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Korraz wrote:Where on earth is "Recalling and Destroying" "cutting losses"?
Nobody can be that dumb to decide that it's better to spend the cash on destroying the stuff, rather than to cut the price in half and actually sell the stuff.

I think I'm going to check next week if the local store still has their mointains of Dreadfleet. They should have at least 20-40 copies left after my last count.

Edit: Hilarious typo

In accounting you can write off the value of the unsold units, declare them a loss, and set it against your profit for tax next year.

Example
It may sound stupid but if you are sure you'll never sell the units they are still sitting on your balance sheet and taking up warehouse space you have to pay for.

20,000 units of Dread Fleet with a nominal stock value of £25 each = £500,000

Destroy them and reduce your balance sheet by £500,000.

Pay £200,000 less corporation tax next year.

Will be fun to see the game appear on ebay the moment all copies are gone and then people will kick themselves for not getting it to sell.

Kilkrazy wrote:In accounting you can write off the value of the unsold units, declare them a loss, and set it against your profit for tax next year.

You're correct, but that's not an answer to what Korraz was asking. If you're writing off 500,000 pounds of stock for a 200,000 pound tax credit, you're still losing 300,000 pounds. He was asking why you wouldn't just sell them at a unit price of, say, 35 pounds to cover the costs of selling them, increasing your costs by 200,000 pounds but also gaining 700,000 pounds in revenue, and thus increasing your after-tax profit by 300,000 pounds over the "write them off" option.

Ouze wrote:

ArmorOfContempt wrote:and seriously, those who didn't get Dreadfleet are missing out. Dreadfleet, a few friends and some beers is a great way to spend an evening. It's a really, really fun game.

I believe you. It did look fun. The single, sole reason I didn't but it was it was just too damn expensive. $120 dollars!!

It has no expandability, no tie-ins to any other games. Therefore, by definition, it is a board game - yes? Like Monopoly ($17), or Risk ($25). OK, so the rules are a little more strategic, though, so let's say it's then competing with other niche board games, like Last Night on Earth ($30), or maybe the Dungeons & Dragons board games ($44), or space combat games (which really are naval combat anyway) like Battleship Galaxies ($50) - and the former 2 actually do expand into other games...but the problem is prices, plain and simple.

In my opinion, they cannot exceed $60 for a standalone board game of that type. The only way to do that successfully is by banking on a known good franchise (Space Hulk), which they did not. I'd have bought this game for $60, no hesitation.


So far as why destroy them, I leave you with this.

I've paid 75 USD for a stand alone board game.

Kilkrazy wrote:20,000 units of Dread Fleet with a nominal stock value of £25 each = £500,000

Destroy them and reduce your balance sheet by £500,000.

Pay £200,000 less corporation tax next year.

And then call it the 'Dreadfleet Bubble' in your next annual report, right?

Kilkrazy wrote:In accounting you can write off the value of the unsold units, declare them a loss, and set it against your profit for tax next year.

Example
It may sound stupid but if you are sure you'll never sell the units they are still sitting on your balance sheet and taking up warehouse space you have to pay for.

20,000 units of Dread Fleet with a nominal stock value of £25 each = £500,000

Destroy them and reduce your balance sheet by £500,000.

Pay £200,000 less corporation tax next year.

The thing is, they could accomplish the same write off and generate good will by simply giving the game away for free.

Yeah, lotr bubble, df bubble, fine cast bubbles, sigh

LunaHound wrote:Read the responses in page 2 and 3 on brand images.

For GW to lower the prices is to concede they over estimate the product. And for a company that actively boast on their superiority this is a no no.

Then explain to me finding Black Library books in The Works (a UK discount book retailer)?

GW dont control prices for books and video games

There's plenty of things I didn't like about Dreadfleet (which is why I didn't buy it), but part of me is glad they made an effort to do something new. Its existence didn't particularly offend me and I'm glad some people enjoyed playing it. Still, Blood Bowl next year, eh GW?

Regarding value, this is a funny thing as most things decrease in value as demand falls off (basic rule of economics) and I can't see how someone who bought a product on the initial release would be annoyed about it. I sometimes pay £10 for a DVD on release fully aware that in six months time I will be able to buy it for £3.

AlexHolker wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:In accounting you can write off the value of the unsold units, declare them a loss, and set it against your profit for tax next year.

You're correct, but that's not an answer to what Korraz was asking. If you're writing off 500,000 pounds of stock for a 200,000 pound tax credit, you're still losing 300,000 pounds. He was asking why you wouldn't just sell them at a unit price of, say, 35 pounds to cover the costs of selling them, increasing your costs by 200,000 pounds but also gaining 700,000 pounds in revenue, and thus increasing your after-tax profit by 300,000 pounds over the "write them off" option.

