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GW expecting The Hobbit to do as well as LotR just goes to show how deluded the company is. LotR was such a success in large part do to crative folks like Rick Priestly, who had to work to convince GW to go for the idea in the first place.

GW allowed The Hobbit to die on the vine. The Hobbit was just more of the same from GW. LotR was, at the time, something fresh and different from GW status quo; a new product with big differences in terms of art, marketing, and price structure.

The Hobbit was just more sad-looking overpriced kits for a lagging game; all hat and no cattle. Customers said, "I don't nedd the Hobbit, and I sure as heck don't want it at those prices. "

If 40K is 2/3rds of GW's business, the company is facing more problems than it seems to be. Another WHFB edition aint gonna change that. 40K 2/3 of the business, losses in the UK, the US market propping up the company that lucked out with a favorable exchange rate? That is not painting a rosy picture of the future, and it magnifies the impact of the Chapterhouse litigation for sure.

LotR was *huge* back when it was released, people were looking forward to it for months...much larger excitement and buzz around it than the hobbit.

Fully agree that it's just not the hot IP right now...GoT would make GW an absolute freaking fortune if they announced it, that IP would translate perfectly to a 25-28mm wargame with around a dozen different factions and Martin himself is a fan of miniatures and therefore highly likely to give the thumbs up.

It would never happen though, source material isn't PG-13.

Best guess for a new IP would probably be the new star wars movie releases... that IP is about as much of a safe bet as you can get.

weeble1000 wrote:
GW expecting The Hobbit to do as well as LotR just goes to show how deluded the company is. LotR was such a success in large part do to creative folks like Rick Priestly, who had to work to convince GW to go for the idea in the first place.

I do not agree one bit with this statement, especially the idea that Rick Priestley was somehow so pivotal in getting the game off the ground.
Lord of the Rings did well because of the fact that Lord of the Rings had a huge number of battles spread throughout the movies and the starter boxes were good values for both the Good and Evil sides. They were not focused upon characters but rather a number of troops.

If the starter set had been the Dwarfs trying to retake Moria and given you a number of Dwarf Warriors and Orcs? I think it would have done far better.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
The Hobbit seems to have had a lesser impact than LotR which was everywhere, it just was a major event those years. GW has that to deal with but their prices on the Hobbit were absurd, the LotR fever wasn't replicated, partly their fault, partly due to generally less enthusiasm for the franchise.

Hobbit prices might not be entirely GW's fault though: all Hobbit merchandise seems expensive in comparison to other similar licenses.

Word of mouth only gets you so far. Advertising would have really helped. Also a lower price to get fresh blood into the hobby would have been the smart thing to do as well.

Also, espically seeing these one click bundles, do you really want to spend $500 to $1000 to play a game?

How many of you would have started the GW hobby if you knew how much it would really cost you and/or how much money you would be spending.

When I started, $100 to start was acceptable, but now, to just start you need about $300 min and about $500+ to really play.

Who wants to spend that much money when it's cheaper to spend $500 on an new console and get alot more hours of game time and not having to travel and transport minis to do so.

Then again, when you are selling Ferraris you don't go after the Ford Focus crowd.

It is sad that Fantasy is doing so badly. The sculpts seem to be consistantly better than 40k, the new lizardman releases looked fantastic.

But, like everyone else, I simply can't be arsed with the hassle of putting all my guys into neat little blocks.

Backfire wrote:
Really? Well that has been a huge miscalculation then: lots of people have been cynically suggesting that GW is only hanging on to license to stop anyone else getting it. It should have been obvious that it wasn't going to be as big as LotR in any case, though even the cynics probably failed to predict just how badly the movie failed to capture public imagination.

If they had been cynically handing onto the license only, they wouldn't have done the supposed production runs they did. Told there were 10,000+ starter sets alone made.

Howard A Treesong wrote:The Hobbit seems to have had a lesser impact than LotR which was everywhere, it just was a major event those years. GW has that to deal with but their prices on the Hobbit were absurd, the LotR fever wasn't replicated, partly their fault, partly due to generally less enthusiasm for the franchise.

