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Henners91 wrote:

scarletsquig wrote:There's no point wasting your time thinking about this.

If you don't like the prices, there are hundreds of other alternative games out there, a lot of which are a lot more affordable.

If you want to keep playing GW games, there are cheaper options for buying minis too.. £50 spent on Mantic will get you 100 dwarfs which can be used to make a 2000 point warhammer army, you can even make a chaos dwarf army with all the frills if you want at literally 4 to 10 times less per model than the cost of getting it from Forge World.

You only ever need to use GW models in GW stores and official tournaments, pretty much everywhere else lets you use whatever, especially if it is well-painted.

GW has the largest range of high-quality plastics on the market currently, which is the main reason why people still buy primarily from them.

I second this, nothing rivals Mantic for quality miniatures:



So affordable and yet clearly superior to GW in every way!

Which product is that? I'll take 50, linky please!

notprop wrote:In the preamble of the 2011 report it was stated that anyone looking for a quick buck best look elsewhere as GW management was/is about long term growth not divided. I paraphrase but the sentiment is the same. Divided is however a natural consequence of owning stock and should not be suprisingly to anyone. Moaning about it smacks of entitlement and jealously that someone is making money from "my" hobby.

Actually, some of it is concern for the long-time viability of the company as dividends (at least recently) have consistantly been more than earnings. That's a major red flag right there. There is also the concern that rising prices drive more people out of the hobby until it makes it extremely difficult to find an opponent for your game, this being a social hobby that requires more than one person. Less people to play against means less variety which means less interest in the game, and it's a downward spiral from there.

Price increases are normal. They do not only happen with GW.
GW does it because of inflation.
Yeah, I'm having some economy lessons.

thenoobbomb wrote:Price increases are normal. They do not only happen with GW.
GW does it because of inflation.

Fortunately there are a lot of other companies (in fact, I can't think of another) that don't have a perennial price increase. GW's behaviour in so far as economics is concerned always seems fine until you compare it to everyone else in the same industry.

BP, Shell, Tescos, Sainsbury, almost any services company, and many more.

Did you know a penny sweet wil cost you more than a penny these days. A shop near me wanted 10p for a refresher chew when I wanted to introduce my daughter to its teeth cracking delights.

Oh yeah: price rises really are more common than you are making out Pacific.

notprop wrote:The chairman of a publically traded company owns 6.1% of the company he has been running for approximately two decades - the evil bastard!

Frankly, he ought to have more stock. Executives that get paid more in stock options (that cannot be liquidated for a defined period) than in cash are highly motivated to ensure the long-term success of the company.

notprop wrote:BP, Shell, Tescos, Sainsbury, almost any services company, and many more.

Did you know a penny sweet wil cost you more than a penny these days. A shop near me wanted 10p for a refresher chew when I wanted to introduce my daughter to its teeth cracking delights.

Oh yeah: price rises really are more common than you are making out Pacific.

Pacific wrote:

Fortunately there are a lot of other companies (in fact, I can't think of another) that don't have a perennial price increase. GW's behaviour in so far as economics is concerned always seems fine until you compare it to everyone else in the same industry.

Didnt know GW made sweets :O

to be fair 1p sweets havnt been around since i was little, shame they were amazing :(

Makutsu wrote:Not really complaining but more a so of not understanding their business model.

Yes, it may be old and "lame" but there still stands a truth to it.

Well, GW models aren't ugly and actually look quite good at least my DE army looks nice~ and using other models as "proxies" or substitutes would feel a notch down for me.

Hey, I don't really mind the prices, as a new player I have bought from second hand minis and discounted FLGSs only.

