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 namiel wrote:
Its just truly become a game of pay to win. They want their sales numbers to show nothing but green until they sell it. Then after that you can get space marines at Walmart.

I'm just curious who is going to buy it? In this economy what company is showing such a keen interest in such a niche target market?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Meanwhile, sales seem to be doing okay. Games Workshop doesn't look like it's in trouble, so I'll still have a game for the foreseeable future, and my local game store seems to be doing okay, so I'll still have a place to play it. Honestly, everything's coming up roses.

I disagree. GW is in a lot of trouble right now. Despite price increases and aggressive cost-cutting GW's revenue and profits are barely above inflation, which pretty strongly suggests that sales volume is dropping. And in a market where other games are growing this means that GW's market share is also dropping. Meanwhile the quality of new releases like Escalation (especially the content vs. price ratio) isn't looking very impressive, which suggest a rush to get things done and sold as fast as possible without spending money on playtesting/better fluff and art/etc. The overall picture is a company that will probably remain profitable by milking the cash cow a while longer, but that is completely unable to do anything to grow or innovate and has to settle for trying to extract the maximum profit from what they already have.

Actually their sales volume seems to have gone up based on their turn over percentage (was ~3.8 is now 4.1). That or they're making less stuff to sell which has other issues.

lordwellingstone wrote:
I think the US's Feast of Blades tournament is on the right track with their rules addendums.

QFT

 namiel wrote:
Its just truly become a game of pay to win. They want their sales numbers to show nothing but green until they sell it. Then after that you can get space marines at Walmart.

strange statement, if you buy escalation units they cost less per point then the other models gw produces.

Ie I can buy a 900 point escalation unit for 240 USD or I can buy 900 points of models for about 400 USD...

 Swastakowey wrote:
NZ is exploding with reactions like this. A lot of us are going as far as not buying GW products etc anymore (except books). Fantasy included. People are leaving GW in droves its crazy. Is it a growing trend in other countries i wonder? We simply just play the rule book and non allied codices for fun narratives. GW is getting pretty bad very quickly compared to the usual speed at which things used to change.

In my little nook of the US, almost all the youth are either playing Warmachine or Star Wars whenever I go to the local hobby shop. I think that has more to do with price than anything, as all the 40k players seem to love that they can use their big toys in a regular game. But alot of the veteran gamers seem to think Warmachine is just a better game. I don't know as I've never played it.

Well, I guess it's good to see that I'm not the only one strongly dissatisfied with their purchases. If I had any hope at all of selling my CSMs I would just do that and pick up another game, but man... it's like owning a time share or something! I feel like I wasted my money and now it's all tied up on my shelf. If I could get rid of it for even a fraction of the cost I'd be laughing, because lets face it, for that small fraction you can get into pretty much ANY other wargame.

But I can't get rid of my GW crap because no-one wants to play it except for the die-hards who already have their Riptide spam lists, so here I am in the same boat as the OP. Wishing I was playing something else. Yet with a boatload of minis and the books to match, it's hard to justify spending on another system. Might as well put in the effort to fix it myself.

If anyone would care to get together and round table this stuff, I am down. I'll play kill team with my mates but until I can fix these broken rules myself, then that's all the action my minis will see.

Seriously, anyone interested in helping make GW more balanced and playable. Sign up here. We'll come up with some rules to make our models have value again!

edit: not a thinly veiled advertisement!

 Lobukia wrote:
Wow. With a meta that changes daily, D weapons, broken tau formations, and 2++ with rerolls, I'm throwing in the towel on the game with RAW. Seriously, who can compete with maxxed out Tide/side spam? The games just stupid now when dealing with WAAC lists. Tau FireSpam, seer-star, screamer-star, and serpent spam are just sad. It's like Greyknights all over again.

I don't think I'll attend tourneys anymore that run the game as given by GW. Only narrative events for this guy. How do you guys feel about the current state of the game?

PS: please don't move this to house rules, this is about meta not proposed rules.