Can attest to that. Remember going to see the opening of the Two Towers at the local mutli-plex. Area around the theater was packed with lines around the building. Had to park a couple blocks away because parking was so bad. Went to same theater for the Hobbit. Parking was no problem and there were no lines. The movie may have done alright financially, but it created zero excitement. People who saw the LotR movies multiple times in the theaters were meh on the Hobbit. Saw it and was done.

Pacific wrote:
Incidentally, I wonder how GW will react to dropping WFB and LoTR sales. Will those games gradually scale back until they disappear, and GW become a company that only sells 40k, or will the company return to what many regard as the 'golden age' of wargaming of the 90's, with scores of different new games being released and both within existing and even new game universes?

Like I said, talk is the head of GW North America is not wanting to let that happen. Two of their three main lines have faltered or failed in the last four years. Relying on one product is one bad release away from ruining the company. Pure speculation but she may be trying to improve the company health so that in a post Kirby environment, she is seen as the heir apparent. Turning things around and turning GW into make you look very popular with shareholders and staff. Take GW into a supposed "Second Golden Age" and then rest on those laurels to retirement like Kirby is doing.

Thing is, the real Ferrari genuinely push a premium brand that is attached to a product that continually attracts rave reviews and pushes the limit of what is possible.

Therefore they have the freedom to act a certain way.

GW are not in an industry that is large enough to allow for a Ferrari, have, at best, a tarnished image amongst the community and continually put out product that is ridiculed on here, and if the last 6 months is any indication, is increasingly not selling to a wider customer base either.

They talk the talk but they walk the walk of an Irishman at 4am on St Paddys day.

 insaniak wrote:

I would suspect that presenting it as a whole new game rather than just as supplemental material for the old one might have made a difference, as well. Aside from the new characters, why would you buy into the Hobbit after already buying 3 rulebooks for ever larger games from the previous films?

By that logic you could say why would anyone buy a Version 2.0 or 3.0 of any game system? It is not unique to GW and there are plenty of companies that are doing it.

silent25 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

I would suspect that presenting it as a whole new game rather than just as supplemental material for the old one might have made a difference, as well. Aside from the new characters, why would you buy into the Hobbit after already buying 3 rulebooks for ever larger games from the previous films?

By that logic you could say why would anyone buy a Version 2.0 or 3.0 of any game system? It is not unique to GW and there are plenty of companies that are doing it.

For a Wargame, isn't it more akin to releasing v3.0 of the system, then several years later trying to persuade people to buy the beta test?

Return of the King took $1.44bn in 2012 dollars, the Hobbit took only $1bn. I'd expect the second and third films to take in less too, since the general mood after leaving the cinema was pretty much "that wasn't as good as I expected it to be".

 azreal13 wrote:

For a Wargame, isn't it more akin to releasing v3.0 of the system, then several years later trying to persuade people to buy the beta test?

Not following your logic on this. How is the Hobbit a beta test? If that is what you're implying?

 scarletsquig wrote:
Fully agree that it's just not the hot IP right now...GoT would make GW an absolute freaking fortune if they announced it, that IP would translate perfectly to a 25-28mm wargame with around a dozen different factions and Martin himself is a fan of miniatures and therefore highly likely to give the thumbs up.

About 2005ish, GRRM had licensed Testors to do a miniatures game. They even had a few test pieces done.
A friend worked there and was showing them to us. They were 54mm, but I think the line was intended to be 28mm.
Something happened internally so they scrapped it and cut the department they hired to create it.
I doubt they still have control of it any more.

Darksword Miniatures has license for Game of Thrones last I checked, but I don't think a game was in the works.
Tom Meier is the main sculptor.
They are creating grunt soldiers along with the main characters, so who knows what is planned.

silent25 wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

For a Wargame, isn't it more akin to releasing v3.0 of the system, then several years later trying to persuade people to buy the beta test?

