Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

For all you seasoned veterans out there, could you enlighten me whether there was a time when 40k and Fantasy were equally in the spotlight, or even when GW had the spotlight on Fantasy?

Has it been like this for a long time or has GW only recently shifted almost its complete focus on 40k?

I am a 40k player so I might be biased, but I feel that 40k is getting the lion's share of limelight from the company right now (and has been for the past 2 years)

2 editions of 40k in a row without a WFB edition in the middle is unprecedented as far as I'm aware, and 40k does seem to have got far more from the accelerated release schedule than WFB. There haven't been any WFB 'dataslate'/'supplement' equivalents, which also suggests the design team has been told to prioritise it.

Space Marines alone are suppose to generate more then 50% of all their sells. No wonder they focus more on w40k.

Before dawn of war came out. Well, a little after that. Back around 4th ed's time, I feel like fantasy was more equal.

Though it's less like they started pouring fewer resources into fantasy in a zero-sum game with 40k, so much as they just started to dump most of their new resources into it. By mid 5th ed they were starting to completely redo 40k armies (GK, necron, DE) and that amount of work required a requisite increase in focus.

Yep more on 40k as it is the leader for sales therefor they want to focus on what sells more. Till things change I guess

 Paradigm wrote:
There haven't been any WFB 'dataslate'/'supplement' equivalents, which also suggests the design team has been told to prioritise it.

Fantasy did get a dataslste equivalent a while ago. A battlescroll, I think it's called.

But yeah, 40K's gotten way more.

 Troike wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
There haven't been any WFB 'dataslate'/'supplement' equivalents, which also suggests the design team has been told to prioritise it.

Fantasy did get a dataslste equivalent a while ago. A battlescroll, I think it's called.

But yeah, 40K's gotten way more.

That was only the one, though, as part of the Advent calender, I think. Compared to 40k getting new stuff pretty much every couple of weeks, it's obvious where GW are focusing their efforts.

That said, as a 40k player, I'm not complaining.

WHFB, in the other hand, is in a much better state than 40k is. 40k currently is completely broken whereas WHFB has a few flaws that can, however, be easily fixed with a few adjustments.

Especially the army books in WHFB are top-notch whereas 40k has been an utter mess in regards to balance. No competitive player would want GW to get their messy, sticky hands in WHFB rules at this point - 8th easily is the best ruleset so far.

Comped.

Vanilla WHFB is "meh".

Top notch or not , fewer people have the cash to collect and paint 2500pts+of WFB , compering to 1500pts of w40k.
If it was just about rules , no one would be playing w40k at all , but as it is the only system where you can always be sure to find opponents in any store , it is better for playing the game.

 Sir Arun wrote:
For all you seasoned veterans out there, could you enlighten me whether there was a time when 40k and Fantasy were equally in the spotlight, or even when GW had the spotlight on Fantasy?

Has it been like this for a long time or has GW only recently shifted almost its complete focus on 40k?

I am a 40k player so I might be biased, but I feel that 40k is getting the lion's share of limelight from the company right now (and has been for the past 2 years)

Wow, did you guess?

It's pretty clear that 40k is getting the lions share of attention, fantasy is getting the most basic level of attention, and the Hobbit is given the least attention.

GW's approach is a terrible idea IMO- right now, they take the stuff that's the most popular and endlessly give it more attention. I think they should take the stuff that's less popular and refine it until it becomes good and people want to use it. For example, there was no need to kill specialist games- a smidge of attention and bringing back some of the depth would have easily kept those lines alive.

It seems that despite the fact GW wants our money badly, they are not going about getting it very well.

Definitely, it's pretty obvious.

 welshhoppo wrote:
It seems that despite the fact GW wants our money badly, they are not going about getting it very well.

DLC , faster new editions , big kits , forcing bigger size of armies .Cuting up army books and selling them in multiple parts . All of that seems like a good move to get money .

I think the 40k ruleset is more fun. Even with the horrible imbalance of the game.

You can do a lot more open end games with 40k. From 5 guys encountering 10-20 and huge apoc games. All Fantasy has are bricks of infantry. That can get boring when you try to play a smaller game.

And 40k background is far more unique that Fantasy background. You can draw a lot of the same things in Warhammer Fantasy when compared to most fantasy. (Lord of the Rings, most RPG games, D&D) Where as with 40 most of the stuff doesn't compare to most Sci-Fi. No ther sci-fi i know of has Elite troops with Rocket Launchers as the standard gun.

There are few other sci-fi forces that, with a single soldier can wipe out a large amount modern day military.