All you need to do is find like minded players and play with them. That is the key. If you are a fluff player in a netlist meta you will forever be unhappy playing there because it just isn't the way you want to the game to be, and vice versa. I am happy to have a group that is made up of players with a similar approach to the game as I have, so we have no 4 riptide lists, screamerstar or any other stupid spam lists. Makes things much more enjoyable because we are all on the same page. Of course once you have such a group you need to make sure when you add new bodies to the group that they fit the dynamic as well.

Skriker

 Skriker wrote:
All you need to do is find like minded players and play with them. That is the key. If you are a fluff player in a netlist meta you will forever be unhappy playing there because it just isn't the way you want to the game to be, and vice versa. I am happy to have a group that is made up of players with a similar approach to the game as I have, so we have no 4 riptide lists, screamerstar or any other stupid spam lists. Makes things much more enjoyable because we are all on the same page. Of course once you have such a group you need to make sure when you add new bodies to the group that they fit the dynamic as well.

Preach!

Psienesis wrote:http://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Games-Workshop-Group-13-combined-FINAL-without-title-page.pdf

Yeah, their profits increased 33% even while the amount of money they made from royalties dropped by nearly 75%. And an increase in revenue. That means GW is experiencing sales growth, not decline.

It never ceases to amaze me just how badly people project their negative opinions on 40k's balance or on the prices of the miniatures onto GW itself, and thus assume that they're doing poorly. Then again, facts hurt feelings, so...

 Ailaros wrote:

Psienesis wrote:http://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Games-Workshop-Group-13-combined-FINAL-without-title-page.pdf

Yeah, their profits increased 33% even while the amount of money they made from royalties dropped by nearly 75%. And an increase in revenue. That means GW is experiencing sales growth, not decline.

It never ceases to amaze me just how badly people project their negative opinions on 40k's balance or on the prices of the miniatures onto GW itself, and thus assume that they're doing poorly. Then again, facts hurt feelings, so...

The uptick in their turnover ratio marries up well with that then. Basically GW is selling off a little over the cost of their inventory each quarter.

 Psienesis wrote:
Their earnings report would suggest otherwise, and suggests a company that is quite aware of its industry position, the marketplace challenges it faces, and has plans that may prove viable in place to ensure continued growth in the future. Given that this is a company centered on a product that relies wholly on discretionary spending, during a financial crisis that rivals the Great Depression, that they make *any* money is kind of amazing.

That's because their earnings report is propaganda aimed at reassuring the investors that GW stock is still a good thing to own and buy. A self-published earnings report is always going to present things as favorably as possible and ignore any potential problems, unless those problems are so bad that even a casual observer can see them. In this case that means emphasizing GW's total revenue and profit numbers and ignoring the fact that their profit is the result of unsustainable cost cutting and using price increases to compensate for declining sales volume. GW can brag all they want about getting a bit more profit (after inflation), but making lots of money off a small number of purchases is a suicidal plan in an industry where there's such a strong social component and the most popular game tends to get even more popular while games that don't have a critical mass of players die no matter how good the profit margin is on each box.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
[Actually their sales volume seems to have gone up based on their turn over percentage (was ~3.8 is now 4.1). That or they're making less stuff to sell which has other issues.

It's more likely the latter, given what we've seen with production shortages for their new releases. The sign of declining sales volume is that prices have gone up while revenue hasn't. If you increase prices by 20% and increase revenue by 10% that means you've sold fewer items.

 Ailaros wrote:
Yeah, their profits increased 33% even while the amount of money they made from royalties dropped by nearly 75%. And an increase in revenue. That means GW is experiencing sales growth, not decline.

Do you understand the difference between profit and revenue? Do you understand the difference between revenue and sales volume?

If GW increases profits by cutting things like development time for each new release (giving us zero-content "books" with no playtesting like Escalation) then they make more profit right now, but at the cost of damaging the brand image by associating it with low-quality products. If GW increases profits by cutting their stores to a single employee each they make more profit right now, but at the cost of making their retail stores even less appealing and turning away potential customers who happen to arrive when the one employee isn't there. And of course things like this are unsustainable. Once you've dumped all playtesting to save money you can't cut even more playtesting next year to keep profits increasing at the same rate, and even if you somehow could quality would continue to drop.

