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Polonius wrote:...

I haven't actually added it up, but I'd wager that if you added up all the dedicated kits for SM varients, you'd get roughly the same amount as something like Orks.

I mean, for plastic you have:
Wolf Packs
Wolf Terminators
Sanguinary Guard
Baal Predator
Stormraven (sort of?)
Death Company
DA upgrade
RW upgrade
BT upgrade

Compare to Orks:
Boys
Nobs
Trukk
Battle Wagon
Skorcha
Buggy
Bikes
Storm boys
Lootas
Grots

The point is, in terms of model support (by far the bulk of an armies development cost) all non-chaos MEQ variants roughly cost the same as a full new army.

You can argue if all SM variants are as varied as two full army books, but the cost/benefit ratio for MEQ books is stupidly high compared to other armies.
Or to Tau
Fire Warriors
Kroot
Battle Suits
Stealth Suits
Devil Fish
Sky Ray
Hammer head
Piranha

This serves to point out something that I'm not sure is really been touched on: the inherent savings in SM kits. That is; if you make a new plastic kit for Orks, or DE, or Tau, you have a kit that can only be used with that one army list. While you might, perhaps, be able to multi-purpose some Eldar models as DE, or IG as Tau irregulars, for the most part, every kit made for a non-marine army has a much smaller possible sale pool then a comparable SM release.

Just think about it in terms of the new Chibihawk kit: by allowing multiple armies to use the model, you increase the pool of people willing to buy it, decreasing the risk in making it. Same goes for things like generic SM terminators or tac squads, or assault marines, all of which can easily be used for loyalist marines (and with a little effort, chaos too).

By comparison, no matter how excellent and superior things like the new DE plastics are, they are only useful for DE players.

I'm not saying I agree with GW's release schedule, but it is important to bear in mind when terms such as "xenos" as thrown around. Just as it makes sense to lump toghether all releases for the various Marine chapters as "Marines", so we also have to recognize the limitations of non-SM releases: there is no "xeno" counterpart to the tac squad, or the terminator box, or a landraider or landspeeder, so on and so forth.

Given GW's limited resources, this is only to be expected.

It's a vicious cycle. GW produces SM variants because they have so much groundwork on it already, and it's popular. On the other hand, this popularity and variety of kits was because they produced so many variants. And it's never going to change, because none of the other races will ever be as profitable as the SMs.

However, we might see a slight increase in Eldar Kits. DEs were specifically made to be cross-compatable with other DE kits as well as craftworld kits, much like SMs. While still nowhere near the heights SMs have gotten, it is a small step in the right direction.

I think it is interesting to look at the numbers presented by Ouze, combine them with the fact that more and more people seem to be making a "generic" chapter to represent them all, and then ask one self; "Is GW actually increasing its sales in the long run with this continued favouritism?"

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:It's a vicious cycle. GW produces SM variants because they have so much groundwork on it already, and it's popular. On the other hand, this popularity and variety of kits was because they produced so many variants. And it's never going to change, because none of the other races will ever be as profitable as the SMs.

...

The counter arguments to that are:

1. GW is only barely profitable, thanks largely to international currency exchange changes (a weak £).
2. Sales have been dropping for several years.
3. If you stripped out the Xeno player contribution, they would be making a loss.
4. Suppose a lot of Xeno players dropped the game because it got too boring. Would SM vs SM vs CSM vs IG be sufficiently interesting to keep the game going?

Steelmage99 wrote:I think it is interesting to look at the numbers presented by Ouze, combine them with the fact that more and more people seem to be making a "generic" chapter to represent them all, and then ask one self; "Is GW actually increasing its sales in the long run with this continued favouritism?"

Probably, actually.

If I build a stock ultramarines army, and build it to a decent size (say 3000 points), I eventually realize that I can play that army in a pretty distinct way by buying and adding maybe 500-1000 more points.