From the accounting viewpoint, the hypothetical 20,000 units are not £500,000 cash, they are worth £500,000 because that is what was paid to build them. GW can't pay their electricity bill with the units. The cash invested in them was spent and it's gone. It can only be got back by selling the units, if that is doable, or by writing them down to zero for the tax write-off.

What GW have to look at is what they can now sell the units for. If GW don't think they can sell the units at a sufficiently high price, it may really be better to destroy them. £200,000 reduction in the tax bill is better than losing some money each year, for ever, if the units really won't sell and are taking up space and insurance costs in the warehouse.

There are various possibilities why GW might prefer not to sell the units cheaply.

One is that GW do not want to devalue their brand by holding a sale. This would also apply to giving the units for free. The first thing that would happen is that everyone who bought a full price copy will be outraged.

Another is that it may not be profitable to sell the games at £35 (or whatever). It might cost £65, which is practically the price they aren't selling at now, so they wouldn't sell. I'm making up these figures for the purpose of illustration.

A third possibility in this case is that GW might be pulling the units back from Australia, where they are too expensive, to sell them in Europe at full price.

malfred wrote:

puma713 wrote:

No, but when a company is putting out over-priced, over-hyped games instead of tending to their major lines, it is going to draw the ire of people who are waiting for entire waves of their armies to be filled in (tyranids, anyone?). Some people may feel, 'Why are you scultping boats that no one wants to play with when you could be sculpting Thunderwolves?" or "You could be sculpting [insert your miniature here]."

Instead, they put full focus on this game and, from what I've gathered from forums and websites, it turned most people off.

I'm going to continue to argue that I think GW is quite happy
with the rate at which they update armies. I think anything else
they do is done by extra labor they would just fire or cease to
contract work to should they stop working on those projects.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt a cessation of board games will
lead directly to a speed up of release schedules.

Oh, I agree completely. But I'm not sure the average 40K gamer who is waiting and waiting and waiting for their model line to be completed understands this.

I liked the idea of Dreadfleet, but it just wasn't for me. Mostly the price + the fact that it was limited = forgotten in a year.

I like that GW took a chance, and I like that they redid Space Hulk, but IMO they really need to stop with these extra games and just focus on their main systems. And then give licenses to good board game companies like Fantasy Flight to make these side project games and specialist games too.

Personally I liked Dreadfleet, The game is enjoyable, and the models are something different to what I normally paint. I'm still in the process of painting it all up. I'll also say that for £70 you got plenty of stuff for the price tag. Better then purchasing £70 worth of guards men for my IG army.

Also it's still available on the UK site.

GW has a long history of destroying its products. Our local GW shop destroyed dozens of books because the BL section was being redone. These very same titles were then restocked a few weeks later.

I do not think that GWs actions prevents the devaluation of their brand. It shows that the product is trash. It does maximize the amount of money GW gets per unit of product sold. They would see it as a horrible thing if you could get your gaming fix for less money. Fortunately there are many other companies that produce products at a reasonable price.

It is sad that GW would rather scrap the games than actually market them and try to attract new customers.

I highly doubt they'll destroy them. I understand why they would, but I'd think they would do something a little more creative to get them off the books. They could be used for Games Day in some fashion. Prizes, Paint & Take... Something other than the bin.

IMO, coming off of a complete sellout of Space Hulk lead GW to reach a little too far with this game; overestimate its sales potential and produce far too many.

The whole situation is unfortunate because Dreadfleet really is a fun game.

-Loki- wrote:The thing that makes me sad about this is it might make them decide to scrap future non-core games.

According to Harry and hastings they've had Blood Bowl set for next year, with 4 teams and everyhting you need packed into the box planned, with maybe rules for other teams not in the box.

If this kills that, and future, projects, it makes me sad, and the relish people have over this makes it sadder.

Blood Bowl yes,about time!

I think Blood Bowl is a different ball game (I punned). It's like space hulk where it's always been popular and seems there's other fantasy football minis getting released so there's definitely more of an audience for it. I know I've always wanted to check it out, just never got to it but I'd definitely pick up the new box set if it comes out for reals.

Ouze wrote:

ArmorOfContempt wrote:and seriously, those who didn't get Dreadfleet are missing out. Dreadfleet, a few friends and some beers is a great way to spend an evening. It's a really, really fun game.

I believe you. It did look fun. The single, sole reason I didn't but it was it was just too damn expensive. $120 dollars!!

It has no expandability, no tie-ins to any other games. Therefore, by definition, it is a board game - yes? Like Monopoly ($17), or Risk ($25). OK, so the rules are a little more strategic, though, so let's say it's then competing with other niche board games, like Last Night on Earth ($30), or maybe the Dungeons & Dragons board games ($44), or space combat games (which really are naval combat anyway) like Battleship Galaxies ($50) - and the former 2 actually do expand into other games...but the problem is prices, plain and simple.

