Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Mr Mystery wrote:I do get why they don't sell Third Party stuff, even when it's licensed, through the stores. The minis are their bread and butter.

But surely they could offer a weborder service in store?

Why would I care? Impulse purchases are the entire reason for brick and mortar. If I have to think about it and use the POWA OF THE INTRANETZ then there's no point to the retail stores-they just burn cash.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

BrookM wrote:They opened one in the east late last year and at least five more will be opened sooner or later around here.

Five? What do they need five more for? Is the market large enough to warrant such expansion?

I doubt it. There hasn't been an official GW store in the east of my country for over a decade now. We've got three official big stores, all in the west, where most of the big stuff really is. I think this could be the start of the end of GW in my country.

Ascalam wrote:What i'd do if I was GW (i appreciate that it's highly unlikely that they would..) to massively boost sales and customer loyalty.

Drop Model prices by 50% (it doesn't cost all that much to make and package them, per unit)

Customers will buy by the ton assuming that GW will raise the price again later.

Wavering players will reconsider leaving to other systems (as they have been doing more and more as GW prices go up and up)

New players will have a far better time justifying to their spouse, parent or wallet that its worth it.

Also hire a compentent codex team to rapidly produce codexes/rulebooks etc. My office at work preps 20,000 page legal files and 300 + page court briefs that have to be utterly legally suffiicent, or be thrown out and the offending person fired. We do about 5 a week. It cannot be seriously that much harder to create a 100 page codex in a couple of months that works with the rules and has been properly playtested, with unambiguous rules checked for loopholes by a WAAC 14 year old.

I don't think you can improve it. I'd bet good Chinese currency the entire market for all miniature gaming has been declining the last five years.

Looks like GW will close a few of their smaller stores and hike the prices up as usual and hope for the best, not good news really the miniatures hobby is tiny in comparisson to book and music shops . I fear GW are a fade market now, popular with fairly well off kids until they get bored of the effort to make the models look good and understand the game who then return to Xbox.

Kroothawk wrote:The "no advertising" policy is killing profits and customer base, at least outside UK where there are less stores. And the managers counter with "We are happy to be just niche, so a declining customer base is okay!" and get along with it.

I strongly disagree. I work as a financial analyst for a UK high street retailer that has a lot of similarities to GW, including turnover. We use e-mail and national newspaper advertising as well as catalogue, corporate mailshots, corporate intranet offers and "invite only" after hours events. Catalogue launch is the only one of those that allows us to detect any change in sales in the data, and we've spent a lot of time analysing it. Bearing in mind, despite being a national chain, we can easily detect the effects of protests and tube strikes in London, and (for example) the types of weather conditions that have an adverse effect on our sales (and I mean more subtle things than whopping great piles of snow )*

*Well you can detect an invite only event in an individual store very easily, but it doesn't impact the overall numbers significantly.

@ baragash: everyone probably is already aware of your chain there right? to Kroothawk's point I would guess over 90% of the people in the US have never even heard of Games Workshop. A little effective advertising could go a long way.

now hear this, now hear this:

The world is not going to end and the sky is most definitely not falling.

That is all...

Read the whole thread, great points... it gets discussed every year, but there must be a breaking point. Less service (in the form of book releases, number of staff working their stores, etc) and higher prices will erode a customer base, especially when there are other viable options.

Hopefully, GW gets the message... and does what makes sense from a business standpoint, which would coincide at least somewhat with what most people want (as a business serving customers, that just makes sense).

Fantasy boomed here when the rulebook came out. 18 of us in a little GW shop doing an escalation league for a few months, most of us buying models at the store to build up the armies. But that's over now, and there's still no book released for 8th edition... what were they thinking??

It's going to be real difficult for me to qualify this statement as I can't link to it and it's on an obscure topic line in the Spartan Games forums, so make of it what you will.

Recently one of the distributors of models and gaming supplies did a quick volume analysis of GW versus PP and SG games, and what his source (e-figures) showed was that GW has basically been losing volume while PP and SG together have gained an equivalent amount.

This would speak directly to market share shift away from GW to competitors, for whatever region this distributor was analysing.