The business model is not hard to understand it is Phyletic Size Decrease, Stephen J Gould wrote an interesting essay on it using Hershey bars as an example. I stumbled on a similar example the other day when I bought a pack of Wrigley's gum. When I was a lad there were seven sticks in a pack and each stick had a paper wrapper and they were about 8p, now there are five sticks and no paper wrapper and they are about 40p. The difference with GW is that unlike Hershey bars and Wrigley's gum they are selling a product that still serves it purpose twenty years after I first consumed it - and once I have bought something from them I never have to buy anything again to get the enjoyment.

Also in your OP you mention inflation. Which is a bit of a red herring because the quoted inflation figure includes such thing as fees for internet dating sites, mobile phones, and potatoes. None of those products have any bearing on the cost of producing models. But things like gas and petrol prices do, and these have increased hugely over recent years - certainly in the UK where the price of petrol is around £1.40 a litre.

As for the 'think of children argument' it is old and lame - just as practically all think of the children arguments are.

And if you don't mind the prices what are you complaining about?

thenoobbomb wrote:Price increases are normal. They do not only happen with GW.
GW does it because of inflation.
Yeah, I'm having some economy lessons.

Here's a equation for you:.

revenue = price x units sold

They're not raising prices just because of inflation. They're raising prices to find the point where the price produces the maximum possible revenue.

If all GW did was raise prices to keep up with inflation, they'd never actually increase their revenue in real terms unless they increased the units sold instead (which requires more marketing, more sales, more customer retention, getting existing customers to buy more, etc.,).

If they increase the prices more and more each year, eventually they will hit the point where they maximize their revenue.

And they can't reach that point unless they price over and above inflation.

It's simple if those others game had GW's player base they would charge GW's prices.
GW is going to charge whatever the market will support.
Prices will drop when their profits start to take a major hit. Which will basically mean they have been overtaken by something like Mantic, or warmachine. Which isn't likely.

Possibly Mantic IF and when they get a full line of 6+ armies rolling, and if their rules get a lot more interesting.

Although it is interesting that apparently the Aus prices didn't go up much this year, indicating that there is some kind of ceiling to it above inflation.

Just wanted to share my experience:

I started painting minis a while back. I had a decent set of catachan pewter blisters, but never really played.

With the black reach set, I saw a lot of people get into the hobby at my FLGS. Plenty of people were picking it up, and generally coming back to learn to play because it was such a good deal.
However, once they needed to fill out their army besides the basic starter kit, alot of people dropped out. This I believe is due to 2 things, the price, and the lack of competition.

These two things have to be connected, and while i go back every week to look for a game, it has gotten harder and harder to find an opponent. Everybody has moved on to Warmachines now...

I'd love to fill out my army, and theres some beautiful stuff in the the 40k line, but having a viable army list means buying alot of the same units, and it feels like a punch to the gut when i need to buy another 46.25 for a dreadnought, and then find a cheap way to get autocannon arms on it, when I want to buy a set of assault marines i'll never use because jet packs are cool...

Wagguy80 wrote:It's simple if those others game had GW's player base they would charge GW's prices.
GW is going to charge more than the market will support and we will pay anyway.
Prices will rise even if their profits start to take a major hit. Which will basically mean they have been overtaken by something like Mantic, or warmachine because they still think they're working in a vacuum

Possibly Mantic IF and when they get a full line of 6+ armies rolling, and if their rules get a lot more interesting.

Fixed that for you

frozenwastes wrote:
Here's a equation for you:.

revenue = price x units sold

They're not raising prices just because of inflation. They're raising prices to find the point where the price produces the maximum possible revenue.

If all GW did was raise prices to keep up with inflation, they'd never actually increase their revenue in real terms unless they increased the units sold instead (which requires more marketing, more sales, more customer retention, getting existing customers to buy more, etc.,).

If they increase the prices more and more each year, eventually they will hit the point where they maximize their revenue.

And they can't reach that point unless they price over and above inflation.