Meanwhile if you look at inflation-adjusted revenue the increase isn't very much, especially in a year where GW raised prices. Not only does this tell us that GW is making most of their gains in profit by being more efficient at extracting profit from their existing customers rather than through legitimate growth, it tells us that GW is making more profit per box but selling fewer boxes. This is bad because market share is vital in a social hobby like wargames. Lose too much market share and you get the death spiral where people stop buying because all their friends are playing something else, which causes even more people to stop buying. Eventually GW is left with kids buying boxes of space marines in official GW™ Hobby™ Centers™, and that isn't going to keep the company alive and profitable.

It never ceases to amaze me just how badly people project their negative opinions on 40k's balance or on the prices of the miniatures onto GW itself, and thus assume that they're doing poorly. Then again, facts hurt feelings, so...

It never ceases to amaze me that people can look at GW's ongoing trainwreck and somehow say that it's a successful company.

That's easily done, because by every metric, GW *is* a successful company. Unsuccessful companies don't remain in business for 25+ years.

 Psienesis wrote:
That's easily done, because by every metric, GW *is* a successful company. Unsuccessful companies don't remain in business for 25+ years.

Could argue it was successful. I work in a power boat retailer that sells luxery boats. The place has been here since before the second world war. BUT back then they sold huge boats at huge margin with less staff. Now days even though, when i do the money side of things there is huge dollars being moved, the margin just isnt there like it used to be. Less money is being made and less boats are moving. We live in a place where fishing is huge and so many people are doing it, but no one wants to pay 30 grand for a 5 metre boat with no extras, so they make do with what they have got. Unlike models though boats havent got much competition so this buisness will stay a lot longer.

In my area its a similar thing. People continue to make do with the GW models they have despite really enjoying the hobby. Unlike the boats though a lot of those upset customers move onto alternatives that are readily available.

If we increased our margin then other boating centres will get our customers, it may work for a little while (we have the biggest range of boats in NZ) but the benefits will quickly dissapear and our competition will flourish. I see it happening to GW, i cant know for sure, but from my perspective GW has greatly helped their competitors get bigger in the buisness.

 Psienesis wrote:
That's easily done, because by every metric, GW *is* a successful company. Unsuccessful companies don't remain in business for 25+ years.

We're talking about the current state of GW, not its past success.

I don´t know... most of GW´s actions seem insane, yet they have been doomed to fail for decades, and they are still here.

I think the setting is ace, and it keeps them alive regardless of what they do. In good hands, this universe could go beyond Star Wars, Star Trek, The Avengers or Lord of the Rings.The way they operate, they manage to survive.

On topic: YES: house rules are fun. Try it. Write something new. Be creative. The craziest GW turns the game, the better for me, because it is easier to create new stuff.

Except the only way it could would likely incur the wrath of a thousand lawsuits

I won't bother, I'll just skip playing against the compositions that are impossible to beat. It's no diffrent from 3rd/4th edition. Remember Alaitoc? Yeah have fun playing without an army.

Or, whatever, sure, I'll play your loldar with a Stompa in my army but that's about it, and if you bring a Revenant we're back to square one - I autolose.

Against a Riptide spam yeah still no, they have a 2+ save.

 Peregrine wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
[Actually their sales volume seems to have gone up based on their turn over percentage (was ~3.8 is now 4.1). That or they're making less stuff to sell which has other issues.

It's more likely the latter, given what we've seen with production shortages for their new releases. The sign of declining sales volume is that prices have gone up while revenue hasn't. If you increase prices by 20% and increase revenue by 10% that means you've sold fewer items.

I don't know if it's really the latter. Yes they dropped a number of metal models, but how often were they actually making those anyways? They have increased their plastic model count by a large amount in the last year and likely are having issues meeting demand. It's arguable that they may finally be at the point where expanding production isn't a money sink like it was in the past (there are a lot of factors in this, and I don't want to go down that road but basically there are limits to how big a company can get, and they likely went too big and scaled production back to fix the issue. This may change due to product demand as there is a fixed limit to the maximum number of models they can produce at any one time, and if they are exceeding that in terms of order volume production will need to increase to compensate).

