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I think that people should stop trying to look into the future when they have no clue what's going to happen to GW. Companies don't have horizons more than five years and frankly none of us even know what GW has planned in that time. If GW is going under it shows NO real prospects of doing so at the moment, it is just showing a current lack of growth. This could change very easily due to any number of things.
People need to stop trying to predict more than 5 years into the future as you have no idea what will happen beyond then and it doesn't look like GW is going to collapse right now.

Its not unusual for restructuring companies to show little to no growth anyway, and GW has certainly been doing that. Restructuring takes effort away from business development activities, and the shock-effect amongst staff can give issues as well.

If in another year there are still issues thats more concerning.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Remember not just hardcover, but full colour as well.

And? I buy full-colour hardback books from FFG for half the price.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Remember not just hardcover, but full colour as well. SO a definite quality increase, especially with the shafting they got from some printers on quality (e.g. WoC 7th ed fell apart seemingly in minutes)

Whether you find it worth the extra money or not is up to you - I tend to, as they last a lot longer when handled reasonably poorly, as the ones slung in my bag tend to be...

Both of which seem to be done just to push the notion that it's a luxury product, and to justify a price hike. Bolt Action has a hardcore, full color rulebook for IIRC half the price of the GW rules. Their armies books are about 90ish pages, softcover but full color, for $25, half of what a 40k codex costs for roughly the same amount of pages.

 thetallestgiraffe wrote:
I think that people should stop trying to look into the future when they have no clue what's going to happen to GW. Companies don't have horizons more than five years and frankly none of us even know what GW has planned in that time. If GW is going under it shows NO real prospects of doing so at the moment, it is just showing a current lack of growth. This could change very easily due to any number of things.
People need to stop trying to predict more than 5 years into the future as you have no idea what will happen beyond then and it doesn't look like GW is going to collapse right now.

Sooooo, how do you explain the rapidly falling market share?

What is that if not a sign of GW going under?

What, by your definition would be anyway? It sounds like you're trying to say that no one can ever know if a company is going under.

Once more I'll link this and say people posting in this thread need to read it: http://masterminis.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/the-future-of-games-workshop-part-14.html
It is written by someone who IS a business expert.

There is no denying that GW books are expensive for what they are compared to other wargames. However they are the only GW games rulebooks on the market.

The question is what is the price point at which GW would price their unique product out of reach of enough customers to seriously dent sales.

wufai wrote:
Just ask yourself, are you still spending thousands of dollars buying new gw products from gw and flgs?

No, but then again, I haven't even played 40k in like a year-and-a-half (wait, when did 6th edition come out? Then.) because of irritation at how gamey (as in, focusing on gimmicks and rules rather than tactics) 40k is.

And I actively pursued interested friends not to buy into 40k and play x-wing instead.

X-Wing is hella cool, yeah.

Its too bad AT-43 croaked. I think its ruleset was far better than 40k. However, Rackham was even more inept than GW on its worst day, and ended up going out of business because of it.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 thetallestgiraffe wrote:
I think that people should stop trying to look into the future when they have no clue what's going to happen to GW. Companies don't have horizons more than five years and frankly none of us even know what GW has planned in that time. If GW is going under it shows NO real prospects of doing so at the moment, it is just showing a current lack of growth. This could change very easily due to any number of things.
People need to stop trying to predict more than 5 years into the future as you have no idea what will happen beyond then and it doesn't look like GW is going to collapse right now.

Sooooo, how do you explain the rapidly falling market share?

What is that if not a sign of GW going under?

What, by your definition would be anyway? It sounds like you're trying to say that no one can ever know if a company is going under.

Once more I'll link this and say people posting in this thread need to read it: http://masterminis.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/the-future-of-games-workshop-part-14.html
It is written by someone who IS a business expert.