As someone who has actually left 40k for WM/H, this is no surprise to me. My reason was price of entry into the hobby, and I imagine the high cost of GW games relative to competitors (Malifaux, WM/H, Anima Tactics) is prohibitive for many others as well.

I haven't been paying attention for a while, but now that you mention it...where the hell IS the new set of books for Fantasy! 2010 was a complete desert in terms of releases.
I also think the overall quality is going up, but they've got only a few reliable creators left- those are the people who make the money for the company, yet every year I hear of more of them being let go.

Baragash wrote:

Kroothawk wrote:The "no advertising" policy is killing profits and customer base, at least outside UK where there are less stores. And the managers counter with "We are happy to be just niche, so a declining customer base is okay!" and get along with it.

I strongly disagree. I work as a financial analyst for a UK high street retailer that has a lot of similarities to GW, including turnover. We use e-mail and national newspaper advertising as well as catalogue, corporate mailshots, corporate intranet offers and "invite only" after hours events. Catalogue launch is the only one of those that allows us to detect any change in sales in the data, and we've spent a lot of time analysing it.

That's why I am talking about sales outside UK, where main streets are not plastered with GW stores. There are US States without any GW store, even in Germany, GW is only known by a very small niche. And old Space Hulk/Space Crusade, Heroquest (both MB marketing) and in Germany a LOTR magazine with inlaid sprue prove, what standard marketing can achieve. Still lots of people arround who got into the hobby by these.

sourclams wrote:
As someone who has actually left 40k for WM/H, this is no surprise to me. My reason was price of entry into the hobby, and I imagine the high cost of GW games relative to competitors (Malifaux, WM/H, Anima Tactics) is prohibitive for many others as well.

Isn't the cost of entry into the WM/H gaming world a bit high as well?

Competitive and winning tournament armies can be had for under $200 with an ultra-competitive Menoth 35 point list for about $175 retail. $200 won't get you in the door for any competitive GW point level.

By my estimation WM/H is somewhere around half price versus 40k for competitive play and it scales much more easily so getting a 15 point starter box game going versus a complete newcomer is easier than playing a 500 point equivalent in 40k.

In a 35 point list I tend to feature 1 Warlock kit, 2-3 Beasts kits, and 1 Unit kit plus 2-3 solos or unit attachments. Full retail, excluding starter box discounts, that's around $225-$275.

Let's just look at the vehicles I'd need for... I don't know... 1500 pts of Chaos.

Rhinos run about $30 apiece retail, so just the rhinos for my troops would probably be $120 or more. I'm halfway to my WM/H total and I've bought less than 10% of the list's total point cost...!

Morphability of a WM/H army is a lot more dramatic as warlocks tend to impact the playstyle of a list so much. I could change a warlock and swap a single unit and a beast or two (cost: $100-$150) and now I've got a distinct and completely different list, like going from Green Tide to Nob Bikers. To do that in 1500 pts of 40k you almost need to buy another list entirely.

Can you sink a huge amount of money into PP, Malifaux, or any other game system? Yes, absolutely, but the analogue in 40k would be buying 5,000 pts of the model line. Maybe there's an even more expensive minis hobby than what GW puts out, but for my store/area GW is clearly at the top of the price scale.

For my personal end, I've spent about the same on a 3K WoC monster mash army for fantasy, as I have for the trollbloods for PP.

However, I wanted to be able to field 2 almost completely different lists for the highest "standard" point level (50 points) and try out a lot of the units. So if I'd wanted only a single list for that point level, half the price of a GW standard list sounds about right.

However, I'm also got fewer models... albiet, nice large metal ones (which are also a pain to put together, but that's neither here nor there).

It's not a totally fair comparison because it is comparing a skirmish game to a more largescale army / units game. But it does matter a bit, since as posted above, you can get into WM/H a bit cheaper depending on how you do it.

Of course, you can do some similar things for GW as well (buy 2 ogre battalion boxes, convert the leadbelchers into bulls, and convert your own characters, for example) but on the whole it is a bit more accessible to get into WM/H than to create a new army for warhammer or 40k, assuming standard point levels for both.

You guys are tempting me...

I really like the Khador stuff, and I think their play-style suits mine.