Without seeing their exact cost of goods from year to year, not to mention production volume numbers it's hard to pin down these things to the correct factors when you don't have all the pieces.

For those who are wondering (and anyone who isn't can just skip this), the turnover ratio is a ratio to measure how much a company is selling based on it's cost. It takes the average inventory (based on it's cost, and yes, someone gets paid to figure that out, just like they get paid to set prices. This is done by factoring all the costs built into the product in its development, plus materials and labor, then divided by a number of units they want to sell at a certain amount (likely the 60% that is used to sell to their stores and FLGS) to determine how much they need to charge for it to be paid off. That or that gives them the upper price, then they work backwards for the discounted price. Either way the goal of their pricing is to play off the developmental costs by the time a certain number of units are sold so that they can then invest that money into other things, such as new models for other armies.) , which is the calculation of how much the have in inventory (in money, so GBP for this) plus the inventory (again, represented by a monetary amount) and divided in half. This number is then divided by the Cost of Goods Sold, or the cost of the total accumulated product sold in the last year based on how much it cost Games Workshop. The number that comes out shows roughly how many times they've sold their inventory. You can break this down into smaller chunks such as quarters, months, weeks or even days, but generally it's done based on the fiscal year. Because it's amounts are based on how much it cost the company, not how much they sold it for, it's a good metric to determine how much is actually being sold. 4.1 was based off of GW's fiscal year that ended in May '13, before the Marines came out, meaning that we haven't even seen the ripples they've caused yet.

Actually, I've just looked, GW's Cost of Goods has gone up to 36.2m GBP from 34.8 in '12. For those who don't know, that means in the fiscal year that ended in the end of May '13, they sold 36.2M (or 36,200,000 GBP) of product (that's what it cost them) and netted a gross on it of 98.4M (that's the revenue minus the cost of the product they sold). Their final net, as you can see, was 16.3M, which is up from 14.3 in '12.

With numbers like that it's hard to say they aren't selling more stuff, but I will freely admit that there is room there for them to be making less but it costing them more (which seems doubtful with all the cost cutting they've been doing).

 Peregrine wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Meanwhile, sales seem to be doing okay. Games Workshop doesn't look like it's in trouble, so I'll still have a game for the foreseeable future, and my local game store seems to be doing okay, so I'll still have a place to play it. Honestly, everything's coming up roses.

I disagree. GW is in a lot of trouble right now. Despite price increases and aggressive cost-cutting GW's revenue and profits are barely above inflation, which pretty strongly suggests that sales volume is dropping. And in a market where other games are growing this means that GW's market share is also dropping. Meanwhile the quality of new releases like Escalation (especially the content vs. price ratio) isn't looking very impressive, which suggest a rush to get things done and sold as fast as possible without spending money on playtesting/better fluff and art/etc. The overall picture is a company that will probably remain profitable by milking the cash cow a while longer, but that is completely unable to do anything to grow or innovate and has to settle for trying to extract the maximum profit from what they already have.

In addition to what you have already stated, I also believe that 3D printers pose a greater threat to GW then they let on. I recall seeing a quote in past few months from someone inside GW claiming (Paraphrasing) :

"If we thought 3D printers were the future we would have invested in it."

I've seen the quality of stuff coming off 3D printers & while it is still lacking, I can easily see it causing huge issues for GW in 5-10 years time. I'm concerned that the massive increase in miniatures, updates & volume that GW has produced lately is a means of getting as much money out of the industry as possible before the miniature bubble bursts.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Their earnings report would suggest otherwise, and suggests a company that is quite aware of its industry position, the marketplace challenges it faces, and has plans that may prove viable in place to ensure continued growth in the future. Given that this is a company centered on a product that relies wholly on discretionary spending, during a financial crisis that rivals the Great Depression, that they make *any* money is kind of amazing.