By encouraging DIY, a "complete" space marine army now includes plenty of stuff to play wolves, BA, etc. My marines are DIY, and admittedly built out of old used stuff, but I'm building baal predators, extra apothocaries, and CCW/BP marines to run BA. I'm also buying librarians, missile launchers, and razorbacks to play wolves.

A smart marine player can get tremendous play value out of a solid core of tactical marines, landspeeders, drop pods, predators, and landraiders.

Surtur wrote:I could have sworn that FW released some tau suits last year.

Depends on how strict you want to be. I originally saw them for sale in September 2009 and eliminated them, but after some digging looks like that was a limited release (Games Day and some other things) and the general release was pushed all the way back to April 2010. I'm done editing that stupid sheet but if I did it over again I would/should have included it. I also made a similar mistake (but in the other direction) with the IG Malacador Infernus, which wasn't fully available until 2011 and should not have been included, but was.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Polonius wrote:You could argue that people buy what's promoted, but if that's true, than it doesn't matter much what GW makes.

Well, the other element to it is the viral one. Lets say you have a friend who plays, and who shows it to you in the shop. You look at a few shelves. Most of the stuff is halo looking space marines, but there are some silver terminator looking robots that also seem cool. You ask your friend about the skull robots. "Necrons"?" he scoffs. "They're ok, but they haven't had any cool stuff released in about a decade." Well, these double barrelled shotgun skeleton guys are neat! "Immortals? Well, they're not bad, but they're $14 apiece, and you need at least 5. They go up to 10. Do you have $70 to buy these 5 guys, or would you rather spend $15 more and get a whole battleforce?"

Granted, Necrons in general and Immortals in specific are maybe the most extreme example of this I can pick next to Sister of Battle, but as a Necron player they leap to mind as a good example of how a poorly developed faction becomes self-perpetuating: players in the know will not wish to invest startup capital into something that historically has seen halfass support.

Y'know, I can't think of any Space Marines that actually look 'Halo-y'.

That depends on how au fait you are with Halo and 40K.

The average man on the Clapham Omnibus would probably just wonder why the little robot dudes are waving swords and hammers when it is a science fiction game.

Unfortunately all these SM releases distract me from building a xeno army, because I get the "ooooh... look shiny" thing problem and then forget about my half painted skaven, or my just barely primed DE....

Kilkrazy wrote:That depends on how au fait you are with Halo and 40K.

Indeed. I was in Hobby Town yesterday when a kid walked up to the Battletech area: "Hey cool! Little Transformers!" Followed by the Reaper models: "These look like Bioshock guys!"

I'm going to have to sit with the DIY chapter theory. My smurfs may be absurdly expensive, but once I'm done them (my target right now is 1000 points, but I figure they'll be completely done at 1500), I won't be buying any more space marine kits... damn near ever (Grey Knights not included, but that depends on just how bad the codex ends up being).

Where as there's a wealth of xenos that could be interesting, but never gets touched. Half the stuff doesn't even have a model, and the release schedule is so slow that there's no motivation to even pick up a xenos army.

I was about to say the same thing. If xenos got more attention then they would be more interesting to play, paint, model, ect. Since that doesn't happen they have the same boring codex and models for years (or very long time), before GW even thinks about touching them.

The initial analysis didn't fully capture the realities of 2010. I would certainly agree that 5th has been pretty Marine heavy, but it's hardly the pie chart presented. Not all releases are equal.

The 3 bolter releases by FW??? What work into those? Someone asked why they needed 3 releases? How much work did FW do? What resources did they commit? Each release involved a single sculpt, copied 5 times, and sold to bolster the company bottom line while they grind out a Phantom Titan. I could say the same for the Armor Mks. One set of arms, one set of heads, one set of chests, one set of backpacks, and two kinds of legs. Those releases pay huge dividends for FW. Minimal outlay, maximum return. That is how you balance large kits that only sell, at most, several dozen to a low hundred kits.

