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 Pacific wrote:
Think that Yakface probably has the long and short of it (or maybe short and curlies would be a more apt expression).

There is a difference between what people want to see (which is for the continued basic codex to continue to exist) and what the track record over the past 6 months tells us might happen if you view things in a logical manner. Most people agree that ltd edition + digital only is a bad idea. But so what? So was the way Finecast was introduced, the cutting down to 1 man stores, the rest of world ban, Games Day, the increased direct only and too many other numerous things to mention. All of those things benefited GW's ledger at the expense of the fans and customer base, and this rumour slots in neatly with that. So, while you might say "I would hate it if they did that", people saying those exact words in the past didn't change what followed.

I could totally see an early (basic) digital release, followed by an extremely expensive ltd edition printed version, with GW knowing that many fans will want to buy both. Perhaps 6 months later a 'deluxe' digital edition which includes an FAQ, and perhaps then a 'super deluxe' that combines other bits and pieces with some kind of faux-leather cover for an extra $50. There is every possibility that many people could end up buying 3-4 copies of exactly the same material.

Exactly why I do a little, internal, facepalm every time a limited edition anything sells out in short order on GW's website. While I understand people's enthusiasm, perhaps as intimately as it is possible to understand another person's feelings, as I share that same feeling myself, for their models and armies and their desire to own special things associated to it, I just stop and consider what sort of message this is sending to the sharks in the sales room?

I would love to see a more expansive, inclusive GW, that was as much interested in stimulating business from the older gamer through love and enthusiasm for their product as being a giant birthday/Christmas/pocket money vacuum for younger players, but while they still have people willing to spend those sums of cash on items with negligible intrinsic value and ultimately little resale value, why should they bother?

Digital has proven to be a much tighter format for security, requires far less investment up front in printing or storage, no ongoing production costs at all, no shelf space in store, no requirement to hold inventory...

Christ, when I look at it that way, I can't see how, given GW's pursuit of cost reductions, this won't happen, even if it ultimately nets them less cash per copy. That would be offset to some degree by zero third party sales though, so the numbers may still stack up too.

Do it GW. Lose my revenue.

 azreal13 wrote:
7d4df6577b3b20ca133639f33f48e4c4.png]...requires far less investment up front in printing or storage, no ongoing production costs at all, no shelf space in store, no requirement to hold inventory...

Christ, when I look at it that way, I can't see how, given GW's pursuit of cost reductions, this won't happen, even if it ultimately nets them less cash per copy. ...

Design time for digital formats is far greater, and more expensive, than conventional artwork - salaries are 50% or 100% higher. Although this will become more streamlined as they produce more digital publications, origination costs are significantly higher for illustrated digital books. And, as mentioned before, margins on iBook formats are much lower. The numbers absolutely do not stack up. This is just another of your and Kroot's Chicken LIttle moments.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
Design time for digital formats is far greater, and more expensive, than conventional artwork - salaries are 50% or 100% higher. Although this will become more streamlined as they produce more digital publications, origination costs are significantly higher for illustrated digital books. And, as mentioned before, margins on iBook formats are much lower. The numbers absolutely do not stack up. This is just another of your and Kroot's Chicken LIttle moments.

You mean, Phil Kelly & Co. get a 50-100% bonus when their text is used in a digital product? And that copying webstore photos and FFG artwork into a digital file is an expensive procedure? Sure, makes sense
Guess that's why you ended your "argument" with insults.

And just in-house digital products means no printing company and no more potential leaks of photos...

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
7d4df6577b3b20ca133639f33f48e4c4.png]...requires far less investment up front in printing or storage, no ongoing production costs at all, no shelf space in store, no requirement to hold inventory...

Christ, when I look at it that way, I can't see how, given GW's pursuit of cost reductions, this won't happen, even if it ultimately nets them less cash per copy. ...

Design time for digital formats is far greater, and more expensive, than conventional artwork - salaries are 50% or 100% higher. Although this will become more streamlined as they produce more digital publications, origination costs are significantly higher for illustrated digital books. And, as mentioned before, margins on iBook formats are much lower. The numbers absolutely do not stack up. This is just another of your and Kroot's Chicken LIttle moments.