That's because their earnings report is propaganda aimed at reassuring the investors that GW stock is still a good thing to own and buy. A self-published earnings report is always going to present things as favorably as possible and ignore any potential problems, unless those problems are so bad that even a casual observer can see them. In this case that means emphasizing GW's total revenue and profit numbers and ignoring the fact that their profit is the result of unsustainable cost cutting and using price increases to compensate for declining sales volume. GW can brag all they want about getting a bit more profit (after inflation), but making lots of money off a small number of purchases is a suicidal plan in an industry where there's such a strong social component and the most popular game tends to get even more popular while games that don't have a critical mass of players die no matter how good the profit margin is on each box.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
[Actually their sales volume seems to have gone up based on their turn over percentage (was ~3.8 is now 4.1). That or they're making less stuff to sell which has other issues.

It's more likely the latter, given what we've seen with production shortages for their new releases. The sign of declining sales volume is that prices have gone up while revenue hasn't. If you increase prices by 20% and increase revenue by 10% that means you've sold fewer items.

 Ailaros wrote:
Yeah, their profits increased 33% even while the amount of money they made from royalties dropped by nearly 75%. And an increase in revenue. That means GW is experiencing sales growth, not decline.

Do you understand the difference between profit and revenue? Do you understand the difference between revenue and sales volume?

If GW increases profits by cutting things like development time for each new release (giving us zero-content "books" with no playtesting like Escalation) then they make more profit right now, but at the cost of damaging the brand image by associating it with low-quality products. If GW increases profits by cutting their stores to a single employee each they make more profit right now, but at the cost of making their retail stores even less appealing and turning away potential customers who happen to arrive when the one employee isn't there. And of course things like this are unsustainable. Once you've dumped all playtesting to save money you can't cut even more playtesting next year to keep profits increasing at the same rate, and even if you somehow could quality would continue to drop.

Meanwhile if you look at inflation-adjusted revenue the increase isn't very much, especially in a year where GW raised prices. Not only does this tell us that GW is making most of their gains in profit by being more efficient at extracting profit from their existing customers rather than through legitimate growth, it tells us that GW is making more profit per box but selling fewer boxes. This is bad because market share is vital in a social hobby like wargames. Lose too much market share and you get the death spiral where people stop buying because all their friends are playing something else, which causes even more people to stop buying. Eventually GW is left with kids buying boxes of space marines in official GW™ Hobby™ Centers™, and that isn't going to keep the company alive and profitable.

It never ceases to amaze me just how badly people project their negative opinions on 40k's balance or on the prices of the miniatures onto GW itself, and thus assume that they're doing poorly. Then again, facts hurt feelings, so...

It never ceases to amaze me that people can look at GW's ongoing trainwreck and somehow say that it's a successful company.

it also never ceases to amaze me that things like legal obligations and corporate governance are just blatently ignored by members looking to push their point

If they release an earnings report it has to be acurate and audited before being annouced, its a legal duty in the uk for a PLC, they cannot just make up figures and go yeah were amazing invest in us. It doesnt work that way over in the UK. i dont know the laws in the US so i wouldnt speculate on them, however the PLC is registed in the uk and on the London Stock Exchange so even costs/profits revenue from the US feeds back into there.

The company is making profit (its legal obligation) so in that respect it is sucessfull. Is it a great company, clearly not, but there is a lot of speculation which is purely founded on personal opionin

cammy wrote:
If they release an earnings report it has to be acurate and audited before being annouced, its a legal duty in the uk for a PLC, they cannot just make up figures and go yeah were amazing invest in us. It doesnt work that way over in the UK. i dont know the laws in the US so i wouldnt speculate on them, however the PLC is registed in the uk and on the London Stock Exchange so even costs/profits revenue from the US feeds back into there.

You do realize there's a difference between fraud and emphasizing the positive data while minimizing the importance of the bad data, right? Nobody is claiming that the financial report numbers are fake, the point is that GW gives a lot of priority to emphasizing the profit numbers (which suggest good things to investors) everywhere they can in size 255 bold while only briefly mentioning the facts and numbers that hint at how GW makes that profit: increased prices and cost cutting to compensate for declining sales volume. If you think you're getting an honest assessment of a company's weaknesses in their own financial reports then you're delusional.