A fall in share prices never necessarily means that a company is going under, like the global financial crisis didn't mean that the western economies ceased to exist. They are back and stronger than ever now. I know that analogies are inherently weak in a discussion but I think it's worth pointing out that market price has to go down at some point when people loose faith in the current price, which begins to set trends, where the price bounces up and down.

I'm just saying that GW is a regular company, and like most companies any collapse will most likely only be forseeable when it's about to smack them in the face and as scary as some of the data MAY look there have been no widespread closures and it doesn't look like there will be any time soon. I just think that to make premature judgements now isn't really going to successfully predict anything. Unless there is a sudden decline in sales that can't just be linked to a dip in sales due to Lack of hobbit popularity I think they will be going a bit longer.

Also although this guy has impressive data it's worth remembering that people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that

Edit: some of my wording was off

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Remember not just hardcover, but full colour as well.

And? I buy full-colour hardback books from FFG for half the price.

and? your quote snipping again dropped the context, which is that you cannot just compare like for like and say it has doubled in price "because", without including the contributing factors. Or at least those that GW attributed to the price rise.

Try to avoid snipping context out, makes your posts more coherent.

 thetallestgiraffe wrote:

A fall in share prices never necessarily means that a company is going under, like the global financial crisis didn't mean that the western economies ceased to exist. They are back and stronger than ever now. I know that analogies are inherently weak in a discussion but I think it's worth pointing out that market price has to go down at some point when people loose faith in the current price, which begins to set trends, where the price bounces up and down.

I'm just saying that GW is a regular company, and like most companies where any collapse will most likely only be forseeable when it's about to smack them in the face and as scary as some of the data MAY look there have been no widespread closures and it doesn't look like there will be any time soon. I just think that to make premature judgements now isn't really going to successfully predict anything. Unless there is a sudden decline in sales that can't just be linked to a dip in sales due to Lack of hobbit popularity I think they will be going a bit longer.

Also although this guy has impressive data it's worth remembering that people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that

Edit: some of my wording was off

You mean like a 12% drop in revenue accompanying a 30% drop in profits in a period where they did a re-launch of their most popular and profitable product line (Space Marines)?

And the Hobbit hasn't been popular since 2004.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Remember not just hardcover, but full colour as well.

And? I buy full-colour hardback books from FFG for half the price.

Exactly.

Or you can also say GW's rulebooks are more expensive than most books from La Pléïade, which are fully commented critical editions of major litterary works. We're talking about 1200+ pages of exquisite bible paper, covered in fine leather with gold lettering...

nosferatu1001 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Remember not just hardcover, but full colour as well.

And? I buy full-colour hardback books from FFG for half the price.

and? your quote snipping again dropped the context, which is that you cannot just compare like for like and say it has doubled in price "because", without including the contributing factors. Or at least those that GW attributed to the price rise.

Try to avoid snipping context out, makes your posts more coherent.

Those contributing factors don't excuse the price rise. They especially don't excuse it when other, smaller companies have comparable products for a much lower price.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Its not unusual for restructuring companies to show little to no growth anyway, and GW has certainly been doing that. Restructuring takes effort away from business development activities, and the shock-effect amongst staff can give issues as well.

If in another year there are still issues thats more concerning.

If by restructuring you mean cutting everything they can cut then, yeah, GW has been restructuring.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Remember not just hardcover, but full colour as well.

And? I buy full-colour hardback books from FFG for half the price.

and? your quote snipping again dropped the context, which is that you cannot just compare like for like and say it has doubled in price "because", without including the contributing factors. Or at least those that GW attributed to the price rise.

Try to avoid snipping context out, makes your posts more coherent.

Why exactly can one not compare the same type of product (hardcover, full color book) from two different companies as justification that one (GW in this case) is charging more than they should just because they can get away with it?

The bottom line is that GW charges $50 for hardcover books with color pages, while other companies charge less for hardcover books with color pages.

No no, "rightsizing".

Well the base fact is that codexes and army books doubled in price over the past three years.

This means bluntly that unless people are prepared to double their spend on the necessary books, they will buy fewer of them, possibly half as many.