I'd encourage you to read up on Price Elasticity of Demand.

skyth wrote:

notprop wrote:In the preamble of the 2011 report it was stated that anyone looking for a quick buck best look elsewhere as GW management was/is about long term growth not divided. I paraphrase but the sentiment is the same. Divided is however a natural consequence of owning stock and should not be suprisingly to anyone. Moaning about it smacks of entitlement and jealously that someone is making money from "my" hobby.

Actually, some of it is concern for the long-time viability of the company as dividends (at least recently) have consistantly been more than earnings. That's a major red flag right there. There is also the concern that rising prices drive more people out of the hobby until it makes it extremely difficult to find an opponent for your game, this being a social hobby that requires more than one person. Less people to play against means less variety which means less interest in the game, and it's a downward spiral from there.

You noticed that too about the dividends. Good

@AtariAssassin

Currently the LFGS in my area are reducing GW product by 20% Most of them are increasing their product line from other companies.
"Nature Abhors a Vacuum", as the saying goes and people who are still in the hobby and leaving GW all together are looking for alternatives.
People are playing other games at their stores.

Myself? Sometime in 2013 when all of my tournament obligations in running an event will have been met I'll probably leave the 40K all together.

I hope you can get some more games in yourself.

As a once small buisiness owner myself, I can tell you that running a business is hard. There are a LOT of factors to consider when doing things like setting prices. The idea that you can take stripped down equations from economics and then universally apply them to every specific situation is laughable.

In the world of business, you've got to be able to carefully navigate all of these different variables and pressures, or you can fold overnight, whether from specific shock (like FASA), or because consumers are fickle (like the other 90 tabletop strategy games that we only still play like 3 of anymore). If GW is increasing prices, it's because they genuinely believe it's in the interest of the health of the company as a whole. If it wasn't, GW"s shareholders would boot the leadership out, and boot them out in a hurry.

In any case, GW is providing a product that has been getting better over time (better models, better rules/fluff, more people to play with, etc.) at a price that hasn't risen substantially over inflation over the long term (as in, over the last 25 years). It has still continued as a company, while dozens of others have folded. People complain that GW is a monopoly, while overlooking the fact that it would have to be doing things terribly right for that to even be possible.

As for the specifics of the current price hike, I can't say for certain as I'm not on the board. My guess is that the entire world economy is still in the gak and, like many other companies, GW is having to fall back on its existing regular consumer base to make up for the fact that it's going to be very difficult to get new customers (regardless of price) in this current economy. Retrenching back onto loyal regulars is a common strategy when times are tough.

Of all complaints, there is really only two that strike me as real. The first is the absolute mess GW has made out of its Australian operation. Someone needs to be sacked if it's cheaper to buy retail from the US and have it air-mailed to Australia than to buy it wholesale from the distributor.

The second, I will agree, that the fact that GW is both retrenching AND paying out a divident (which they've INCREASED) makes no damn sense whatsoever. I would hesitate to blame individual greed, as much as I think it's an attempt to sweeten up investors so that they don't get skittish and bail on the company (so that they can save up their pounds and pence in a sock drawer, presumably). In the end, though, you will please stockholders more with solid long-term growth than by flashing a little bit of cash at them right now. That said, I'm not on their board, so perhaps I don't know just how tenuous the position of their equities are.

scarletsquig wrote:There's no point wasting your time thinking about this.

If you don't like the prices, there are hundreds of other alternative games out there, a lot of which are a lot more affordable.

If you want to keep playing GW games, there are cheaper options for buying minis too.. £50 spent on Mantic will get you 100 dwarfs which can be used to make a 2000 point warhammer army, you can even make a chaos dwarf army with all the frills if you want at literally 4 to 10 times less per model than the cost of getting it from Forge World.

You only ever need to use GW models in GW stores and official tournaments, pretty much everywhere else lets you use whatever, especially if it is well-painted.

GW has the largest range of high-quality plastics on the market currently, which is the main reason why people still buy primarily from them.