Not following your logic on this. How is the Hobbit a beta test? If that is what you're implying?

I meant, going from a large scale, high model count, multiple faction system to The Hobbit, which while I believe can still support that (don't play) has certainly come across as being marketed as a way of recreating the much smaller scale found in the movie. So while the scale of LotR kept increasing, the Hobbit seems like a step back.

 Kanluwen wrote:

If the starter set had been the Dwarfs trying to retake Moria and given you a number of Dwarf Warriors and Orcs? I think it would have done far better.

Been too long, but wasn't the original LotR box actually units from the opening battle of the FotR movie? Agree, that if the starter box had been the Battle for Moria, that might have generated more sales given the majority of the movie involved the word, "RUN!".

 Kanluwen wrote:
If the starter set had been the Dwarfs trying to retake Moria...

... then it wouldn't really have been a "Hobbit" game.

 azreal13 wrote:

I meant, going from a large scale, high model count, multiple faction system to The Hobbit, which while I believe can still support that (don't play) has certainly come across as being marketed as a way of recreating the much smaller scale found in the movie. So while the scale of LotR kept increasing, the Hobbit seems like a step back.

I still don't see how that is a negative for a new version of the game? In fact that would be a positive for any newer version of a game system as it suddenly makes it more accessible to newcomers. I never played LotR outside a demo and can't comment on the rules otherwise.

I decided to go back and have a look at my old White Dwarf magazines and i was shocked to see how far GW has fallen in Australia.

Now before anyone jumps down my throat, the figures are accurate.

In September 2007 GW had in its Autralian Operations.

28 Bricks and Mortar Stores
206 Independent Stockists.

Now as of July 2013 GW has approximately

33 Bricks and Mortar Stores, an increase of 5 Stores overall
80 Independent Stockists, a decrease of 126 Independent Stockists

For whatever the reason, such as retirements, business sales, bankruptcy and property loss, losing 126 Independent Stockists in 6 years bites on the overall sales of units.

GW Australia has a long way to go to get back to what it had in September 2007, but with prices as they are now, i can't see it.

silent25 wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

I meant, going from a large scale, high model count, multiple faction system to The Hobbit, which while I believe can still support that (don't play) has certainly come across as being marketed as a way of recreating the much smaller scale found in the movie. So while the scale of LotR kept increasing, the Hobbit seems like a step back.

I still don't see how that is a negative for a new version of the game? In fact that would be a positive for any newer version of a game system as it suddenly makes it more accessible to newcomers. I never played LotR outside a demo and can't comment on the rules otherwise.

Well, I think, considering its success, the original LOTR game probably reached most of the customers it would have. Excluding those who would have "come of age" in the interim. So to do something smaller scale isn't really going to capture the casual gamer who has fond memories of that game from back in the day, factor in the rather excessive pricing and the total lack of exposure and the percentage retention of that non-gamer market that LOTR so effectively tapped is probably pretty small.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Achaylus72 wrote:
I decided to go back and have a look at my old White Dwarf magazines and i was shocked to see how far GW has fallen in Australia.

Now before anyone jumps down my throat, the figures are accurate.

In September 2007 GW had in its Autralian Operations.

28 Bricks and Mortar Stores
206 Independent Stockists.

Now as of July 2013 GW has approximately

33 Bricks and Mortar Stores, an increase of 5 Stores overall
80 Independent Stockists, a decrease of 126 Independent Stockists

For whatever the reason, such as retirements, business sales, bankruptcy and property loss, losing 126 Independent Stockists in 6 years bites on the overall sales of units.

GW Australia has a long way to go to get back to what it had in September 2007, but with prices as they are now, i can't see it.

Don't assume that fall off is all closures, some stores may well have simply dropped GW and be doing just fine, which is probably worst case scenario from a GW standpoint, as every $ they take is definitely not giving them a cut.

Wasn't LotR also sold in book stores and some department stores?
And there was a magazine that had free minis in it to promote LotR as well, though I don't remember the name of that.

