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Saldiven wrote:
So, judging from their recent financial performance, how well would you say this strategy is working for them?

Terribly. I never said it was a good plan, just that it's GW's current plan and it's at least better than getting rid of their retail stores, taking GW products out of independent stores, and only selling through the GW website in a desperate effort to claim every last bit of profit margin they can.

 Peregrine wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
GW have been trying to "fix" that for years - downsizing gaming space, kicking out veterans, reducing open play, reducing opening hours, pre-booked painting lessons or intro games only, and so on.

Yes, but that just means they're obsessively focusing on recruiting new players and cutting costs. They don't want the bitter veteran who has been playing for 10 years and has already bought everything they're going to buy, they want new players meeting other excited new players.

Assuming those excited new players are still new enough to not get kicked out of the store. I'd imagine that the more eagle-eyed newbies would also register that beyond the demo tables, there's no where to actually play properly, and/or that there's no actual player presence.

 Peregrine wrote:

Saldiven wrote:
So, judging from their recent financial performance, how well would you say this strategy is working for them?

Terribly. I never said it was a good plan, just that it's GW's current plan and it's at least better than getting rid of their retail stores, taking GW products out of independent stores, and only selling through the GW website in a desperate effort to claim every last bit of profit margin they can.

Honestly, I agree with you. It really does seem like GW is trying to drive as many sales as possible through their proprietary channels. It does mean their per unit margin is higher, but it also appears that it is contributing to the decreased number of units moved.

Saldiven wrote:
Honestly, I agree with you. It really does seem like GW is trying to drive as many sales as possible through their proprietary channels. It does mean their per unit margin is higher, but it also appears that it is contributing to the decreased number of units moved.

As I said on the first page:

It plays in to their current business strategy of making the most amount of money from the least amount of people.

You know... their current model with the stores seems like a big scam. You give the ILLUSION of this big hobby where you can use your $1000+ of figures, but never really offer it. It's a carrot on a stick to make people think that they need to buy all this stuff for their "collection" in the hopes of using it.

WayneTheGame wrote:
You know... their current model with the stores seems like a big scam. You give the ILLUSION of this big hobby where you can use your $1000+ of figures, but never really offer it. It's a carrot on a stick to make people think that they need to buy all this stuff for their "collection" in the hopes of using it.

I will admit, luckily, my local GW isn't like that. The manager has one epic table set up that usually has 1 section for LOTR, 1 section for WHFB intro game, and 1 section where you can play your own games with the forces you bring in. There's 2 smaller tables, a 4x4 with a 40k intro game and a 6x4 (I think) where you can play whatever you want. There's usually a lot of terrain set up on the tables that aren't being used for intro games, but he's usually fine with you moving it around to play a game.

Maybe it's just because the store is huge, even with those tables there's plenty of space in the store, it's no biggy to have people playing or not playing and most customers aren't too negative.

It's the only place I bother to play as the FLGS doesn't have many (if any) dedicated 40k/WHFB nights anymore.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Saldiven wrote:
Honestly, I agree with you. It really does seem like GW is trying to drive as many sales as possible through their proprietary channels. It does mean their per unit margin is higher, but it also appears that it is contributing to the decreased number of units moved.

As I said on the first page:

It plays in to their current business strategy of making the most amount of money from the least amount of people.

There also seems to be an element of scrificing long-term growth for short-term gain in this to me, though I majored in history and not business!

What worries me as a player is that it is now impossible for me to even have the chance of rolling into a store (even an exceptionally well-stocked one like Mikhalia's) and getting all the models I might want/need to field an army. For a new player or for an established player wanting to start a new force, finding out you have to mail-order much of your new force seems like it would be a major deterrent to starting in the first place!

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm sure they must lose a good chunk due to the lack of advertising.

advertising. That is what is going to kill gw: very few people have even heard of them. The lord of the rings is one of the most popular things in the world and yet is their least popular game. Because people dont play games that they dont know exist. Direct only is simply because in this world of discounts its the only way to get people to buy their product from them instead of somewhere like gifts for geeks.

