single OOP FW infantry models without thinking about it because, again, $35 is below the point where it's worth caring about the price.)

 Azreal13 wrote:
It is irrelevant how much you paid for your plane, or how trivial that amount of money is to you in your privileged little bubble.

It absolutely is relevant, because how much other things in your life cost defines how much you care about certain prices. My budget planning, at least in terms of optional expenses, is defined by how much my flying hobby costs. Whether or not the weather clears up for the upcoming weekend has a much bigger effect on my financial situation than any plausible miniatures purchase I can make this weekend. GW could double their prices and this would still be true. So, when the miniatures purchase is a negligible component of my overall spending, why should I care about differences in price there?

And, as I've said before, flying is just my personal budget limiter. Other people have other hobbies that exceed miniatures spending by safe margins and have mentioned them here.

Whether something has value to someone has no connection to whether the person paying can afford it.

Of course it does. Affordability is a huge component of value, because affordability determines how much attention you have to pay to price. If you're poor and struggling to cover the necessary expenses price is a huge factor, if you're a billionaire you don't even look at the price tag when you tell your assistant to go fetch whatever it is that you want. For the billionaire value is determined by other factors: aesthetics, time investment, etc. In my case the dollar cost of miniatures is almost irrelevant, and value is defined by time. The space marine has zero value to me because I don't want to invest my time into it. No matter what the price tag is, $5 or $50, I can afford to buy primaris captains faster than I can paint or use them. But I can't magically create more painting time.

Literally every time I do a grocery shop I reject items that cost more because the premium doesn't justify itself to me or my needs, it has nothing to do with spending £3 on shampoo over £1.50 (or whatever.)

You must pay a lot more attention to such things than most people.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
I find it hard to believe some people are still like that with a game mainly aimed at young teens.

It's hardly aimed at young teens. At least, if it is, it's doing a very poor job of marketing to them. High prices, massive time sinks, emphasis on in-store gaming that requires a car to get to, etc. IMO GW is happy to milk the cash cow of kids whining to their parents until they get a starter box of space marines, but that's hardly playing the game. IMO the target market for GW's games is older players with disposable income, the skill and patience to make good use of the models, and the ability to go play a game whenever they want. And this is supported by the fact that every time I'm in a game store and see people playing it's all college students and older, with maybe an occasional token younger player at most.

I know there's a lot of us older folk that still like our toy soldiers, but when that young generation are priced out, and the whales move on... what then?

Then the current younger generation will have real jobs and no longer be priced out.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Have you read a newspaper lately?

Priced out is the motto of a generation.

Priced out of major things like owning a house in a vastly over-inflated housing market. Not priced out of minor entertainment expenses, where the only reason they are priced out currently is that we're talking about young kids with no income besides an occasional birthday/christmas gift. It doesn't take a lot of income for time to be the limiting factor on miniatures instead of money.

 Azreal13 wrote:

GW’s core demographic is 12 - 18 yr old boys. GW purchaser is often the customer themselves, funded by a Saturday/holiday job, or pocket money. To support their purchasing requirements GW requires the acceptance of multiple payment methods

https://trade.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/GW08V5-European-Trade-Terms-2.pdf

Since when did we start believing GW's claims when they conflict with reality? GW may claim to target that demographic, but they sure don't market to them very effectively. And that demographic sure doesn't make up any significant part of the in-store gaming community at any store I've ever been to.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

GW’s core demographic is 12 - 18 yr old boys. GW purchaser is often the customer themselves, funded by a Saturday/holiday job, or pocket money. To support their purchasing requirements GW requires the acceptance of multiple payment methods

https://trade.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/GW08V5-European-Trade-Terms-2.pdf

Since when did we start believing GW's claims when they conflict with reality? GW may claim to target that demographic, but they sure don't market to them very effectively. And that demographic sure doesn't make up any significant part of the in-store gaming community at any store I've ever been to.

"Their official line doesn't support my argument do Dakka as a whole has always ignored it"?

More like "GW has a historty of corporate documents that range from 'this is probably putting a spin on it to appease the shareholders' to 'delusional ramblings of someone who shouldn't be anywhere near control of a business' therefore we should view their business claims with skepticism when they contradict what we see happening."

 Duskweaver wrote:
Also, 12-18 year old boys are definitely still GW's core demographic, at least in the UK. You have to remember that those kids are not playing most of their games in GW stores or the independent gaming clubs you might belong to, but in school clubs on lunchtimes and after school.

Maybe that's true in the UK, but it sure doesn't seem to be anywhere else. I've never heard of this school club thing in the US.


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Seriously. If you’re operating at capacity and still can’t keep up with demand, does that suggest that your pricing is wrong?

Depends on what your production capacity is. If you're running "at capacity" because your capacity is one tactical squad per month then the fact that you can't meet demand is pretty meaningless from a pricing point of view. It's the same problem we have with trying to evaluate the success of GW's limited edition stuff: did it sell out because everyone wants to buy limited-edition releases at high prices, or did it sell out because GW made a very small number of them?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
£38,000,000 in profit for six months would suggest that it’s most definitely not a case of false scarcity, but a genuinely popular product at a price plenty are willing to pay.

Not necessarily, because we don't have any context for those numbers. It's possible that GW could be making 50% more profit by improving their production capacity, and their "sold out" status is the result of false scarcity. Or it's possible that £38,000,000 profit is the maximum that can reasonably be extracted from the market, and selling out at their current capacity is a sign that GW is doing things right. We can't know unless we look at a parallel world where GW has different prices and see how their profit compares.

Have a think (everyone, not Peregrine specifically) about why companies typically offer sales, and cut prices.

You've covered the reasons for sales (IOW, temporary price cuts), but sales are not the only kind of price cut. There's a third reason for permanent price cuts: you're on the wrong point on the supply vs. demand curves and you need to adjust your pricing. Even if GW was the only company in the market they could still potentially benefit from price cuts.

So given the stuff we know to be fact (maxed production capacity, seriously profitable) - why would you be looking at lowering your price right now?

Right now? No reason. A price cut is a pure loss if you can't make it up in volume. But it's possible that GW should be massively investing in additional production capacity, and then making price cuts to maximize it.