As for GW proper, it is all about the plastic kits. Space Marines got the BA releases...Death Company, Sanguinary Guard, and the Baal predator, which was an add-sprue to an existing kit. That is 3.

I'm not trying to pretend that SMs don't get an inordinate amount of love. They do. But keep that in perspective. They don't make kits to piss you off. And they don't make kits based on some random idea of what army/fan base is worthy. They make kits based on a profit ratio. The SMs do well because require less effort up front. This is a business, gents.

As for GW barely being profitable...barely is a damn sight better than most mini/gaming companies, especially in this economy. SMs will get releases every year. Sorry. If you don't like that, pick another game.

Until that company inevitably goes under.

What was the 1% Necron release!? Tomb Stalker doesn't count as that's FW.

Kurgash wrote:What was the 1% Necron release!? Tomb Stalker doesn't count as that's FW.

Then they got nothing. The graph was counting FW releases as well.

Kilkrazy wrote:

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:It's a vicious cycle. GW produces SM variants because they have so much groundwork on it already, and it's popular. On the other hand, this popularity and variety of kits was because they produced so many variants. And it's never going to change, because none of the other races will ever be as profitable as the SMs.

...

The counter arguments to that are:

1. GW is only barely profitable, thanks largely to international currency exchange changes (a weak £).
2. Sales have been dropping for several years.
3. If you stripped out the Xeno player contribution, they would be making a loss.
4. Suppose a lot of Xeno players dropped the game because it got too boring. Would SM vs SM vs CSM vs IG be sufficiently interesting to keep the game going?

1.) I'm not good with financial matters so I wont argue this one. However I do know that buying GW locally here tends to have a considerable markup compared to that of the UK's price (calculating with exchange rates, Maelstrom, which claims to offer a 10% discount, is actually 30% cheaper than the GW retail price here on average).

2.) Same as above. Although I would imagine their sales improving if they had lowered the price to around that of normal toy hobbies rather than as a sort of luxury item. Certainly I've seen a ton of people pass up the hobby solely due to the price (the few that I know who indulges regularly borrows my stuff, which is partly why I own so many armies).

3+4.) Up until the update of the Ork Codex, I rarely, if ever, saw any xeno players. Most of the demographic over at fairview mall played either one of the imperial armies or Chaos, with maybe one or two for each of the xeno races (some, like the Dark Eldar and necrons, were never even brought up in a conversation, let alone had any players). Right now Orks saw a resurgence, but otherwise the other xeno races remain few and far between. In addition, every player I know owns at least one SM army and regularly updates it, so even if all the xeno races get cut, GW might suffer a drop in sales, but it will recover as people accept that SMs are all that's left. The local FLG has two whole racks dedicated to Marine stuff, with another half-rack dedicated to CSM and Imp Guard stuff, while all of the xeno races share the last rack.

Basically they could possibly quell all of the complaints by focusing more on Xeno races, and compensate the loss in space marine revenue by making the game overall more accessable monetary wise. However such is a dangerous venture, since if there isnt enough purchases to fill the gap made by those two decisions, it may put GW in the red, or worse.

dienekes96 wrote:The initial analysis didn't fully capture the realities of 2010. I would certainly agree that 5th has been pretty Marine heavy, but it's hardly the pie chart presented. Not all releases are equal.

The 3 bolter releases by FW??? What work into those? Someone asked why they needed 3 releases? How much work did FW do? What resources did they commit? Each release involved a single sculpt, copied 5 times, and sold to bolster the company bottom line while they grind out a Phantom Titan. I could say the same for the Armor Mks. One set of arms, one set of heads, one set of chests, one set of backpacks, and two kinds of legs. Those releases pay huge dividends for FW. Minimal outlay, maximum return. That is how you balance large kits that only sell, at most, several dozen to a low hundred kits.

As for GW proper, it is all about the plastic kits. Space Marines got the BA releases...Death Company, Sanguinary Guard, and the Baal predator, which was an add-sprue to an existing kit. That is 3.