Take those 2 things out, add in the lack of battles in the Hobbit, and GW's bizarre pricing and packaging strategy, and you get a flop game.

azreal13 wrote:

silent25 wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

I meant, going from a large scale, high model count, multiple faction system to The Hobbit, which while I believe can still support that (don't play) has certainly come across as being marketed as a way of recreating the much smaller scale found in the movie. So while the scale of LotR kept increasing, the Hobbit seems like a step back.

I still don't see how that is a negative for a new version of the game? In fact that would be a positive for any newer version of a game system as it suddenly makes it more accessible to newcomers. I never played LotR outside a demo and can't comment on the rules otherwise.

Well, I think, considering its success, the original LOTR game probably reached most of the customers it would have. Excluding those who would have "come of age" in the interim. So to do something smaller scale isn't really going to capture the casual gamer who has fond memories of that game from back in the day, factor in the rather excessive pricing and the total lack of exposure and the percentage retention of that non-gamer market that LOTR so effectively tapped is probably pretty small.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Achaylus72 wrote:
I decided to go back and have a look at my old White Dwarf magazines and i was shocked to see how far GW has fallen in Australia.

Now before anyone jumps down my throat, the figures are accurate.

In September 2007 GW had in its Autralian Operations.

28 Bricks and Mortar Stores
206 Independent Stockists.

Now as of July 2013 GW has approximately

33 Bricks and Mortar Stores, an increase of 5 Stores overall
80 Independent Stockists, a decrease of 126 Independent Stockists

For whatever the reason, such as retirements, business sales, bankruptcy and property loss, losing 126 Independent Stockists in 6 years bites on the overall sales of units.

GW Australia has a long way to go to get back to what it had in September 2007, but with prices as they are now, i can't see it.

Don't assume that fall off is all closures, some stores may well have simply dropped GW and be doing just fine, which is probably worst case scenario from a GW standpoint, as every $ they take is definitely not giving them a cut.

That is why i said that for whatever reason, simply put that i agree some stockists decided to get out of the game, and again that is a lot of stockists to lose

skrulnik wrote:Wasn't LotR also sold in book stores and some department stores?
And there was a magazine that had free minis in it to promote LotR as well, though I don't remember the name of that.

Take those 2 things out, add in the lack of battles in the Hobbit, and GW's bizarre pricing and packaging strategy, and you get a flop game.

I recall this, and now they have gone from those shelves, and what i have seen and being told is that LoTR and The Hobbit have flopped, big time, because it is too expensive.

 azreal13 wrote:

Well, I think, considering its success, the original LOTR game probably reached most of the customers it would have. Excluding those who would have "come of age" in the interim. So to do something smaller scale isn't really going to capture the casual gamer who has fond memories of that game from back in the day, factor in the rather excessive pricing and the total lack of exposure and the percentage retention of that non-gamer market that LOTR so effectively tapped is probably pretty small.

And I still don't see how fewer model count factors into this. You keep shifting the goal posts. To suddenly say "fewer models bad" seems like a fallacy. We spend months complaining how GW is horrible for increasing the model count each edition and then you say, fewer models is bad? If WHFB or 40k were to come out with a new edition where fewer models are required would be greeted with shock and celebration. The whole October Mystery Game thread is filled with people who say GW needs to bring out small skirmish game. And here you say they did and supposedly also supports larger games was a bad thing? Marketing and price may be other factors, but to say needing fewer models is a factor comes across as very wrong. Heck, in the PP vs GW fanboys arguments higher model cost and lower model count is the defense argument the PP side was making for years.

@Achaylus72 how did Australia fair in the global turn down? Those independent store numbers reminds me of the numbers you heard for a longtime in the comic book industry. Closings and failures are pretty common in economic downturns.

The whole October Mystery Game thread is filled with people who say GW needs to bring out small skirmish game. And here you say they did and supposedly also supports larger games was a bad thing? Marketing and price may be other factors, but to say needing fewer models is a factor comes across as very wrong. Heck, in the PP vs GW fanboys arguments higher model cost and lower model count is the defense argument the PP side was making for years.