What's the new "must have" rules/supplements list look like?

sourclams wrote:By my estimation WM/H is somewhere around half price versus 40k for competitive play and it scales much more easily so getting a 15 point starter box game going versus a complete newcomer is easier than playing a 500 point equivalent in 40k.

normally, i'm the first to jump onto the gw price-bashing bandwagon but i think over the past 10 years other companies have caught up with their prices when you compare apples to apples. while i agree that the cost of entry to games like malifaux and WM is lower simply because the model count is also, the price per fig of comparable size and quality is roughly the same and sometimes more when you compare similar sets (size, quality, white metal only).

Infinity starters with 6 figs? $46 USD and up retail on the warstore. GW boxes with 5 similarly sized (see link below half way down the page) figs recently released? $29.75 for the dark eldar stuff like incubi. bulkier figs like marines (LOTD)? 5 for $35.


http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/318593.page

warmachine? infantry is roughly the same size as 40k infantry. 10 IG stormtroopers? $41.25 10 winter guard rifleman? $49.99


http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/224179.page


I can theoretically make up a minis game where you only need 2-3 minis in 28mm scale for the game and charge $50 for them together and have a "lower" barrier to entry but that doesn't mean the customer is actually getting a better deal when you compare similar items (size, quality, price). mind you, this is in no way a justification of GW's current prices, just a comparison with other popular companies to show that they have caught up or in some cases exceeded GW's price per ounce of sculpted minis. GW minis used to be hand over fist more expensive but concommitently better quality than their competitors' options; neither is really true right now.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Games Workshop announces that pre-tax profits in respect of the year to 29 May 2011 are likely to be below current market expectations.

Time to raise the prices!

In addition, the outlook for royalties receivable in the current year remains good, although not as significant as in the year to 30 May 2010.

So it's time to raise the prices!

The Board of Games Workshop currently believes that, as a result of reduced volumes, pre-tax profits in respect of the year ending 29 May 2011 are unlikely to meet current market consensus estimates.

... so we're raising the prices!

The Board will announce the Group's half-yearly results for the six months to 28 November 2010 on 25 January 2011.

Where they will vote on how much to raise the prices by.

70 pence drop on their shares thus far today.

Which the board are confident can be quickly recouped via an across-the-board price rise.

The weather and travel issues in the UK/Europe won't have helped either.

I hear that 'It's snowing' is one of the 800,000 possibly justifications for 'price rises' listed within the Games Workshop Group PLC company handbook.





Ok, I've had my fun. Kan, you can stand down from red alert.

One of the best posts ive read!

@Warboss:
Yes price per model may be the same but when you look at the total you need to outlay to play, it's far cheaper any way you look at it since you can't play with just a unit of stormtroopers or just a unit of Winter Guard. You can't compare model prices between WM and 40k because it's not relevant. That squad of Winter Guard is close to 30% of a 35 point tournament force by itself before you put any attachments to it. The stormtroopers are under 10% of a 1500 point force.

12thRonin wrote:@Warboss:
Yes price per model may be the same but when you look at the total you need to outlay to play, it's far cheaper any way you look at it since you can't play with just a unit of stormtroopers or just a unit of Winter Guard. You can't compare model prices between WM and 40k because it's not relevant. That squad of Winter Guard is close to 30% of a 35 point tournament force by itself before you put any attachments to it. The stormtroopers are under 10% of a 1500 point force.

i agree with you that you have to consider the total price but that doesn't mean you should just ignore the individual fig price. the other games have been around a fraction of the time 40k has. i don't play warmachine so i'll rely on my fellow dakkites... are "standard" WM games bigger in model cost/count than they were when the game first started out? i realize the point scale completely changed which is why i'm specifying model count. if so, do you think the "average" model count will go up or down in 5-10 years? 40k didn't start out with such a high relative entry price; its gotten bigger and bigger to generate sales with every edition and i'd suspect the other companies are following the same dastardly gameplan.

edit:

warmachine army size has gone up if you can use their championship as a yardstick. the 2005 warmachine gencon national championship was a 500pt tourney while there was another 500pt tourney that weekend also as well as a 750pt one. the 2009 championship was a scaled tourney that apparently went from 500pts in the prelim rounds to 1000pts for the final (so you needed 1000pts to compete).

http://gencon.highprogrammer.com/gencon-indy-2005.cgi/group/Privateer_Press/Jason_Soles
http://gencon.highprogrammer.com/gencon-indy-2009.cgi/type/NMN/Warmachine-%252F-Hordes
http://privateerpress.com/company/gen-con-masters-2009-crank-it-up-a-notch

I'm surprised at how well Games Workshop is weathering the economic storm, to be honest. To be down that little in the grand scheme of things is quite an accomplishment.