I'm not trying to pretend that SMs don't get an inordinate amount of love. They do. But keep that in perspective. They don't make kits to piss you off. And they don't make kits based on some random idea of what army/fan base is worthy. They make kits based on a profit ratio. The SMs do well because require less effort up front. This is a business, gents.

As for GW barely being profitable...barely is a damn sight better than most mini/gaming companies, especially in this economy. SMs will get releases every year. Sorry. If you don't like that, pick another game.

Until that company inevitably goes under.

On the one hand GW are marketing geniuses, because they know what sells.

On the other hand, GW's sales dropped 4% in the last half of 2010, compared to the same period in 2009.

On the third hand, GW themselves say their poor sales performance is not due to the bad economy.

No-one is saying SMs shouldn't get releases. They are saying that non-SMs should get releases as well.

dienekes96 wrote: Not all releases are equal

This is absolutely true. Of course the guys who got nothing, or next to nothing, might have been happy with even some just brass etch or transfers. The "it doesn't take much effort to release just a few bolters" argument cuts both ways: if they have time to do a minor release, why not do one for the guys who haven't gotten stuff in years? But, of course, I also agree with your statement that GWS doesn't do anything to piss people off (that's just a byproduct of making a game people are passionate about). Obviously, their market research indicates people want MOAR MAHRINES, and that's what they are doing. Is it working for them? Hard to say. They've been bleeding money, but as others have said, in this industry, in this economy, making any money requires superhuman efforts. They presumably know the market better then I do.

I posted this chart to rebut the people who say GWS is too Space Marine-oriented are just whiners, or incorrect, or it's just perception. It's not, at least in 2010: If something got released, half the time it was for Space Marines. I didn't question the wisdom of this choice, see the previous paragraph.

Perhaps a better methodology would be to weight each release with a score, with a low score for say a transfer sheet, a medium score for a single kit, and a higher score for each kit that's part of a large wave release (or for a model that was in the codex but previously unreleased, like the Valkyrie or Stormraven). Separating FW from GWS also would be interesting.

Ouze wrote:I posted this chart to rebut the people who say GWS is too Space Marine-oriented are just whiners, or incorrect, or it's just perception. It's not, at least in 2010: If something got released, half the time it was for Space Marines. I didn't question the wisdom of this choice, see the previous paragraph.

Since my quoted statement kind of inspired this thread and your chart, I feel the need to clarify that it wasn't my intention to imply that anyone was a whiner or that they were unjustified in bemoaning the brevy of space marine releases compared to other armies, just that certain jokes have been worn out (imo).

I'm all for non space marine releases (and fresh comedic material).

NELS1031 wrote:

Ouze wrote:I posted this chart to rebut the people who say GWS is too Space Marine-oriented are just whiners, or incorrect, or it's just perception. It's not, at least in 2010: If something got released, half the time it was for Space Marines. I didn't question the wisdom of this choice, see the previous paragraph.

Since my quoted statement kind of inspired this thread and your chart, I feel the need to clarify that it wasn't my intention to imply that anyone was a whiner or that they were unjustified in bemoaning the brevy of space marine releases compared to other armies, just that certain jokes have been worn out (imo).

I'm all for non space marine releases (and fresh comedic material).

No, no - maybe I should have stripped your name from that. It's a very common sentiment and yours just happened to be the most recent. I hope I didn't give the impression that's how it was presented, as it's certainly not how I took it.

This thread has somehow managed to make me both glad and ashamed of being a Marine player, so good work .

While I'm glad for the constant updates and new stuff, I will admit that the balance of releases, at least related in this thread does rather appall me, especially as I know there are lists like the Necrons who could really use some new stuff (And the Dark Eldar before them) and haven't really seen much in a while.

'Tis almost enough to convert me to the side of the Xenos ......that and getting bored of the Marine vs Marine games that seem to be all I play when I play outside of my circle of friends (Lucky to have only one other power-armor player in my 6man group).