 Da krimson barun wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm sure they must lose a good chunk due to the lack of advertising.

advertising. That is what is going to kill gw: very few people have even heard of them. The lord of the rings is one of the most popular things in the world and yet is their least popular game. Because people dont play games that they dont know exist. Direct only is simply because in this world of discounts its the only way to get people to buy their product from them instead of somewhere like gifts for geeks.

People are not playing LotR or The Hobbit is because it's too expensive. Increasing the prices, and halving the product also doesn't keep the current people who were playing still keep playing. LotR/The Hobbit is just like 40K and Fantasy, GW advertising is word of mouth. Since hardly anyone is playing LotR/The Hobbit anymore there is no word of mouth going around because of what GW has done.

A lot more is effecting GW than advertising. They lasted what 30 years without hardly any advertising but going by word of mouth. Sadly word of mouth is not enough now because GW seems to be driving people away instead of brining them in.

Yeah, I was stoked for The Hobbit miniatures when they were coming out and then saw the price and was like "...err....no".

Davor wrote:


People are not playing LotR or The Hobbit is because it's too expensive. Increasing the prices, and halving the product also doesn't keep the current people who were playing still keep playing. LotR/The Hobbit is just like 40K and Fantasy, GW advertising is word of mouth. Since hardly anyone is playing LotR/The Hobbit anymore there is no word of mouth going around because of what GW has done.

A lot more is effecting GW than advertising. They lasted what 30 years without hardly any advertising but going by word of mouth. Sadly word of mouth is not enough now because GW seems to be driving people away instead of brining them in.

I am not so sure that GW advertising is only word of mouth. They want to believe that but with the first LOTR movie and game other companies did some advertising and GW had great LOTR sales (40k and fantasy players were a bit concerned with the new game that is taking GW design studio attention from their favourite game). It was even made into the third main GW game because it was so successful. I don't think that this many people would have bought LOTR stuff if they didn't know about it. That brought GW a lot of new players, some of them even switched to 40k or fantasy. There was even the LOTR bubble because they suddenly sold so much stuff and didn't know how to handle it (except using it as an excuse for bad financial performances after the movie hype died down).

While I would agree that the Hobbit minis are not selling because of their optimistic pricing the LOTR minis sold because of the advertising. Although it probably doesn't help the Hobbit minis that nobody (besides us) knows that they even exist.

Davor wrote:
People are not playing LotR or The Hobbit is because it's too expensive. Increasing the prices, and halving the product also doesn't keep the current people who were playing still keep playing.

The prices aren't that bad actually. They're as expensive per-model as GW's stuff in general, but you don't need anywhere near as many models as WHFB/40k. And, unlike WHFB/40k, there's a fully-developed skirmish game to start with that you can scale up to the army-level rules with all of your existing models, so even if your eventual goal is a large army you can start playing right away with that initial $50-100 investment.

The real problem with the LotR stuff is the nonexistent marketing. Most LotR fans probably aren't even aware that the game exists, and never will be unless they happen to start playing some other miniatures game first. And that's a shameful missed opportunity for GW. They should have had LotR starter boxes in mainstream retail stores to reach as broad an audience as possible and exploit the valuable IP instead of just treating it like another WHFB product. But I guess GW is so terrified of repeating the previous LotR bubble that they'd rather make no profit at all than make a lot of money for a short time and then have to explain to the shareholders why it didn't last forever.

I got into the hobby with the LotR stuff back when GW had the other company putting out a magazine specifically for it.
That company ran a few ads on TV and I believe that was a big factor in the success of the lord of the rings line.

 Peregrine wrote:

Davor wrote:
People are not playing LotR or The Hobbit is because it's too expensive. Increasing the prices, and halving the product also doesn't keep the current people who were playing still keep playing.

The prices aren't that bad actually. They're as expensive per-model as GW's stuff in general, but you don't need anywhere near as many models as WHFB/40k.