What?

None of that makes sense?

You can't call the numbers because you don't have the numbers, none of us do, so while you are free to speculate that it wouldn't work, you aren't in a position to tell me I'm wrong.

And my name isn't Kroot.

I don't think that this is a very valid rumour. Not much evidence, and though it may be possible that the Sisters/Inquisition Digital Codex may be a sort of test to see how well Digital Codecies are received and how well they are used, I do not think that it would be in any way a viable method for GW to go with all Army Books and Codecies.

Just about all players I talk to (including myself) enjoy having the physical book very much, and even collect them. Not only that, but I feel as though it would be incredibly inconvenient and deter players from starting the hobby, and continuing. Also it happens relatively often that some pictures are leaked, but a few pictures being leaked early is a lot different from an entire codex being leaked early.

Get past the "resale value" of any media product and it becomes much easier to go to digital.

I don't think it would happen but, if it did, that would be the end of my dysfunctional relationship with GW.

Eric

Interesting rumor. One thing is clear, I will be getting a laugh at someone's expense over this. It's just unclear who that will be for the moment. Either the purveyors of far-fetched rumors, or the eedjits making this kind of decisions.

I'm almost inclined to hope it's true, since it would mean my return to the game would be even more unlikely, and that I could start selling off parts of my collection with no regrets.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Maelstrom808 wrote:
For me, this would be the end of the game. I don't own a tablet and have no intentions of buying one - same with a smart phone. Having used ebooks and friends' tablets before, I hate navigating with them, and find them a pain to read compared to an actual book.

How do you live....

Nice condescension, friend. Despite what you might have heard, owning either of those things is not a prerequisite for membership in polite society.

So, the TL;DR of this is GW wants to eliminate any reason to buy their books instead of pirating them?

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
Interesting rumor. One thing is clear, I will be getting a laugh at someone's expense over this. It's just unclear who that will be for the moment. Either the purveyors of far-fetched rumors, or the eedjits making this kind of decisions.

I'm almost inclined to hope it's true, since it would mean my return to the game would be even more unlikely, and that I could start selling off parts of my collection with no regrets.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Maelstrom808 wrote:
For me, this would be the end of the game. I don't own a tablet and have no intentions of buying one - same with a smart phone. Having used ebooks and friends' tablets before, I hate navigating with them, and find them a pain to read compared to an actual book.

How do you live....

Nice condescension, friend. Despite what you might have heard, owning either of those things is not a prerequisite for membership in polite society.

I guess they don't have sarcasm in whatever country you live in? Get over yourself.

 cincydooley wrote:
I guess they don't have sarcasm in whatever country you live in? Get over yourself.

Oh, do tell me more, o stranger from an arcane land, about this incredible conversational innovation of yours. It sounds fascinating.

Nope, sarcasm does not survive at these latitudes. Every now and then, someone tries to import a new crop, but it just withers and dies in the cold darkness.

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
-snip- owning either of those things is not a prerequisite for membership in polite society.

At least for now.

To be more serious, I also believe it's not happening tomorrow. It's still a bit too soon to go "all digital", but I also think that's not completely impossible in a not-so-far future.

I mean, we already know GW is not "made for the poors" (I'm full of sarcasm inside, there, not intending to offend anyone ). It wouldn't be so "off" in their logic until now to go fully on the "Luxury Hobby Road".

 Peregrine wrote:
So, the TL;DR of this is GW wants to eliminate any reason to buy their books instead of pirating them?

Seems "legit".

 fishy bob wrote:

Rostere wrote:

 Erasoketa wrote:
Good luck trying to sell the games to 12 years old kids in Spain with codexes available only online and in English. It would be a suicidal move for GW here.

That's strange, don't kids learn foreign languages in Spain?

Where I live, a translation would be seen as condescending.

But where you live, you know, isn't the rest of the world.