I couldn't agree more with this. Really the thread should've ended here!

pretre wrote:

frozenwastes wrote:
Here's a equation for you:.

revenue = price x units sold

They're not raising prices just because of inflation. They're raising prices to find the point where the price produces the maximum possible revenue.

If all GW did was raise prices to keep up with inflation, they'd never actually increase their revenue in real terms unless they increased the units sold instead (which requires more marketing, more sales, more customer retention, getting existing customers to buy more, etc.,).

If they increase the prices more and more each year, eventually they will hit the point where they maximize their revenue.

And they can't reach that point unless they price over and above inflation.

I'd encourage you to read up on Price Elasticity of Demand.

Umm. The equation includes it.

Price goes up, units sold goes down, but price times units sold might be higher as a result.

Eventually they'll hit a point where putting the price up has a negative result on the final revenue total. That's when they've gone too far.

They've almost hit that point. Their latest financial report shows less than a percent in real (adjusted for inflation) revenue growth from their miniatures business. But that includes a mammoth amount of paint sales that results from overhauling the line, so maybe their revenue adjusted for inflation and a one time paint purchase by retailers is now shrinking because of elasticity.

Either way frozenwastes, GW's price arose waaaaaaaaaaay beyond the % of inflations.

Hence, it is not inflation alone ( or more because ... because GW can xD )

Industry specific inflation is higher than general inflation.

I would also suggest that there was a general realignment of prices for the releases of 6th with the presumption that they will hold their prices on those lines for longer than the current approximate 2 year cycle.

Australian prices didn't increase as much as they have historically (in regards to the last price hike) and an interesting turn of events is a restructure in Australian GW stores - staff cuts and moving to cheaper rent locations with more flexible lease agreements; the analytical minds of this forum can decide what these things may mean.... the local GW store manager put a bit of a spin on it citing that they are cutting costs where ever possible in Australia so they can afford to run things like "games-day" which I smugly thought was a bit rich, considering the $75 ticket price just to walk in the door (but what would I know).. Perhaps GW Australia got the message of "maximize your profits some other way than super price hikes twice a year" and started investigating more long term sustainability tactics...

Now GW Australia won't be able to rest on the laurels that the super Australian prices are a direct result of the expensive rent and ages they pay to run their stores, and perhaps they are finally able to admit that the GW stores are not the only way people get not this hobby.. Personally, I would not care if they closed every one of the small tiny BS stores around the place and just had ONE in each capital city like it used to be, for those times when you absolutely have to go to a GW store, you make the trip, any other time you support a FLGS or some web based service to get your fix..l I for one will never play in a GW store that has only 2x2 or 4x4 tables and only enough room to swing a landraider and an obscure carefully calculated angle... (why would ANYONE? They are expensive, cramped, and full of people trying to stuff product down your throat without a moments peace, I just don't get it)..

Meh.. Close the stupid stores, have one mega centre in each major city, and go back to a great mail order service that was reliable, cheap, and could give you the specific bits you wanted... And FFS, put 20 skeletons back in the box for less than my paycheck!

notprop wrote:Industry specific inflation is higher than general inflation.

We're talking about only one company in this industry though mate..

Why is this discussion happening AGAIN? Maybe it's just me, I've just come over from the StatueForum where they're complaining about the price rises at SideshowCollectibles (the GW of collectible statue world).

These hobbies are optional, buy or don't buy, simple as. If you can't afford it do something else.

GW is the industry you fool!

Seriously though it will be common to most hobby companies as they are dealing primarily with petrochemical/metal raw materials, high labour intensity productio. GW also have to contend with distribution costs and property rates to a much greater extent.

notprop wrote:GW is the industry you fool!

Haha yes right, I forgot about that!

I do agree though that one area GW still scores well with me is that they have managed to keep most of the production in the UK/US. I lost a lot of time for Battlefront when they switched production to Malaysia, yet still manage to charge similar prices to guys such as Peter Pig and Skytrex who still produce on a smaller scale in what are basically tiny companies. So, in the latter case I've had no compunction at all about buying PSC stuff at a drastically cheaper price, and as you say Battlefront don't even have the overheads of stores to maintain.

