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Given the odd things GW seems to do I had a 'What if' moment about their next weird or unpredictable moves.

What if GW decided:

1. To close all it's one man gaming stores in every country of operation

OR

2. To not allow anyone to sell any of its products i.e. You could only buy direct from them. Nothing for FLGS at all.

OR

3. To do both of the above at the same time.

What do we all think would happen?

1. Sales would drop significantly.

2. Sales would drop even more significantly.

3. Sales would go to nothing, GW would die, FLGS's would prohibit people from playing GW games in their stores, and Privateer Press would jump with joy!

I can't guess what would happen, except it would be Great News!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I can't guess what would happen, except it would be Great News!

Every time you or Alpharius says "Great News!", I picture this in my head. Stop it!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I can't guess what would happen, except it would be Great News!

Great news for who, exactly? Nothing is gained if GW collapses (unless you are a competitor). This pipe-dream of Privateer Press buying 40K and suddenly making it a balanced perfect game is just that, a pipe dream on many many levels (Space Marines would have to look like armoured gorillas with oversized arms and tiny legs-ugh). What would likely happen is the license would be snapped up by a large video game company and the table top version would be left to die, or worse, Hasbro would turn it into HeroClix 40K. Warhammer Fantasy would be left to completely dry up and blow away.

In many cases, companies don't buy a competitor to add/expand on that competitor's product line. They buy it to bury it, so they are the only game in town. If PP ever did manage to buy up the Warhammer license, that's EXACTLY what they would do.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I can't guess what would happen, except it would be Great News!

Great news for who, exactly? Nothing is gained if GW collapses (unless you are a competitor). This pipe-dream of Privateer Press buying 40K and suddenly making it a balanced perfect game is just that, a pipe dream on many many levels (Space Marines would have to look like armoured gorillas with oversized arms and tiny legs-ugh). What would likely happen is the license would be snapped up by a large video game company and the table top version would be left to die, or worse, Hasbro would turn it into HeroClix 40K. Warhammer Fantasy would be left to completely dry up and blow away.

In many cases, companies don't buy a competitor to add/expand on that competitor's product line. They buy it to bury it, so they are the only game in town. If PP ever did manage to buy up the Warhammer license, that's EXACTLY what they would do.

Somebody's not familiar with the "This is Great News!(TM)" meme.

nanook wrote:
What if GW decided:
1. To close all it's one man gaming stores in every country of operation

No-one would notice? Depends on what they decide for supply to FLGS's.

2. To not allow anyone to sell any of its products i.e. You could only buy direct from them. Nothing for FLGS at all.

A much more steady loss of market share until they close their doors.

3. To do both of the above at the same time.

No-where to play in a sales setting = no market = fast death for a company.

I could anticipate #2 possibly flying for a couple months until they acknowledge just how much other companies drive their sales.
Kirby is many things but even he would see the writing on the wall and kiss and make up with anyone that mattered once the numbers came in.

Interesting exercise but rather cut and dried.
Decreasing brand exposure to the public, you need another alternative to take it's place.
Like targeted advertising on Facebook based on people's hobby interests in their profile which at least with this management they will never do.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:

Great news for who, exactly? Nothing is gained if GW collapses (unless you are a competitor). This pipe-dream of Privateer Press buying 40K and suddenly making it a balanced perfect game is just that, a pipe dream on many many levels (Space Marines would have to look like armoured gorillas with oversized arms and tiny legs-ugh). What would likely happen is the license would be snapped up by a large video game company and the table top version would be left to die, or worse, Hasbro would turn it into HeroClix 40K. Warhammer Fantasy would be left to completely dry up and blow away.

This paragraph hurts my head.

To actually address the topic of the thread:

As for #1, I'm not super-familiar with the situation outside of North America, but within North America it would save them money and theoretically not impact sales badly. There's waaaay more independent game stores than GW shops in the US, it is my understanding their sales figures (even if looking at only GW product) are generally much better, and since a significant portion, perhaps even the majority of players in the US don't just buy from their FLGS, but play there, the GW stores usually offer nothing that makes them more attractive than FLGS.

So in the US and Canada, at least, #1 would be good for them, assuming they continue to and improve support for FLGS.

For number two and three, I agree with Talizvar; 2 would bleed them dry over time, and three would be about as close to instant death as you can get.

There sales and popularity will drop again.