I know people get disgusted with price raises - it's an easy target. Here's the reality that I see. Minis war gaming is a niche, shrinking market. Every year, there are fewer and fewer people willing to purchase a ton of miniatures, paint them, set aside hours to meet friends and play, etc. I think before the days of cable, internet, computer games...minis gaming was a fun, social exercise for geeks. Now? Well, we have lots of choices.

Stuck with a relatively static market, a company has few choices. Certainly, one option would be to broaden the market - advertising, for example, Frankly, I think that's madness. It's over $1 million to do any campaign on TV. Given their revenue, I think throwing around several million dollars would be risky - at best.

Now, I've got a little glimpse into marketing and hobby games. One report I saw was that hard core geek types don't have the same price ceilings as other purchasers. This is why all of a sudden hard cover RPG books jumped from $20 to $40; there was a negligible effect on sales. Geeks want what they want. It's as core to them as food, gas, rent, etc.

Given that insight, and no doubt reams of data from previous price increases, Games Workshop' least risky move is to raise prices. I hazard to guess a dollar here, a dime there doesn't effect them much...but the cumulative effect has definitely been to increase the barrier of entry to the hobby. A starting player has a pretty daunting amount of money to spend no matter what.

Lucky for GW, no game has really stepped up (Warmachine I think is the closest in sales). But even Warmachine is vastly different than Warhammer fantasy/40k. It's a far more thinking game, IMHO and really hits the hardest of the hard core. Just my 2 cents there.

Personally I think GW's future is in 1) computer games 2) digital entertainment. Unfortunately, they've licensed out their two IP's, so they don't get the lion's share of the profits on the former. On the latter, they're starting to get their books up (though oddly not on Kindle). The movie was another license deal, though I'm aware it's REALLY tricky to make money on movies. I'd also get up some digitial comics (costs maybe $10K for a writer/artist/inker/etc. - sell it for $1.99 online, no physical copies).

Another good shot would be to invest in games that have the same "gotta buy them all" mentality, but have a smaller financial hurdle. Warmachine has got this down pat; lots of different units, but squad based gameplay. Or a combo card game minis game (think Bakugan).

Just waiting to go into a meeting right now so I had time to kill to put down my thoughts about GW. Sadly, I think a lot about it!

They're weathering it like they weather everything else - with their heads in the sand.

NELS1031 wrote:Someone dropped the ball, and it started with the Beastmen releases. I look at the Skaven army book and its models/rules then to my beloved Beastmen models/rules, and its just depressing.

We sure got the sculpting "B" team on that one, didn't we?

BrassScorpion wrote:It seems that getting stores into profitability in all their main markets is futile and every year they are down enough in some areas to bring the whole thing down. This has got to be scary for investors and it's certainly scary for customers concerned about GW's future. One thing is certain, they can't cut any more "fat" from the stores, they already slashed everything to the bone when they went to the one-man store system earlier this year.

Just seems to me that the fundamental question that GW has to answer internally is whether it's a manufacturer or retailer in a given market. The strategy about the stores seems to change like Tzeentch. And right now in the U.S., I dunno that they're effective as customer recruitment OR a retail outlet. One-man stores in lower-traffic strip malls isn't a good recruitment strategy, but limited products in stores, etc. isn't a good retail strategy either. Americans expect company specialty stores to carry the entire line and more.

Perhaps the chain makes a lot of sense in the U.K., but in the U.S. it sure seems to make more sense to focus on trade sales and maybe operate a small number of larger destination stores in the right metro markets. But what do I know? *shrug*

I don't want to see them fail...I hope they get it sorted out. But they sure seem to have bled a lot of talent in recent years, which isn't a good sign.