Games Workshop will never make a skirmish game that will hurt their core products. I believe that they will make a skirmish game (table top) with a separate set of rules that is not compatible with the current rule set and/or different model size all together. I also believe that the possibility of a skirmish type game will be video only.

 BryllCream wrote:
Return of the King took $1.44bn in 2012 dollars, the Hobbit took only $1bn. I'd expect the second and third films to take in less too, since the general mood after leaving the cinema was pretty much "that wasn't as good as I expected it to be".

I am not sure, like the First LOTR there was lot of exposition (read boring) in the first movie, the action will increase in the next movie until the battle of 5 armies in the third one, so i expect the opposite.

 Kanluwen wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
GW expecting The Hobbit to do as well as LotR just goes to show how deluded the company is. LotR was such a success in large part do to creative folks like Rick Priestly, who had to work to convince GW to go for the idea in the first place.

I do not agree one bit with this statement, especially the idea that Rick Priestley was somehow so pivotal in getting the game off the ground.
Lord of the Rings did well because of the fact that Lord of the Rings had a huge number of battles spread throughout the movies and the starter boxes were good values for both the Good and Evil sides. They were not focused upon characters but rather a number of troops.

If the starter set had been the Dwarfs trying to retake Moria and given you a number of Dwarf Warriors and Orcs? I think it would have done far better.

A: Priestly is basically the reason there was a LotR license in the first place. No Rick, no New Line Cinema license. So, yea, pretty important, and you know, as head of the design studio, I think Priestly had a bit of impact on the game and the models.

B: You are pretty much making my point - "the starter boxes were good values for both Good and Evil sides." As I said, LotR was something different from GW in terms of art, marketing, and price structure. LotR had good box sets, at a good value, with well-designed and characterful models, with a-typically broad advertising and distribution channels.

Hell, when I met my wife I was surprised to find that she owned GW LotR models. She's not a wargamer, and she doesn't really collect miniatures. But she had LotR miniatures. Why? Because GW actually pushed LotR products and offered them at reasonable prices. Combined with a hot IP you get a LotR bubble.

You can blame that crap on the movies all you want, but the Hobbit didn't exactly bomb at the box office, there were plenty of LotR box sets that were just about the characters (Attack at Weathertop anyone?) and nothing about the movie prevented GW from making a new, creative game and backing it up with a range of exciting, reasonably priced, army-starting boxed sets. GW didn't do that.

What GW put out was overpriced crap with no anchor, sold principally to the very few people who still maintained an interest in War of the Ring, and those customers probably looked at the prices and said, "go yourself."

Edit: And I think what Azrael is saying is that The Hobbit was always destined to be compared to the extant LotR product range. There was an opportunity to move the ball forward with the extant LotR range by expanding on the mass battle aspect of War of the Ring, which could easily have been done in combination with offering a different type of gaming experience with a character-focused narrative skirmish type game. What GW put out instead was a haphazard set of models that did not offer much to extant LotR customers/players in terms of providing avenues for expanding existing collections or starting new ones, and a bastardized set of expansion(esque) rules that did not really stand on its own.

And GW offered these weird, seemingly half-fleshed out product offerings at historically high prices. When you aren't sure what you are getting or what you are going to do with it, the last thing you want to see is a high price tag. Customers seemed to have been befuddled by the Hobbit release, in the sense of not really knowing what to do with it. That's a terrible place to be, and I think if you compare it to what GW was doing in the heady days of the LotR bubble, you can point to some pretty glaring absences in the GW creativity gene pool.

weeble1000 wrote:

A: Priestly is basically the reason there was a LotR license in the first place. No Rick, no New Line Cinema license. So, yea, pretty important, and you know, as head of the design studio, I think Priestly had a bit of impact on the game and the models.