The company is making profit (its legal obligation) so in that respect it is sucessfull. Is it a great company, clearly not, but there is a lot of speculation which is purely founded on personal opionin

That's a terrible standard for defining success. Is a company that makes 1% profit a success even though the only thing preventing them from making 10% profit is their own stupid decisions? Is a company that makes 10% profit instead of 5% this year at the cost of going bankrupt within a year instead of surviving to make that 5% year after year a success? Of course not. And that's the situation GW is in: their immediate profit is fine, but the long-term future is not good.

Commissar Benny wrote:
I've seen the quality of stuff coming off 3D printers & while it is still lacking, I can easily see it causing huge issues for GW in 5-10 years time.

I doubt it. 3d printing is unlikely to match high volume injection-molded plastic in either per-unit manufacturing cost or speed any time in the foreseeable future, and will likely have similar problems competing with other conventional manufacturing methods. It's probably going to remain a hobbyist toy, and most of GW's customers aren't dedicated hobbyists. The biggest impact on miniatures will probably the ease of creating small production runs of customized models, and that's something only a very small minority is interested in.

GW's investors report outright says that it was a mixed year.
Admitting it was a mixed year is not a good sign, especially since it was a year that released both the Hobbit line and 6th Ed of 40k.

Meanwhile in the wider hobby we're hearing 15% growth last year.

So because I found that investment information breakdown I wanted to do a little comparison to the price of something and see how much GW is really making off of something they sold in their previous fiscal year.

So first I calculated what percentage of the a given thing went where:
Cost of Goods Sold (CoGS): 27%
Operating Expenses(Sales, Admin, ect): 57%
Taxes: 4%
Profit: 12%

And then I applied those same percentages to a something GW sells: a box of Dark Eldar Kalibites. Honestly anything could work, as long as it hasn't changed price, or as long as you're using the old price it had during the 2012 fiscal year.

So in the UK a box of Kalibites costs 18GBP. While currency doesn't matter because GW reports no losses or gains on currency exchange, so we can look at whatever, I felt sticking to the Pound would keep people from yelling at me later. So we take that number and multiply it by our percentages and sees what comes out:

CoGS: 4.86
Operating Expenses: 10.26
Taxes: .72
Profit: 2.16

And here we can see that GW only made a little over 2 quid in actual profits off that box of Kalibites if they sell it for full price. Now as FLGS don't pay as much let's take 60% of that original price (what an FLGS typically pays on non-direct only items), which is 10.80GBP, and see what comes out next:

CoGS: 2.916
Operating Expenses: 6.156
Taxes: .423
Profit: 1.20

Now I know that there is a fixed cost on each item, and on their operating expenses, but remember, this is just how much of the item is being paid into covering that cost, not how much that item is actually costing them to make. And yes, we can clearly see that GW only makes 1.20 quid on a box of Kalibites when they sell it to your FLGS.

So based on a comparative break down of what things are sold for vs the percentages of where it goes, GW really isn't running us through the ringer as much as people claim. The amount of money they make on something is a lot lower than I've heard claims of in the past as this gives us a better picture of how the money from a product gets divided up.

Back to the topic at hand (really another argument on whether or not GW is a "bad" business?! Let's throw in some Matt Ward hate and pick on the helldrake to round out the cliché arguments)... Frontline is running a pretty tight set of rules and making all 2+ rerolls 4+ on the second roll... period.

My group decided today to basically add a max of one formation and then run with LVO's list creation rules. I think we'll stay there for awhile.

My group is kinda going beyond house ruling allied formations, and just outright boycotting it. Our last big house ruling ban was for the Skyshield after some big to-do about putting barrage units underneath the pad and having them still able to fire. We have a tournament coming up this Saturday and in light of all this influx of extra rules and formations, FW is banned, the Skyshield and Fortress of Redemption (which no one has anyway) are banned, Escalation and Stronghold Assault are banned, and all these micro digital dataslates are banned all pending further analysis for future tournaments considering we planned this date before GW began releasing all this gak.

@Wilytank, why not just ban the ability to put units underneath to prevent that abuse instead of removing the option of taking it completely?