Please, don't make me compare Spanish educational system to the Swedish one. Moreover, not to any nordic one. I might cry in despair. Yes, English es teached. Poorly. Gak level. We can generalize and say that most people in Sweden speak English. We can also generalize and say the most people in Spain doesn't. The percentage of people who would be willing to read a rulebook in English is minimal. ForgeWorld is not near as popular here as anywhere else, for example.

I am actually hoping for this to happen. This would make it easy for them to directly fix errors, make erratas etc.

I can see them having 2 options:
Download the codex on ebook
Buy the printed copy.
That way it would work for everybody. Like with most books you have those two options. Nothing stopping from gw to do that aswell.

I guess GW will have a print button on their site, print out your codex for only 50quid!

 azreal13 wrote:

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
7d4df6577b3b20ca133639f33f48e4c4.png]...requires far less investment up front in printing or storage, no ongoing production costs at all, no shelf space in store, no requirement to hold inventory...

Christ, when I look at it that way, I can't see how, given GW's pursuit of cost reductions, this won't happen, even if it ultimately nets them less cash per copy. ...

Design time for digital formats is far greater, and more expensive, than conventional artwork - salaries are 50% or 100% higher. Although this will become more streamlined as they produce more digital publications, origination costs are significantly higher for illustrated digital books. And, as mentioned before, margins on iBook formats are much lower. The numbers absolutely do not stack up. This is just another of your and Kroot's Chicken LIttle moments.

What?

None of that makes sense?

You can't call the numbers because you don't have the numbers, none of us do, so while you are free to speculate that it wouldn't work, you aren't in a position to tell me I'm wrong.

And my name isn't Kroot.

Well, I do work in publishing - so I guess that disqualifies me, from your standpoint that those who have no connection with a business know how to run it better than those with experience of it. For instance, you're wilfully overlooking the fact that there's VAT and an Apple royalty on iBooks, because that doesn't fit your Chicken Little world.

If GW does indeed go limited print and digital only they lost themselves an other custumer.

Maybe they want to do on order only in a couple of years.... with GW you never know.

and no, thats not a rumor - you never know wat people take serious here either. :-x

 cincydooley wrote:

 Maelstrom808 wrote:
For me, this would be the end of the game. I don't own a tablet and have no intentions of buying one - same with a smart phone. Having used ebooks and friends' tablets before, I hate navigating with them, and find them a pain to read compared to an actual book.

..

How do you live....

Heh, the same way I lived before cell phones were around at all - just fine.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
Well, I do work in publishing - so I guess that disqualifies me, from your standpoint that those who have no connection with a business know how to run it better than those with experience of it. For instance, you're wilfully overlooking the fact that there's VAT and an Apple royalty on iBooks, because that doesn't fit your Chicken Little world.

But you don't work for GW. Phil Kelly & Co don't get a higher salary just because their texts are used for digital products.
Using webstore and FFG pics in their digital products is not an expensive procedure.
These are not high quality digital masterworks, these are cheap no-effort copy-paste jobs with mostly existing material and maybe 5 Word pages of added new extra text.

But why am I talking to someone who doesn't trust his own argument to work without insults

Yes they have to pay VAT + Apple/Google tax on ebook sales, but they also don't have to warehouse and distribute tons of paper.

I don't understand how the salaries for digital editors is 50-100% higher though; presumably the print edition is still edited digitally in similar tools to the digital edition, but it's rendered in a PDF (or whatever the industry uses) and sent off to a printer rather than rendered in an iBook/epub/mobi and uploaded to the store. As such, the actual editing/graphics/authoring is identical, with the exception of the interactive stuff which presumably results in an additional digital editor in a staff of, what, 5? for an increase in cost of at most 20%

Essentially, if this were to end up becoming a reality, would this essentially equate that a person can not purchase anything except directly from GW (IE: based on rumors of their new upcoming website and you'd have to purchase these books through that website).