Whilst the point that Space Marine releases can be used for a large number of armies, making them sound releases in terms of product demand, I'd like to point out that as an Ork player - ANYTHING CAN BE LOOTED!

Orks don't need more Ork releases, they need more tank releases! I bought a Storm Raven today - it's going to be at least a Fighta-Bomma when I'm done with it.

I used to play in a kind of local 40K league back in 3rd edition. Things were so heavily imbalanced toward Space Marines even back then that the other members of the league thought it my duty as a rare non-MEQ player to only play against SM armies. When I wanted to play against another xenos army, I got the distinct impression people thought I was actually being selfish. Because that meant two non-MEQ armies were pulled out of the rotation and that meant there weren't enough xenos to go around and some SM player would have to play a SM player. And that's boring, so I was bad for making that happen.

Even worse, since I could basically guarantee who my opponent would be every week, taking an anti-MEQ list became a no-brainer. So I had to listen to complaints about how cheesy my army was. "Oh, of course you took Howling Banshees in a Wave Serpent. You couldn't just once take Striking Scorpions, could you?"

That's part of the reason my interest in 40K has trailed off, and why I eventually stopped buying and playing all together. So while I may not be a statistically significant sample, yes, GW's promoting of SMs did make them lose some sales.

Odd thing is that GW had added two non-MEQ armies since then (Tau, Chaos Daemons. Three if Witch Hunters counts) and yet the Marine-heavy environment seems to have actually gotten worse.

I wonder, now that it's been a few months: Are the WHFB players seeing a noticable uptick in the amount of High Elf\Skaven players? I wonder how linked the demographics are to simply what's in the starter box.

From what I can see there are a lot of High Elf players coming out of retirement, so to speak, and a healthy number of fresh Skaven players in my local circles.

Buzzsaw wrote:

Polonius wrote:...

I haven't actually added it up, but I'd wager that if you added up all the dedicated kits for SM varients, you'd get roughly the same amount as something like Orks.

I mean, for plastic you have:
Wolf Packs
Wolf Terminators
Sanguinary Guard
Baal Predator
Stormraven (sort of?)
Death Company
DA upgrade
RW upgrade
BT upgrade

Compare to Orks:
Boys
Nobs
Trukk
Battle Wagon
Skorcha
Buggy
Bikes
Storm boys
Lootas
Grots

The point is, in terms of model support (by far the bulk of an armies development cost) all non-chaos MEQ variants roughly cost the same as a full new army.

You can argue if all SM variants are as varied as two full army books, but the cost/benefit ratio for MEQ books is stupidly high compared to other armies.
Or to Tau
Fire Warriors
Kroot
Battle Suits
Stealth Suits
Devil Fish
Sky Ray
Hammer head
Piranha

This serves to point out something that I'm not sure is really been touched on: the inherent savings in SM kits. That is; if you make a new plastic kit for Orks, or DE, or Tau, you have a kit that can only be used with that one army list. While you might, perhaps, be able to multi-purpose some Eldar models as DE, or IG as Tau irregulars, for the most part, every kit made for a non-marine army has a much smaller possible sale pool then a comparable SM release.

Just think about it in terms of the new Chibihawk kit: by allowing multiple armies to use the model, you increase the pool of people willing to buy it, decreasing the risk in making it. Same goes for things like generic SM terminators or tac squads, or assault marines, all of which can easily be used for loyalist marines (and with a little effort, chaos too).

By comparison, no matter how excellent and superior things like the new DE plastics are, they are only useful for DE players.

I'm not saying I agree with GW's release schedule, but it is important to bear in mind when terms such as "xenos" as thrown around. Just as it makes sense to lump toghether all releases for the various Marine chapters as "Marines", so we also have to recognize the limitations of non-SM releases: there is no "xeno" counterpart to the tac squad, or the terminator box, or a landraider or landspeeder, so on and so forth.

Given GW's limited resources, this is only to be expected.