They're as expensive as the more expensive WHFB/40k models which is why people complain. Mirkwood Elves and Palace Guard are $4 a model, Warriors of Dale and the Dwarf models are $3.50 per model, Knights of Rivendell $10 per model. Glade Guard and Dwarf Warriors for WHFB are $2.20 per model, even Chaos Knights are only $6.60. Those are the cheapest things in The Hobbit "good" side, a lot of the resin stuff is a lot more like the Lake-town warriors are $8.30 per model.

And those are US prices, some of the regional pricing is even more out of whack. Mirkwood Elves in Australia are $7 a pop and Legolas/Tauriel are $40 each for a single sprue clamshell plastic blister... seriously feth that.

You can find WHFB/40k models that are even more expensive, but I think many people just look at the price per model of everything that has come out for the Hobbit and go no further. Especially when you have the insane prices of the characters.

Especially when part of the appeal of the original LOTR game was the value. A lot of those models are only $2 per model for plastic infantry and $5 for plastic cavalry.

I don't know the US prices, but the Mines of Moria set for LOTR was cheap enough for me to impulse buy, I think maybe $85AUD, escape from Goblin Town is $205AUD... feth that. I actually want escape from Goblin Town, but not at that price.

Then add to that the fact the range is very slim. GW have only been adding the absolute minimum of new products and haven't attempted to grow the game at all.

Advertising is only part of the problem. Even established LOTR gamers (there's still some around my area) who know about the new releases have totally skipped The Hobbit because of the excessive pricing.

Googling around, the Mines of Moria set was $45US... Goblin Town is $125US. People are just far less likely to want to impulse buy a boxed set which is that expensive.

The Hobbit stuff is a smaller scale too (not by much, but by enough), so the assumption is that it should be at least proportionally cheaper.

Agreed on the impulse thing - many times I've been tempted to buy Goblin Town just for the Dwarves to paint, but I just can't bring myself to pay £75. The Goblin Town scenery itself would be great for Malifaux, but at least 100% too expensive.

Another hobbit problem is almost no bits.ten orks are cheaper then men of dale yet are bigger models and have more stuff!?you just dont get the value.

Yeah, LOTR models are less comparable to GW's other plastics (multipose, typically lots of options) and more comparable to something like these:

http://www.wargamesfactory.com/webstore/world-war-2/ww2-german-infantry-28

...which weigh in at less than 75 cents each.

LOTR seems like it'd be awesome to play, but that model cost has scared almost everyone I know away.

 TheKbob wrote:
LOTR seems like it'd be awesome to play, but that model cost has scared almost everyone I know away.

Well with the direct only/finecast lord of the rings stuff it does deter people from the game. You can certainly buy most of the main troop forces not direct only.
I have a big box of lord of the rings stuff and haven't even played it. I have the old One Rulebook To Rule Them All and not the new one. Would just need the source books.

Trying to keep this on topic a bit though is that I rarely ever see any lord of the rings stuff in my FLGS. The owner has a huge Easterling force and played the War of the Ring with a bunch of people and used to stock it then. Now whenever I go in there he has the same 3 or 4 boxes of stuff that have been there forever and he can't sell it. I believe that direct only for Lord of the Rings is fine because nobody really wants to buy it....which is a shame but just the hard truth.

 chiefbigredman wrote:
Trying to keep this on topic a bit though is that I rarely ever see any lord of the rings stuff in my FLGS. The owner has a huge Easterling force and played the War of the Ring with a bunch of people and used to stock it then. Now whenever I go in there he has the same 3 or 4 boxes of stuff that have been there forever and he can't sell it. I believe that direct only for Lord of the Rings is fine because nobody really wants to buy it....which is a shame but just the hard truth.