Where are you getting the information that Priestly brought the LotR license to GW? I do not recall any interviews where he made that claim and the Kirby quote you listed only stated he made a good rule set.

weeble1000 wrote:

Edit: And I think what Azrael is saying is that The Hobbit was always destined to be compared to the extant LotR product range. There was an opportunity to move the ball forward with the extant LotR range by expanding on the mass battle aspect of War of the Ring, which could easily have been done in combination with offering a different type of gaming experience with a character-focused narrative skirmish type game. What GW put out instead was a haphazard set of models that did not offer much to extant LotR customers/players in terms of providing avenues for expanding existing collections or starting new ones, and a bastardized set of expansion(esque) rules that did not really stand on its own.

And GW offered these weird, seemingly half-fleshed out product offerings at historically high prices. When you aren't sure what you are getting or what you are going to do with it, the last thing you want to see is a high price tag. Customers seemed to have been befuddled by the Hobbit release, in the sense of not really knowing what to do with it. That's a terrible place to be, and I think if you compare it to what GW was doing in the heady days of the LotR bubble, you can point to some pretty glaring absences in the GW creativity gene pool.

Problem is that the model selection goes back to what was on the screen in the movie. It is a licensed game and GW is not 100% in control of what can be made and not. During the LotR bubble, nothing came out that wasn't on the screen. GW did not have the flexibility in their license to add any additional items. The extra units outside the LotR movie weren't added till after the third movie and was due to a direct contract with the Tolkien estate and not New Line.

Again, it's hard to make an exciting skirmish game with a movie that didn't have any skirmishing. Only running. GW should have realized this and toned their expectations way down. Whoever made the call to produce that much should have realized the conditions were not the same and they did not have the same factors going in that made the first game a success.

*edit* also with price, just with the $85 vs $75 cost for the Hobbit rule book vs the 40K rule book and $125 vs $99 for the Hobbit starter vs 40K/Fantasy starters, you could estimate the supposed higher licensing fees added 10 - 25% to every set.

silent25 wrote:
Again, it's hard to make an exciting skirmish game with a movie that didn't have any skirmishing. Only running.

I don't think this is true at all. Licensed products don't necessarily have to be a literal reproduction of the events in the film and only the events in the film, it would be easy to use the ideas of the film (along with the rest of the LOTR IP that everyone is familiar with) and produce an "alternate universe" game where the characters in the movie fight just for the sake of fighting. It's exactly the thing plenty of kids do with their licensed toys as soon as they get them, even if the movie never had that exact fight.

The real problem with the Hobbit game was the complete lack of marketing. If you weren't already a GW customer you never heard of it, and adding a bunch of incredibly overpriced character models (and nothing else) to a game that is already selling poorly isn't going to get existing customers to buy it. And they certainly aren't going to buy it when even GW's own website pretty much drops the game as soon as it is released. Fix these problems and market the game correctly (starter sets in mainstream stores, advertising in places the movie audience is likely to see, etc) and it probably does a lot better.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
Return of the King took $1.44bn in 2012 dollars, the Hobbit took only $1bn. I'd expect the second and third films to take in less too, since the general mood after leaving the cinema was pretty much "that wasn't as good as I expected it to be".

I am not sure, like the First LOTR there was lot of exposition (read boring) in the first movie, the action will increase in the next movie until the battle of 5 armies in the third one, so i expect the opposite.

Meanwhile, Raimi could have made the Temeraire license he's sitting on and we could be having "Sharpe's Rifles+giant dragons" RIGHT NOW.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
Return of the King took $1.44bn in 2012 dollars, the Hobbit took only $1bn. I'd expect the second and third films to take in less too, since the general mood after leaving the cinema was pretty much "that wasn't as good as I expected it to be".

I am not sure, like the First LOTR there was lot of exposition (read boring) in the first movie, the action will increase in the next movie until the battle of 5 armies in the third one, so i expect the opposite.

It was the action which sucked in 'The Hobbit'. More of it will turn more people off.

If the film took 1 billion dollars at the box office it was a big success -- LoTR was bigger, of course -- but anyway mainstream popularity was not a factor.

Therefore it was bad design and marketing by GW that led to the result.