Delephont wrote:These hobbies are optional, buy or don't buy, simple as. If you can't afford it do something else.

That's a fair point certainly. But, an important issue is that there used to be a much cheaper buy in to GW games than there is now. There are none of the skirmish or board-game scale games that got so many of us 'bitten by the bug' when we were kids, and nowadays all but the upper middle class are going to be turned away from a GW store when they walk into it and find out how much they have to spend. Yes they might buy a box of tactical marines, but they will forever be looking wistfully at the massive battle reports featured on the pages of WD, or in the rulebook, and might well end up dumping those miniatures (and miniature wargaming in general) forever.

This is mitigated somewhat (at least in the UK) by something of a renaissance of the local game store, which sells other games - a parent can pick up Malifaux/Infinity or a board game from Mantic for instance for less than £50, which I think is a reasonable amount for a parent to gamble on something their kid will potentially throw into a box after 2 weeks. £200-£300, not so much.

LunaHound wrote:Either way frozenwastes, GW's price arose waaaaaaaaaaay beyond the % of inflations.

Hence, it is not inflation alone ( or more because ... because GW can xD )

My point was never that it was inflation alone. It was that in order to get price x units sold = revenue to the highest level possible, they MUST increase prices faster than inflation. If they don't, then the real price remains the same and their price increases don't have their desired effect (for GW, not for us).

Since the decline of LOTR, GW has probably priced away around a half of their customer base. Each year they jack up the prices again, sell less and make a bit more money (or a bit less some years).

They're going to continue this until it stops "working" for them. The problem is that it's often hard to tell when you've achieved a peak price for a product until after you've passed it.

Either way, GW's upper management will all retire quite wealthy, so even if this is a short sighted plan, the long term for them is a golden parachute. It'll be someone else's problem if this ever bites GW in a catastrophic way.

The plus side is that GW recruits with their demo sales process and in this internet age, it's really easy to find out about 3rd party bitz sellers and alternative games and miniatures to GW ones, so they recruit customers, some will stick with GW, some will quit miniature gaming completely and some will join the larger market, providing more and more opportunities for small businesses to take market share.

There's really no up side if you're planning on sticking with GW products and not using conversion bitz. You just get to pay more and more and more each year.

And even then, the idea that GW is offering the same product, but has raised the price substantially over the rate of inflation is just plain old false:

Ailaros wrote:In 1987, space marines were £0.75 apiece. The price for a litre of petrol in 1987 was £0.387. In 2012, the price of a space marine is £2.30 apiece. The price of a litre of petrol as of this month is £1.338.

The cost of a space marine has increased just about 200%, while the price of petrol has increased 245%. During that same time period that gas prices have gone up 240%, and space marines 200%, the price of gold has increased just slightly less than that (194%), while the price of a pound of bacon has nearly tripled (293%). The price of ground beef has gone up 83% in the last three years alone, much less the last 25.

Plus, even if GW increased its prices slightly over the cost of inflation, you've got to look at the quality of the product itself. 25 years ago, you basically couldn't find anybody to play the game with you, and the minis looked awful to a game where its easy to find someone to play (with better rules), and that has minis that are of much higher quality.

What we're talking about is a game that has gotten cheaper, or stayed the same (or at absolute worst, gotten slightly more expensive) compared to inflation, while also being a bigger, better, more popular game with a much higher quality product.

Ailaros wrote:And even then, the idea that GW is offering the same product, but has raised the price substantially over the rate of inflation is just plain old false:

Ailaros wrote:In 1987, space marines were £0.75 apiece. The price for a litre of petrol in 1987 was £0.387. In 2012, the price of a space marine is £2.30 apiece. The price of a litre of petrol as of this month is £1.338.