I think the main problem is GW have just let LOTR stagnate and so no one wants to buy it, rather than the other way around. When games stop getting updates they do tend to die out, carried on only by the hardcore enthusiasts who will continue to play it even if new players can't find the models and rules to start an army of their own.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I think the main problem is GW have just let LOTR stagnate and so no one wants to buy it, rather than the other way around. When games stop getting updates they do tend to die out, carried on only by the hardcore enthusiasts who will continue to play it even if new players can't find the models and rules to start an army of their own.

If they added more miniatures and improved the rules situationit would have stagnated slowly because they also sold to people who had no idea what wargaming is and who were not that invested in the game.

After the movies were done and nobody advertised the games anymore their sales slowed down. For GW it was the LOTR bubble because of that but in the end it probably also showed that wargames can be advertised to increase sales. How else to explain the people who have no idea what wargaming is but started buying from the LOTR line, or the LOTR bubble itself. It's not like money just appeared in GW's bank accounts out of thin air. Stuff happened that made people buy this new line of miniatures without siphoning off money out of the 40k and fantasy budgets. It's not even about some sort of deceptive advertising to lure people into a game they otherwise wouldn't like but just basic "Hey people around the world, stuff like this exists and you might like it" type of informing people about all this. The industry would probably never become as big as video games but even as a niche hobby it could grow a bit more besides what GW expects.

I'm not sure what they were trying to do with the Hobbit. It clearly wasn't going to be as big as LotR and they'd already been letting the game go to pasture. The Hobbit range has been rather poorly handled, the films lack of impact is one problem but the GW stuff is just so expensive. It's s far cry from the release of Fellowship when they were flying off the shelves even before DeAgostini got involved.

I do suspect a bit of it was to go with keeping the licence for themselves and keeping other companies away, but the license was probably pretty expensive and I'm going to guess its a money pit they will be glad to get rid of.

Mario wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I think the main problem is GW have just let LOTR stagnate and so no one wants to buy it, rather than the other way around. When games stop getting updates they do tend to die out, carried on only by the hardcore enthusiasts who will continue to play it even if new players can't find the models and rules to start an army of their own.

If they added more miniatures and improved the rules situationit would have stagnated slowly because they also sold to people who had no idea what wargaming is and who were not that invested in the game.

I know what you mean and I agree there was a bubble of people who were only in to LOTR for the hype the movies created... but I think there was also a large swathe of wargamers who were genuinely as interested (if not more) in LOTR as people are interested in 40k and WHFB.

The reason 40k and WHFB have remained for 25+ years is entirely down to the fact GW keep updating it (I won't say "improving" ), if GW just picked an edition and said "yep, this will do" and stopped updating it and then started removing models as they stopped selling, I'm pretty sure it'd be dead in a few years as well.

I think the same is true of LOTR, if they'd kept updating it and releasing things as they could, the game could have lasted for ages. There's a lot of nerds out there who love the Tolkien universe over other fantasy settings like WHFB.

Maybe it's just because LOTR was so very popular in my area even among regular wargamers long after the movies that I feel this way. 40k and WHFB both declined in the years LOTR grew, when LOTR started to stagnate, people didn't go back to WHFB and 40k, they just went on to entirely different games. Even now I find the LOTR universe GW created much more appealing than the cartoonish WHFB universe they created.

AllSeeingSkink yup, continuous development is probably a defining element of a long living game (a bit like Star Craft/WOW/TF2) so I completely agree with you on that point but it just seems to me that the LOTR bubble showed that there was much more money coming in than they expected. I just somehow can't picture all these people seeing the movie and then going home to guess keywords that would result in google showing them link for the LORT wargames (that they didn't know of before).

GW got help from outside and couldn't do anything to stop these marketing efforts from happening and it showed in their financial performance for these few years. The bubble years were probably the best evidence for GW that advertisement actually works (despite their claims).

advertisement does work, there is no real refuting that otherwise no one would.

The problem is the cost involved in it. for GW they are limited in the media they can advertise.