I think #1 and 2# would have very different impacts in different countries. As has been said America seems to rely on the FLGS model and if GW stopped sales to them they would loose the north america market pretty quickly. I think we have already seen this begin to happen as more and more things are made direct only in the same period as GWs sales have simply been plummeting.
In the UK market closing the GW stores would kill them, from everything I've heard over there they have a store in every town and in most are the only place to game. They've saturated the market to the point where FLGS simply can't get a foothold.

Acting on either #1 or #2 would loose them one of their key markets while possibly marginally helping the other, enacting both would kill them by the end of the year.

I do genuinely get the sense that, in the UK at least, they have been working towards doing #2 since 2011.

I believe it genuinely is their 5-10 year plan to wean people off independent stores and into buying directly in store or online.

 Compel wrote:
I do genuinely get the sense that, in the UK at least, they have been working towards doing #2 since 2011.

I believe it genuinely is their 5-10 year plan to wean people off independent stores and into buying directly in store or online.

Nope, they are trying it everywhere.

They are putting more and more restrictions on trade customers while making more and more products direct only so that they get full retail for every item sold rather than the 50% or so they get on a trade sale.
GW has this weird idea that we will buy whatever they put out and should be thankful for the opportunity to buy it so they think if FLGSs can't sell GW products anymore then everyone will still buy the same amount of stuff just at a higher profit margin to GW.

I think their chain of stores is massively costly to them but you don't change your whole business overnight by slamming all the brakes on and closing hundreds of stores unless you're facing receivership.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I think their chain of stores is massively costly to them but you don't change your whole business overnight by slamming all the brakes on and closing hundreds of stores unless you're facing receivership.

So at the current rate of decline that'll be what, this time next year?

#2 is pretty much here for UK stores, yeah. I haven't actually seen a FLGS which stocks GW stuff, though I've heard that some of them still exist here and there. I generally get my hobby goodies from model shops (train sets and planes and so on).

In contrast, I can pretty much guarantee that there's a GW store around in every city, and its easy to search for that location. They're often not guaranteed to be open, and might only have a very limited amount of stocks on shelves (the GW in the Trafford Centre, Manchester, was very bad for that, and tucked away in a corner to boot, however the GW Manchester is huge and has multiple staff ), but they're generally there.

It'd make more sense to do #1 in non-saturated areas, and #2 in places like the UK, where it's not worth it.

They would save a massive amount of money if they could move over to a Forgeworld-esque marketing, manufacturing and shipping model. Even enough to drop prices, maybe, which would be a lure.

The issue would be to get and keep people interested while not providing a place to play or a local hangout for players. This would probably require some sort of actual marketing. After all, it's not like they hide their stores away to reduce interest via foot-traffic, never market to non-customers, don't put their magazine on any public shelves, and generally try to remain unnoticed, right?

1: dude -this is already happening
2: dude- this is already happening
3: dude- this is...........you get the message

More seriously stores are already closing or changing hours, shutting gaming nights to the point you know they're going to close soon.
The choice of products in flgs is seriously limited and getting more limited all the time so you have to buy direct
Both are happening already. It will damage he sales for gw but as long as they stay around the hobby should grow as other games become more popular for those who stay in the hobby

If they just dropped the price on the models I would buy so many more. Even if they had a temporary 25-40% off sale I would get two crones, two harpies and two exocrine probably more. Instead I might get one or two over the next 3-6 months.

Anyways even if GW went and sold its IP, it is very unlikely the products would die. Its a well known and branded name in models and games. You could certianly expect cheaper models and probably a hell of a lot better service and quality in rulebooks.

DarkerSavant wrote:
If they just dropped the price on the models I would buy so many more. Even if they had a temporary 25-40% off sale I would get two crones, two harpies and two exocrine probably more. Instead I might get one or two over the next 3-6 months.

Anyways even if GW went and sold its IP, it is very unlikely the products would die. Its a well known and branded name in models and games. You could certianly expect cheaper models and probably a hell of a lot better service and quality in rulebooks.

I dunno about cheaper models, I imagine it's rare for someone to take over something and go 'yeah, we can lower prices' instead of just keeping them at what they are and not raising them more, or mabey doing a reverse-GW and lowering them a little with the next wave of releases.

I could see rules quality and model quality skyrocketing though and no more of the silly toy like models (have you seen that pig-mobile in the IG release thread?), and if that happens then the value for money would shoot back up and I'd happily buy GW again since I wouldn't feel like I was being charged for the best and being given something that was 'meh'.

Not that I'm going to be playing 40k again any time soon at this rate...

I did take some Kasrkin out of the dettol I've left them in for 6 months today and I'm feeling quite happy that I did buy that 20 man box of Eisenkern Stormtroopers from Northstar when I did.