Makumba wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
It seems that despite the fact GW wants our money badly, they are not going about getting it very well.

DLC , faster new editions , big kits , forcing bigger size of armies .Cuting up army books and selling them in multiple parts . All of that seems like a good move to get money .

Yeah, for one gaming system out of three. The Hobbit and WHFB are both being left in the shade. They are over saturating one third of the market and ignoring the other two thirds. Maybe if they were to do this for all three of their major systems people would spend more money on them.

Fantasy will probably start getting more attention once they discontinue the LotRs range, but that's several years out.

I don't think it will ever be even. Warhammer Fantasy remains a strong but fairly generic fantasy setting. Warhammer 40k is really unique. There's nothing else like it. Once 40k got to a good place it was inevitably going to outpace fantasy. However I think GW's focus, being a business rather than an artistic venture is reinforcement of successful practices. At least a little bit.

I don't think anyone minds that 40k is their main game. I don't think Warhammer is suffering. It's just not getting as much lavished attention.

 welshhoppo wrote:

Makumba wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
It seems that despite the fact GW wants our money badly, they are not going about getting it very well.

DLC , faster new editions , big kits , forcing bigger size of armies .Cuting up army books and selling them in multiple parts . All of that seems like a good move to get money .

Yeah, for one gaming system out of three. The Hobbit and WHFB are both being left in the shade. They are over saturating one third of the market and ignoring the other two thirds. Maybe if they were to do this for all three of their major systems people would spend more money on them.

But it is not equally divided in sales between thirds. I recall that combined the space marines armies make up about 50% of GW model sales across all systems. I recall that info from back in 4th much less now. Licencing the IP which focuses on 40k has also been quite successful for GW over the last decade as well where other licences for WHFB have not had nearly the same success (WAR, Mark of Chaos)

Ultimately, if you think GW is ignoring fantasy then just look at the homepage currently. Hardly looks like ignoring to me.

40k has had so many more releases than WHFB lately that it is turning me off 40k and into the arms of WHFB again.

 buddha wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:

Makumba wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
It seems that despite the fact GW wants our money badly, they are not going about getting it very well.

DLC , faster new editions , big kits , forcing bigger size of armies .Cuting up army books and selling them in multiple parts . All of that seems like a good move to get money .

Yeah, for one gaming system out of three. The Hobbit and WHFB are both being left in the shade. They are over saturating one third of the market and ignoring the other two thirds. Maybe if they were to do this for all three of their major systems people would spend more money on them.

But it is not equally divided in sales between thirds. I recall that combined the space marines armies make up about 50% of GW model sales across all systems. I recall that info from back in 4th much less now. Licencing the IP which focuses on 40k has also been quite successful for GW over the last decade as well where other licences for WHFB have not had nearly the same success (WAR, Mark of Chaos)

Ultimately, if you think GW is ignoring fantasy then just look at the homepage currently. Hardly looks like ignoring to me.

Maybe ignoring is too strong a word. But instead of them going "Oh look 40k is selling the best, may as well make sure it stays the best." They should be "Oh, 40k is selling better than Fantasy, how can we push Fantasy ahead so they are more level?"

When I worked in retail, when we had something that didn't sell as well as something else, we did something about it. Whether by moving to somewhere where people would see it or by making it look swankier. One thing we didn't do was ponder why it wasn't selling and letting sit there.

WHFB gets less attention, but it's also harder to get into, with a higher average points total (2250-2500pts vs 1500-2000pts) and cheaper average model pts cost. In 40k most armies have a basic trooper that's 12-18pts in cost, in Fantasy it's about half that, requiring a lot more models.

On top of that, it's more fiddly to play, keeping everything in box formations and wheeling them about and all is annoying.

There's also more alternatives, while WHFB's setting is very cool, there's a ton of classic "sword and sorcery" settings out there to compete with. While 40k is still very "sword and sorcery", it's got a completely unique take on it with the semi-steam-punky scifi veneer it wears.

 Overlord Thraka wrote:
There are few other sci-fi forces that, with a single soldier can wipe out a large amount modern day military.

Saiyans? I dont think Space Marines would have a chance against them.

Also I think youre grossly overestimating the strength of a single space marine. Yes, he can easily best 100 men in single combat without breaking a sweat, and arguably several dozen that gang up on him at the same time, but I doubt he could take an Abrams projectile to the face without tactical dreadnought armor.