I am inclined to think there is more to the problem than just that. I realise that it's difficult truly to be objective about these things, but Dreadfleet floundered where Space Hulk succeeded because its mechanics failed to impress many boardgamers - see excoriating reviews on boardgamegeek.com by way of example. I don't doubt that nostalgia helped Space Hulk to sell, but its appeal also lay in its simple, uncluttered mechanics and fast, cinematic gameplay (incidentally, also Blood Bowl's strongest selling point). Now Dreadfleet's not a terrible game, but it's too fiddly and time-consuming (and indeed also too bloody expensive) for a beer and pretzels game, and vastly too random to be a decent tactical game.

I suspect, sadly, that the only lesson that Games Workshop will take from this debacle is that "boardgames don't sell", whereas what they need to learn is that badly-written, overpriced boardgames don't (unlike their wargames) sell just because GW released them; the market is just too crowded and competitive for that. It's also indicative of their corporate hubris that they didn't bother to promote the game at Essen Spiel or at Origins, unlike every other games company with a new release.

And yet it's still available on both the UK and US webstores...

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?prodId=prod1350015a

It still shows, but you cannot add it to the shopping cart. It is not available.

Destroying stock rather than storing it avoids taxes on inventory, costs of storage, etc. There are many good reasons to get rid of something from inventory if it won't sell. I know a lot of people who did buy the game wanted more ships though, they should pull the sprues and sell them separately. But there's probably not enough money in the time and labor involved so they'll just trash it and write it off.

They should do what I suggested originally and that's sell them to toy shops like toys 'r' us or the similar Australian equivalent.

This way they get some money back quick on them (if the sales goes ahead). They also potentially reach a new audience and so put there brand out a bit, all without so much as a tarnished brand.

Looks a lot better than throwing out good stuff, that they simply can't sell.

ceorron wrote:They should do what I suggested originally and that's sell them to toy shops like toys 'r' us or the similar Australian equivalent.

This way they get some money back quick on them (if the sales goes ahead). They also potentially reach a new audience and so put there brand out a bit, all without so much as a tarnished brand.

Looks a lot better than throwing out good stuff, that they simply can't sell.

Genius. But they'll never do it.

It was something they did some years ago, and with some success.

An MB Games/GW copy of Space Crusade was the way I got into wargaming, and got bitten by the 'bug', and I know it was the same for a lot of other people in my age group.

It's so sad that in this day and age it has never been so difficult to get into the games, and Dreadfleet was one of the few ways that didn't require you to sell a body part in order to experience a game.

Recalled? Possibly in Australia (units are being distributed in the UK to Stores, rather than be flogged via the website).

Destroyed? Evidence please!

BrassScorpion wrote:

And yet it's still available on both the UK and US webstores...

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?prodId=prod1350015a

It still shows, but you cannot add it to the shopping cart. It is not available.

Destroying stock rather than storing it avoids taxes on inventory, costs of storage, etc. There are many good reasons to get rid of something from inventory if it won't sell. I know a lot of people who did buy the game wanted more ships though, they should pull the sprues and sell them separately. But there's probably not enough money in the time and labor involved so they'll just trash it and write it off.

It did when I wrote that. I added both to US and UK shopping carts successfully before the post (sorry aussies, didn't check yours!). That has since changed though.

ArmorOfContempt wrote:It's a shame that it didn't do well, since it's actually a great deal of fun.

Whats the difference? Even if it was the most populr thing going they would deep-six it or relegate it to a forgoten corner on a whim as they have done with all the other great games (Necro, Gorka, etc.)

Take Necromunda for example: Even after all this time it is fondly remembered by most and has a fanatic cult following.

If they released a new Necromunda box set with new models and plastic terrain it would sell like you can't imagine to greybeards and newbs alike, but that would make too much sense...

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Recalled? Possibly in Australia (units are being distributed in the UK to Stores, rather than be flogged via the website).

Destroyed? Evidence please!

Whoa! Mad Dok's back And he's disagreeing with H.B.M.C. already

I saw three copies left for sale in my local GW today. I expect they'll shift within the next couple of months

Not disagreeing as such, just asking for clarification on the statement they're being destroyed.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Not disagreeing as such, just asking for clarification on the statement they're being destroyed.

Good to see you back anyway. Hope all is well

DF is getting the Stalin treatment. All mentions of it are to be purged and all perpetrators sent to liquidation centers.

If you remember back a few months ago where everything GW was nothing but DREADFLEET DREADFLEET DREADFLEET, then you must be mistaken.