And I agree with others re: advertising. I think there are some more creative things they could do on the marketing side, but traditional advertising in the way most of you are probably thinking of it is enormously expensive. And what's more, their target audience is small and hard to target efficiently. Which essentially makes it even more expensive. If they were my client I'd be looking for much cheaper, more creative avenues than TV advertising, etc.

gorgon wrote:If they were my client I'd be looking for much cheaper, more creative avenues than TV advertising, etc.

TV advertising would be prohibitively expensive, and it is likely that radio advertising would be equally as pricey for a company like GW. Internet advertising on the other hand is something that they haven't embraced - not even on their own website (effective advertising that is - not the ham-fisted 'What's new Today' bullgak which is no different to WD in the way it ends every 'helpful' article with 3-6 links to buy things).

GW needs to embrace the Internet, something they clearly still regard as a 'fad' or 'curiosity' and get out there. It may be a little redundant to do it here, but could you imagine GW advertising in that little banner ad up the top right of your screens? Right now I've got an ad for Wayland Games there. Why couldn't it be GW? Why couldn't it be GW at half a dozen big 40K/gaming sites? Would it be good for the banner ad to change the closer we got to a big release (eg. 'Coming Soon - The Eldar's Dark Kin Arise, coming November '10') and so on? Does it not happen because we mention other games, and GW hates to be reminded of the fact that they aren't the hobby but just part of it?

GW's use of the internet is anaemic. They remind me of all the small business out there that have their own badly designed website and think that people actually care about the 'About Us' section and have spent a lot of time writing it when all customers really care about is the 'What can you do for me?' part.

sourclams wrote:By my estimation WM/H is somewhere around half price versus 40k for competitive play and it scales much more easily so getting a 15 point starter box game going versus a complete newcomer is easier than playing a 500 point equivalent in 40k.

In a 35 point list I tend to feature 1 Warlock kit, 2-3 Beasts kits, and 1 Unit kit plus 2-3 solos or unit attachments. Full retail, excluding starter box discounts, that's around $225-$275.

Let's just look at the vehicles I'd need for... I don't know... 1500 pts of Chaos.

Rhinos run about $30 apiece retail, so just the rhinos for my troops would probably be $120 or more. I'm halfway to my WM/H total and I've bought less than 10% of the list's total point cost...!

Morphability of a WM/H army is a lot more dramatic as warlocks tend to impact the playstyle of a list so much. I could change a warlock and swap a single unit and a beast or two (cost: $100-$150) and now I've got a distinct and completely different list, like going from Green Tide to Nob Bikers. To do that in 1500 pts of 40k you almost need to buy another list entirely.

Can you sink a huge amount of money into PP, Malifaux, or any other game system? Yes, absolutely, but the analogue in 40k would be buying 5,000 pts of the model line. Maybe there's an even more expensive minis hobby than what GW puts out, but for my store/area GW is clearly at the top of the price scale.

Round of applause for sourclams for most blatantly skewed price comparisson seen today! I do like particularly how you singled out possibly the worst bang/buck ratio model in an army to 'prove' your point.

1,500 points of Chaos eh? Why not start with say, 2 squads of 10 Chaos Marines, and a Chaos Lord Kit. Terminators..now they are a pretty decent bang/buck ratio, and fairly effective in the game. And hey, you know what, you could always, you know, use a Batallion as a starting point. Hell, why not drop in a Landraider? It's a hefty amount of points, fulfils the role of one of the Rhinos, and is a solid in game investment to boot! No? Getting too far from your 'point?'

Apologies.

I really should check my logic at the door.

Because you know, I've got a Fantasy army. Ogres it be. Consists of 2 Batallions, 1 Tyrant, 1 Slaughter Master, 2 boxes of Ironguts, and 3 Forgeworld Rhinox Riders. That's a healthy 3,000 point right there, and you know what...it's a pretty cheap (going on todays prices) £250ish, straight from GW. And you know what, I get a lot more variety out of this particular army than your Warmachine one. See, I can play 'lets go for the cheapest possible option' as well.

warboss wrote:i agree with you that you have to consider the total price but that doesn't mean you should just ignore the individual fig price.