Of course, there are two other issues here. One is that GW aren't forced to re-do all their minis for a new army. When we hear about the next army to get a release, most discussions here are about rules. GW could resurrect sales of flagging armies by simply releasing a new, up to date codex and drip-feeding minis. They seem to be focussed on hitting us with everything new at once, so that we all rush out and buy a new book and lots of new models. It seems a fairly short-term strategy. (In addition, I don't think any 40K armies have any truly terrible minis that are essential to the game. I can't think of a 40K equivalent of Nagash, or dragon ogres. There is nothing crying out to be updated from a mini point of view - though I await correction).

The second is that they could release upgrade kits for armies, allowing players to field specific themed armies within that race. They obviously do this with space marines - SWs only have two dedicated SW boxes IIRC. So, for the orks, there could be a sprue including speed freek parts, goff parts, and blood axe parts, with sanctioned rules for them each (armies entirely in vehicles, armies even harder in CC and armies with access to imperial vehicles, each with a respective weakness). The same could be done for eldar craftworlds, tyranid bio-fleets etc.

dienekes96 wrote: They don't make kits to piss you off. And they don't make kits based on some random idea of what army/fan base is worthy. They make kits based on a profit ratio. The SMs do well because require less effort up front. This is a business, gents.

As for GW barely being profitable...barely is a damn sight better than most mini/gaming companies, especially in this economy. SMs will get releases every year. Sorry. If you don't like that, pick another game.

Until that company inevitably goes under.

Sorry mate disagree with some of your comments...

THe its a Business side of your comment its well covered by Kilkrazy last post.

As for - Dont like so pick another game from other company ( that will inevitably go under) comment really not that accurate and kind of strange.

Sure some will go under for bad management or crappy product but Go compare the loss of sales GW position with the Problems to meet increased high demand for FOW and warmachine hordes goods... these are the few we know a bit but things like malifaux or infinity also seem to be going just fine... and seem to be growing...

Sorry to say but "inevitably" there will always be people that only see what they want to believe in.

Fafnir wrote:Where as there's a wealth of xenos that could be interesting, but never gets touched. Half the stuff doesn't even have a model

Like what? Tau, Necrons, Orks & Eldar have pretty much everything (barring some wargear options like warlocks on jetbikes).
Nid's are waiting on three MCs and some special characters.
DE are the only ones waiting on a significant proportion of their models but that's to be expected after a major re-boot like that.

Navarro, this board is packed with comments from members, seemingly astonished that GW would ignore all of these awesome armies to just make Marines. The perpetual ignorance towards sound business practices, the frequent business advice, almost all of which is tailored toward some notion of getting x army some love, indicates that some people might be insane, in the classic definition. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

As for my snarky comment at the end, it was made in general. I think it is gteat that Warmachine and FoW are doing well. Confrontation and Starship Troopers were great once. Here is a question...which of GW's competitors.existed in 2004? How about in 1998? How about in 1991? You may not like their business practices, but they have proved to be a lot better than their competitors over the years.

Malice did not drive my comment. I hope the games people play last forever. I think competition is the best thing for this little industry. But in my time in the hobby, the competitors keep changing. Except GW.

So, a plea to those without a degree in finance, business, or at least some analytical background, please don't give business advice to the successful company that has currently outlasted all tabletop competitors.

Scott-S6 wrote:

Fafnir wrote:Where as there's a wealth of xenos that could be interesting, but never gets touched. Half the stuff doesn't even have a model

Like what? Tau, Necrons, Orks & Eldar have pretty much everything (barring some wargear options like warlocks on jetbikes).
Nid's are waiting on three MCs and some special characters.
DE are the only ones waiting on a significant proportion of their models but that's to be expected after a major re-boot like that.

"Half the stuff" is something of an exaggeration.

The Nids are missing the Tervigon -- an absolutely key unit -- and the Tyrannofex which is less important. I can't remember the third one.

Tau have their entire range partly because it is a very small range. That's not necessarily a good thing in itself.