Yeah, people get way overly excited about Space Marines and think they can do everything. In reality, infantry are the least lethal and least harm inflicting force on the battlefield, it's artillery, crew served weapons, armor, and aircraft that inflict the vast majority of casualties. Modern day tanks put anything in the 40k universe to shame, and a Space Marine wouldn't stand much of a chance against modern day artillery or attack aircraft or anything of the like. Even Terminator armor, unless being equivalent to a meter of steel (which is unlikely), wouldn't withstand modern anti-tank projectiles. Hell, by Forgeworld's numbers, the classic WW2 Panzerfaust would be capable of penetrating a Land Raider or Predator.

welshhoppo wrote:They should be "Oh, 40k is selling better than Fantasy, how can we push Fantasy ahead so they are more level?"

Why?

welshhoppo wrote:When I worked in retail, when we had something that didn't sell as well as something else, we did something about it.

Same when I worked retail. The "it" we would do is "drop them for stuff that sells better".

Which is why GW doesn't have a huge pile of specialist games anymore.

I would say so, fantasy does not get any dataslates, supplements or particularly noteworthy updates. At least the damn thing is rememberable rulewise and far more balanced.

 Ailaros wrote:

welshhoppo wrote:They should be "Oh, 40k is selling better than Fantasy, how can we push Fantasy ahead so they are more level?"

Why?

welshhoppo wrote:When I worked in retail, when we had something that didn't sell as well as something else, we did something about it.

Same when I worked retail. The "it" we would do is "drop them for stuff that sells better".

Which is why GW doesn't have a huge pile of specialist games anymore.

I dont understand why they send stock back to HQ. Why cant they just keep em on the shelves till they are sold out (and keep manufacting the stuff that has demand)? It's not like GW is offering so many new products that store shelf space is becoming an issue, is it?

 Sir Arun wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:

welshhoppo wrote:They should be "Oh, 40k is selling better than Fantasy, how can we push Fantasy ahead so they are more level?"

Why?

welshhoppo wrote:When I worked in retail, when we had something that didn't sell as well as something else, we did something about it.

Same when I worked retail. The "it" we would do is "drop them for stuff that sells better".

Which is why GW doesn't have a huge pile of specialist games anymore.

I dont understand why they send stock back to HQ. Why cant they just keep em on the shelves till they are sold out (and keep manufacting the stuff that has demand)? It's not like GW is offering so many new products that store shelf space is becoming an issue, is it?

If they send it back they can put the cost of that kit towards something that sells. If it's sitting on a shelf not selling then it's taking up space that could go to something else that does sell. In some stores (particularly the one man stores) shelf space definitely can be an issue. If the stock is just sitting there and not selling, the retailers investment is sitting there not generating a return.

This is pretty simple, its just a question of money. GW are in a reasonable position financially, but their sales volumes have been dropping for the last few years and this year they have dropped to the point that they have actually seen it hurt them for the first time. 40k sells way better than Fantasy (even without 8th edition Fantasy being a disaster for GW), Marines by themselves outsell Fantasy (I'm not sure about the 50% of revenue thing) and the other big selling core 40k races (Tau, Eldar, Chaos, Guard) aren't that far behind Marines in terms of sales volumes. With Fantasy not selling very well and LOTR/Hobbit being a complete write off (the Smaug model getting rejected didn't help) GW are doing what many big businesses do when they are in trouble, concentrate on their core line which is selling better, which is part of the reason they have been releasing so much stuff for 40k in the last 6 months or so.

@Sir Arun. Inventory management is one of the biggest problems large retail chains have to deal with (and deal with constantly). From a business standpoint anything that is sitting on a shelf or in a warehouse that isn't selling is just deadweight, big companies have huge amounts of money tied up in inventory and if they can't keep selling it then they run into cash flow issues (which is probably the most common reason companies fall over). I don't think I have been into a GW that would be big enough to stock everything in their line, even the big ones can't fit everything and are constantly rotating stock and squeezing in new releases.

 ThunderFury 2575 wrote:
I would say so, fantasy does not get any dataslates, supplements or particularly noteworthy updates. At least the damn thing is rememberable rulewise and far more balanced.

Didn't they come out with a WHFB Belakor dataslate too?

Let's not get too distracted by the form of the retail analogy here, though, when it's the substance that's important.

If you have two product lines, A and B, and B sells a lot more, then you're going to invest more in B than A. It's that simple.

Not to say that you can't do things to make A as popular as B, of course, but you'd have to have pretty good reasons for purposely going against the most obvious course of action, businesswise.

The irony is that GW continues to borrow elements from the less popular line and throwing them into the better selling one. Perhaps just one more reason their over all market share is dwindling?