The cost of a space marine has increased just about 200%, while the price of petrol has increased 245%. During that same time period that gas prices have gone up 240%, and space marines 200%, the price of gold has increased just slightly less than that (194%), while the price of a pound of bacon has nearly tripled (293%). The price of ground beef has gone up 83% in the last three years alone, much less the last 25.

Plus, even if GW increased its prices slightly over the cost of inflation, you've got to look at the quality of the product itself. 25 years ago, you basically couldn't find anybody to play the game with you, and the minis looked awful to a game where its easy to find someone to play (with better rules), and that has minis that are of much higher quality.

What we're talking about is a game that has gotten cheaper, or stayed the same (or at absolute worst, gotten slightly more expensive) compared to inflation, while also being a bigger, better, more popular game with a much higher quality product.

This is of course ignoring the fact that you only needed around 10-30 Marines in 1987's Rogue Trader. A tactical squad was 250 points before upgrades and would easily reach 300+. Now 10 or 20 Marines isn't even a legal Army.

Personally I believe that miniature wargaming and buying things from GW is a very cheap hobby, don't get me wrong. In the grand scale of things, GW stuff for your hobby is very inexpensive. As far as a game goes, however, GW stuff is fairly expensive.

Certainly this is true.

If you wanted to complain about how expensive it is to start a new army, it has less to do with price hikes and more the sheer quantity of stuff you have to buy, thanks to rules changes, etc.

That said, I wonder if GW doesn't already realise this. For example, when GK came out, it was possible to build a 1500 point paladin draigowing with only 11 models. Likewise, deathwing was always really cheap, and with new dark angels, they're likely to make a build that more explicitly parallels a draigo or loganwing army. It wouldn't surprise me if they give you expensive new terminator options with CSM as well so that you could make a legal 1500 point army on the very cheap.

That they also categorically made horde armies worse, giving you even more incentive to play low-model-count armies, well, perhaps it's a deliberate attempt to curb the cost of the hobby again?

Vladsimpaler wrote:

Ailaros wrote:And even then, the idea that GW is offering the same product, but has raised the price substantially over the rate of inflation is just plain old false:

Ailaros wrote:In 1987, space marines were £0.75 apiece. The price for a litre of petrol in 1987 was £0.387. In 2012, the price of a space marine is £2.30 apiece. The price of a litre of petrol as of this month is £1.338.

The cost of a space marine has increased just about 200%, while the price of petrol has increased 245%. During that same time period that gas prices have gone up 240%, and space marines 200%, the price of gold has increased just slightly less than that (194%), while the price of a pound of bacon has nearly tripled (293%). The price of ground beef has gone up 83% in the last three years alone, much less the last 25.

Plus, even if GW increased its prices slightly over the cost of inflation, you've got to look at the quality of the product itself. 25 years ago, you basically couldn't find anybody to play the game with you, and the minis looked awful to a game where its easy to find someone to play (with better rules), and that has minis that are of much higher quality.

What we're talking about is a game that has gotten cheaper, or stayed the same (or at absolute worst, gotten slightly more expensive) compared to inflation, while also being a bigger, better, more popular game with a much higher quality product.

This is of course ignoring the fact that you only needed around 10-30 Marines in 1987's Rogue Trader. A tactical squad was 250 points before upgrades and would easily reach 300+. Now 10 or 20 Marines isn't even a legal Army.

Personally I believe that miniature wargaming and buying things from GW is a very cheap hobby, don't get me wrong. In the grand scale of things, GW stuff for your hobby is very inexpensive. As far as a game goes, however, GW stuff is fairly expensive.

This is an extremely worthy point, look at the fellows who restore cars for fun in addition to whatever they do for work, or like me collect and shoot firearms (less expensive then the cars, but damn expensive in general) the former is easily in the thousands, if not tens of thousands, and even a modest collection of the latter with regular shooting will run you a few grand. Though the argument could be made both have more value as you get a working car or a functional tool for your money.