With the trends that we have seen over the last couple of years, I'm not sure we'll necessarily see the end of print, but GW trying to work out a method to where a customer can only purchase GW through GW's online store or brick and mortar store appears very plausable. Making books only e-books and ordered exclusively through GW would be another step in that direction.

this is being grossly over-thought out. Whenever gw does two things in a row, the whole internet screams that there's a pattern there. We've had two e-codexes, so the internet demands that all codexes are e-codexes from now on, just like every army would have a gargantuan creature.

Selling actual rulebooks is integral to the hobby. If gw didn't give a damn about that and just wanted money they'd be a hedge fund or just stock a load of porn or something.

The only way they could be convinced this would be feasible would be if e-book sales were huge and the hardbacks have flopped. We don't have any actual data on this but i find it very likely that people aren't buying rulebooks any more.

Herzlos wrote:
Yes they have to pay VAT + Apple/Google tax on ebook sales, but they also don't have to warehouse and distribute tons of paper.

I don't understand how the salaries for digital editors is 50-100% higher though; presumably the print edition is still edited digitally in similar tools to the digital edition, but it's rendered in a PDF (or whatever the industry uses) and sent off to a printer rather than rendered in an iBook/epub/mobi and uploaded to the store. As such, the actual editing/graphics/authoring is identical, with the exception of the interactive stuff which presumably results in an additional digital editor in a staff of, what, 5? for an increase in cost of at most 20%

Digital designers earn a lot more than print graphic designers. Sadly for our family.. you can simply export from the standard design package, which would work for the standard ePub format, but not for the iBook one. It's a newer discipline, and there are fewer good digital designers around. My wife is currently designing a posh mag for one of the planet's flashiest car makers.. she commissions the shots, oversees the design, then the fella who comes in and transfers it to an iPad app, which will pick up a quarter of the readership, will earn 50 per cent more.

GW might well be insane and irrational. But they don't wilfully throw money away, and won't do this.

Right, the people doing the layout, graphics and design aren't earning any more, just the guy that converts it to the iPad app, and that's presumably because it's a newer discipline, as you said.

But with a smallish studio of writers, you presumably only need 1 iPad converter to however many writers and graphics guys you have, so the 50% salary increase only applies to a small fraction of the workforce. If it's 5 staff, then it's an increase of 10% (50% of 20%), 10 staff gives an increase of 5% and so on.

They'd easily make that saving back by not having to pay an outside printer, or having to distribute and store all the printed materials. How much would the warehouse space cost compared to the increase in the one staffers salary?

Herzlos wrote:
Right, the people doing the layout, graphics and design aren't earning any more, just the guy that converts it to the iPad app, and that's presumably because it's a newer discipline, as you said.

But with a smallish studio of writers, you presumably only need 1 iPad converter to however many writers and graphics guys you have, so the 50% salary increase only applies to a small fraction of the workforce. If it's 5 staff, then it's an increase of 10% (50% of 20%), 10 staff gives an increase of 5% and so on.

They'd easily make that saving back by not having to pay an outside printer, or having to distribute and store all the printed materials. How much would the warehouse space cost compared to the increase in the one staffers salary?

Well, we're discussing gradations of grey, but if you're only printing iBooks and eBooks you will only have digital design staff - you won't have conventional designers doig the thing then handing it over for conversion. It will cost more. You could argue it's only 20 per cent, it's possible it might be, but for most companies there's a substantial premium. Add in the slice for Apple and VAT, and the economics become a lot trickier.

For every major publisher, except Amazon, eBooks hardly wash their face. Seriously. Of course that's changing all the time, but the move doesn't make economic sense for GW at the moment. Yet, of course there are warehousing and especially shipping costs for printed books, but actual print costs have fallen recently, after a hike a few years ago.GW wouldn't simply throw away a valuable revenue stream, this story is just a masochist's fantasy.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
GW wouldn't simply throw away a valuable revenue stream, this story is just a masochist's fantasy.

I don't know. GW didn't have a problem sacrificing multiple revenue streams when they stopped translating their supplements just to save a few pennies per copy. We're not exactly talking about a rational, responsible company here.