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I have a rather on-off relationship with 40k, hence why I only recently noticed the - for me at least - perplexing tendency to treat the non-human, non-Chaos factions not as individual factions that are completely independent and unrelated to each other in their own right, but rather as part of the same category, collectively called "Xenos", which is separated from the other two categories "Imperium" and "Chaos", very much in the vein of how the AoS Grand Alliances "Order", "Destruction", "Chaos" and "Death" work.
I noticed it in GW's webshop and recently also in the way some people refer to the armies, like for example: "I already have Marines and Chaos Knights and am thinking about starting a Xeno army" and the like.

As I already said, I tend to put 40k on hiatus every so often, so I'm not following the narrative development tooo closely, but back during 3rd/4th Edition I can't for the life of me remember people saying stuff like "I play Space Marines and Xenos".
It was always "I play Eldaror Orks or Tyranids" etc, with these various factions being as detached from each other as they are from Chaos or Imperium. "Xenos" as a term really only existed in in-universe Imperial lore.

So I am wondering, when and under what circumstances did the narrative shift to lump all the non-humans together (and consequently, shove them that much more into the background) happen? Is this an 8th Edi thing or did it start before?

Purely for listing purposes.

I've never met anyway who says that they play xenos. They still say orks, eldar, dark eldar etc.

It's purely from an amount of stuff PoV and marketing.

Yeah I'm not aware of it being anything other than a filter on the web store

They're not really lumped together beyond the website.

In terms of gameplay, Orks, Eldar, Tau, Necrons, Tyranids etc are all unique from eachother, with some room for allying (Genestealer Cults + Tyranids, Eldar + Harlequins + Dark Eldar).

It's literally just for their online store that they're lumped together, presumably for simplicity.

Xenos is used when people speak of all the non Imperial/Marine factions in a group as a shorthand. So you tend to see it rolled out when people say things like

"Marines get way more models than Xenos"

In this context they are highlighting the big divide between the Imperial (mostly marine) releases and the Xenos factions as whole.


Otherwise people won't typically say "I play Xenos" unless they happen to play all of them. Normally they will say "I play Tyranid" or "ork" etc....



Xenos is just the catch-all for all the non-Imperial based factions and its a handy single term for that purpose. The reason it likely appears a bit more often at times is likely when Xenos players are feeling hard done by a big Marine wave of models being released or teased out steadily. Within that catchment there are finer points. For example Tyranids are doing really well at present with almost their entire range in plastic and the vast bulk being solid modern designs with varied weapon options.

Meanwhile armies like Eldar might be more apt to complain about finecast aspect warriors or super old plastics that show their age when compared to more modern offerings.

Back in the 90s I don't recall hearing the terms "Xenos" nor "Faction". You had an army and that was that.

Some factions got scrapped over the years while new ones were introduced(Necrons, Dark Eldar, Tau), and then some were bought back(Gene-cults and Harlequins). Was taking a break from the hobby during those years so I'll guess thats when the term "Xenos" and "Faction" became a thing.

Factions crept in when armies like Tyranids started getting "subfactions" based on Hivefleets and the like.

Typically, I'd say it's because it makes it both easier and more difficult to see a distinction in levels of support, rather than as an actual faction grouping.

It's easy for someone to claim a particular release is a "Xenos Release" if it's for, say, Genestealer Cults, to then say "those bad Xenos players always complain about no releases, well what's this? A new Xenos mini in psychic awakening! And another one being previewed!" even though that means feth-all to a necron player, who can use Tau models and GSC models exactly as much as a space marine player can.

It's also easy for someone to subdivide them in that way when it's convenient to push the "Great Xenos Neglect Conspiracy." Suddenly Space Marines, Guard, Sisters, and other minor factions aren't getting support - that's all Imperials. And when a big release wave comes out for Orks, they can shift to complaining that "Xenos" got very little comparatively even in the midst of a large release wave.

Mostly, it's just that meme of willy from the simpsons complaining about the greatest enemy of the 40k playerbase: 40k players.

For some reason, maybe because it was useful one getting the indeces out at the start of 8th, GW decided to regroup factions under three main categories: all those who belong to Chaos, to the Imperium, and all those who are alien to both.

But this has brought absolutly no changes.