Do they do Magazine inserts - in which case it will only go to war gamers who most likely already know about GW
they cannot do DM as its the wrong media.

which leaves them with DRTV and similar Media which is extremely expensive and you would have to be run multiple times to get enough level of saturation. The cost is to exorbitant for GW. Also they would have to spend millions to even 'create' a known brand (and to create the 'Halo' effect). Money that just simple isn't in the company. I don't think people realise how expensive it is. I work in the production area of marketing collateral for a large UK insurance business - so have some level of experience of this and the costs involved.

I think what LOTR showed is that creating partnerships can allow for short term spikes in growth and if used correctly can then become a gateway into 40k and/or fantasy. I think GW is missing the trick with this one. Yes it means doing thing outside of the usual for them, and means they would need to be clinical in rinsing the initial sales and then either dump it or put it out to pasture to eventually die off. However if you get it wrong and marry up to the wrong thing it can be seriously damaging so it is a risky area.

Other companies send people to events like Salute and Gencon. They take their latest releases and demo upcoming things.

This generates hype, which generates sales.

GW pay out millions of dollars to their shareholders each year because they can't see a use for investing it back into the company. I doubt real advertisement costs more than what they pay out.

GW wants and NEEDS to become smaller and more flexible to be able to react to the changing world (of wargaming).

They started small and flexible a long time ago and back then webstore did not exist, that where the independent stores and, later, GW stores came for.
Now all competitors are smaller, more flexible and GW has to be too and a strong and good webstore is a part of that.

GW's strong points are miniatures, i actually do agree with them on that.
And they don't have any competition in regard to background, not even close.

They don't have the best (balanced) system, they don't even want to have, they want to sell miniatures.

ORicK wrote:
GW wants and NEEDS to become smaller and more flexible to be able to react to the changing world (of wargaming).

They really don't. GW could continue to dominate the market if they just stopped doing stupid stuff. GW are their own worst enemy, they do more damage to their own company than all of GW's competition combined.

They don't have the best (balanced) system, they don't even want to have, they want to sell miniatures.

And this is a textbook example of GW's self-inflicted damage. GW doesn't sell miniatures, they sell games that happen to contain miniatures. Sure, a few people will buy the models just to paint them, but most of GW's customers* are people who want to play the games. And when the rules suck they lose sales to their competition. The fact that GW still doesn't understand this is almost unbelievable.

*GW will claim that most of their customers don't play the games, but that has more to do with the appalling number of people who give up and abandon the hobby before they manage to build a whole army than a lack of interest in the rules.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Other companies send people to events like Salute and Gencon. They take their latest releases and demo upcoming things.

This generates hype, which generates sales.

GW pay out millions of dollars to their shareholders each year because they can't see a use for investing it back into the company. I doubt real advertisement costs more than what they pay out.

You cannot just decide to opt not to pay out an annuity because you feel like doing some advertising, that's a sure ffire way for a major shareholder to call an EGM and oust the current regime. As per UK rules their are legally obligated to return a profit for their shareholders.

Advertising cost millions and to build a brand takes a a hell of a lot more. I honestly dont think GW has the revenue stream to do this. They need to make sue of 3rd party partnership to do this.

Licencing things out is a good way - ie Dawn of War, and also how Creative assembly will be doing a Total War: Warhammer. This way the partner foots the bill and you make a tidy lieceing fee for next to no work, and at the same time reap rewards of converting from game to tabletop

GW actually does NEED to become smaller, their middle-management size and overhead outside the UK had become huge and the GW-shops were just not worth it.

But i do agree that GW could dominate the market if they stop doing stupid stuff.
My favourite GW game is Epic (Armageddon) for instance and i play(ed) all Fanatic/Specialist games.
The 28mm games are, for me, the best games for creative purposes.

But if i want to play a GOOD game, it's not WH40K or WHFB.
It's Epic or Blood Bowl or Warmaster or Dystopian Wars or....

And allthough it is more or less true that many gamers are in the hobby to play (and win), there is little reason to play tabletop wargames if you don't like miniatures.