I think I have to disagree with you on this point. For a new player (the entry level) the fig price isn't going to matter if he has to buy 4x as many. $200 can get you into WM/H right alongside the vets. $200 doesn't get you anywhere in 40k, except committed to spending the other $400 to buy the other 75% of your force.

the other games have been around a fraction of the time 40k has. i don't play warmachine so i'll rely on my fellow dakkites... are "standard" WM games bigger in model cost/count than they were when the game first started out? i realize the point scale completely changed which is why i'm specifying model count. if so, do you think the "average" model count will go up or down in 5-10 years? 40k didn't start out with such a high relative entry price; its gotten bigger and bigger to generate sales with every edition and i'd suspect the other companies are following the same dastardly gameplan.

I didn't play Mk1, but it *seems* that model count is roughly the same. Further, the main mechanic in WM/H is that a central character, the "warlock/warcaster", has a battlegroup of warbeasts/warjacks which they allocate limited resources to. The allocation of those resources largely determines how well the battlegroup functions. If you simply up the size of the battlegroup, you dilute the effectiveness of any single model within it (for the most part).

You'd have to fundamentally change the way much of the game works to have the same sort of model "creep" that GW has exhibited between editions (IG, for example, upped vehicle inclusion by 50% or more between editions; PP couldn't sustain that kind of Warjack volume).

It simply doesn't work out mathematically, either. If you drop model point cost for GW by 10% (so a 2000 pt list becomes a 2200 pt list) you can gain at least 1 full squad or a new vehicle (maybe two). If you do the same for Warmachine/Hordes, you get 3-5 points to spend on units or heavies that average 6-11 points.

Just one note, WM/H changed their point costings with MKII, so the common levels are 35 / 50 points now (rather than something like 500 points) even though the force is a similar size.

sourclams wrote:I didn't play Mk1, but it *seems* that model count is roughly the same. Further, the main mechanic in WM/H is that a central character, the "warlock/warcaster", has a battlegroup of warbeasts/warjacks which they allocate limited resources to. The allocation of those resources largely determines how well the battlegroup functions. If you simply up the size of the battlegroup, you dilute the effectiveness of any single model within it (for the most part).

the championship tournament size effectively doubled (see my post above) before MkII. in 2005 (the first year), it was 500pts. in 2009 (the last year under mkI), it scaled up to 1000pts. tournament sizes tend (not always but *tend to*) reflect average game sizes.

Mr Mystery wrote:Round of applause for sourclams for most blatantly skewed price comparisson seen today! I do like particularly how you singled out possibly the worst bang/buck ratio model in an army to 'prove' your point.

...snip...

Because you know, I've got a Fantasy army. Ogres it be. Consists of 2 Batallions, 1 Tyrant, 1 Slaughter Master, 2 boxes of Ironguts, and 3 Forgeworld Rhinox Riders. That's a healthy 3,000 point right there, and you know what...it's a pretty cheap (going on todays prices) £250ish, straight from GW. And you know what, I get a lot more variety out of this particular army than your Warmachine one. See, I can play 'lets go for the cheapest possible option' as well.

Yeah, I was a bit hyperbolic.

So let's look at your example.

250 British pounds using today's forex at 1.54 dollar/pound is $385.

So your "cheap" army is over $100 more than the average starter WM/H list.

Thanks for agreeing with me?

Now go build me a 2k mech IG list and see how the prices stack up.

International Man of Mystery wrote:Because you know, I've got a Fantasy army. Ogres it be. Consists of 2 Batallions, 1 Tyrant, 1 Slaughter Master, 2 boxes of Ironguts, and 3 Forgeworld Rhinox Riders. That's a healthy 3,000 point right there, and you know what...it's a pretty cheap (going on todays prices) £250ish, straight from GW. And you know what, I get a lot more variety out of this particular army than your Warmachine one. See, I can play 'lets go for the cheapest possible option' as well.

Hey! I already said this...

Not a Man of Mystery wrote:Of course, you can do some similar things for GW as well (buy 2 ogre battalion boxes, convert the leadbelchers into bulls, and convert your own characters, for example)

That is the best deal for a GW fantasy army right now... I've been recommending it to new players a lot . However, I don't agree about it having a lot of variety, at least not from the lists I've seen drawn up for it.