Also all those bans. Ugh. Sorry, but I get why you may do it, but that still lets all the silly nonsense that comes out of codexes to run around with no issues. Screamerstars, Jetseercouncils, Tripdrakes and Triptides don't need allies to do what they do after all.

The big thing about that is that that's too much stuff released on such short notice that the TO doesn't have time/money/patience to sift through it all.

And anyway, nobody here likes the Skyshield regardless. Plus we're the kind of group that doesn't run that stuff regularly. Looking at who's going, I'm expecting at least one or two IG armies, two marine armies (one of them might be GK), one Eldar player using Serpents, and possibly one Necron Airforce and one Tau player. I'm the only one playing Daemons and I'm not playing Screamerstar because I want to prove that I do not need them to win.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So because I found that investment information breakdown I wanted to do a little comparison to the price of something and see how much GW is really making off of something they sold in their previous fiscal year.

So first I calculated what percentage of the a given thing went where:
Cost of Goods Sold (CoGS): 27%
Operating Expenses(Sales, Admin, ect): 57%
Taxes: 4%
Profit: 12%

And then I applied those same percentages to a something GW sells: a box of Dark Eldar Kalibites. Honestly anything could work, as long as it hasn't changed price, or as long as you're using the old price it had during the 2012 fiscal year.

So in the UK a box of Kalibites costs 18GBP. While currency doesn't matter because GW reports no losses or gains on currency exchange, so we can look at whatever, I felt sticking to the Pound would keep people from yelling at me later. So we take that number and multiply it by our percentages and sees what comes out:

CoGS: 4.86
Operating Expenses: 10.26
Taxes: .72
Profit: 2.16

And here we can see that GW only made a little over 2 quid in actual profits off that box of Kalibites if they sell it for full price. Now as FLGS don't pay as much let's take 60% of that original price (what an FLGS typically pays on non-direct only items), which is 10.80GBP, and see what comes out next:

CoGS: 2.916
Operating Expenses: 6.156
Taxes: .423
Profit: 1.20

Now I know that there is a fixed cost on each item, and on their operating expenses, but remember, this is just how much of the item is being paid into covering that cost, not how much that item is actually costing them to make. And yes, we can clearly see that GW only makes 1.20 quid on a box of Kalibites when they sell it to your FLGS.

So based on a comparative break down of what things are sold for vs the percentages of where it goes, GW really isn't running us through the ringer as much as people claim. The amount of money they make on something is a lot lower than I've heard claims of in the past as this gives us a better picture of how the money from a product gets divided up.

I disagree with your breakdown.
The question is how much of Operating Expenses that is big bonuses and salaries for the bigwigs in the company. You can easily make a company have 0 profit margin if you just take it all out for yourself, no matter how highly you cost the item. In fact, the only one of those four listings we know what it is, is the taxes. Your breakdown is MUCH too simplistic and doesn't give a true picture of anything really.

 Lobukia wrote:
How do you guys feel about the current state of the game?

I'm starting to make a better ruleset for 40k.


I think that answers your question.

 Purifier wrote:
I disagree with your breakdown.

It's not really my breakdown. My math (or use of a calculator) perhaps, but I only used the breakdown that was used in the investment information.

 Purifier wrote:
The question is how much of Operating Expenses that is big bonuses and salaries for the bigwigs in the company. You can easily make a company have 0 profit margin if you just take it all out for yourself, no matter how highly you cost the item. In fact, the only one of those four listings we know what it is, is the taxes. Your breakdown is MUCH too simplistic and doesn't give a true picture of anything really.

I'm sorry that I can't make it more specific, but that's the best look in we're going to get.

Operating expenses is vague, but without more information it's hard to really say how that's broken down further. Honestly my breakdown is limited by the information I have to make it. It's simplistic because the categories I have to work with are simplistic. If you really want better you'd need to be sitting in GW's accounting department.

It's kind of strange to think about how a larger community might go about house ruling things. I don't know if a mob-rule version of 40k would necessarily be better, for example. On the other hand, how would you even structure it? How would they come to a consensus?

It seems like, at best, it would be sort of like the Jesus Commission casting votes for what they think Jesus actually said.