GW probably makes as much profit on a single hardback at £30 as on two paperbacks at £30, so that doesn't matter in itself. However there is probably a knock-on effect.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Well the base fact is that codexes and army books doubled in price over the past three years.

This means bluntly that unless people are prepared to double their spend on the necessary books, they will buy fewer of them, possibly half as many.

GW probably makes as much profit on a single hardback at £30 as on two paperbacks at £30, so that doesn't matter in itself. However there is probably a knock-on effect.

Guess the knock on effect is that people probably won't buy models for armies they don't have a codex for, so GW will sell less models by charging more for Codices as customers stick to one thing as the cost of investing in a new one is too high.

So does a more expensive codex beat the potential selling of another army (even a small one) to a customer?

I am an example of the knock-on effect. I built up fairly substantial Tau and Tyranid armies in 2004-06 and 2010-2011.

When 6th edition came out I bought the softback rulebook but I didn't buy the new £30 codexes so I haven't bought any of the new models either.

Effectively in their effort to screw an extra £15 out of me for the Tau codex GW threw away the chance to sell me a £50 Riptide and a £40 Sunshark, etc.

I apologize in advance for asking a question which has probably already been asked and answered but...

...when is the next official GW report due?

It is soon, isn't it?

And won't that help 'answer' a lot of these questions?

 Alpharius wrote:
I apologize in advance for asking a question which has probably already been asked and answered but...

...when is the next official GW report due?

It is soon, isn't it?

And won't that help 'answer' a lot of these questions?

Very soon. They've got until next Thursday to issue it iirc.

 Alpharius wrote:
I apologize in advance for asking a question which has probably already been asked and answered but...

...when is the next official GW report due?

It is soon, isn't it?

And won't that help 'answer' a lot of these questions?

Next week some time based on previous years.

Whether it answers any questions or not depends what it says

If the Knight + 7th Ed blow the doors off* you'll have the pro-no-problem crowd saying everything was a blip and the anti-no-problem crowd saying launching two flagship products just disguises an underlying decline in the business and by-the-way-didn't-the-market-grow-again.

*This being in the range of H2 revenue flat (so down YoY) to YoY being better in total than H1 all the way through to up YoY total.

Anything less than that and you'll get the pro-no-problem crowd saying one year is not a trend and the anti-no-problem crowd saying it proves their point.

Agreed, I suspect anything other than a massive further drop in turnover and profit will leave enough ambiguity for everyone to declare 'victory.'

Well, or a massive upswing, but I really can't see that.

I think the release of 7th edition will save it from looking too bad. Knight Titans must have helped too.

If it did look bad, though, it would look like the doomsayers were right.

Space Marines, Knight Titans, IG codex plus Temp Stormtroopers, Tyranids, Inquisition and 7th edition new rulebook have all been released in the 2013-2014 financial year. All the codexes came with some new models and some DLC.

If GW couldn't get decent good numbers with so many releases, including very popular lines, there really would be a problem.

IDK what Fantasy big releases there were.

 Kilkrazy wrote:


IDK what Fantasy big releases there were.

Pretty much sums up GWs approach to Fantasy.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
I apologize in advance for asking a question which has probably already been asked and answered but...

...when is the next official GW report due?

It is soon, isn't it?

And won't that help 'answer' a lot of these questions?

Very soon. They've got until next Thursday to issue it iirc.

Next Thursday? I thought that it was the end of the month?

Next Thursday is the last day of July.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Next Thursday is the last day of July.

This might be a non-issue arising due to English not being my first language, but next Thursday is tomorrow, the 24th of July, you still have a whole nother week after that.

PhantomViper wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Next Thursday is the last day of July.

This might be a non-issue arising due to English not being my first language, but next Thursday is tomorrow, the 24th of July, you still have a whole nother week after that.

It's ok. In common usage, tomorrow will be "this Thursday" and the Thursday of the following week will be "next Thursday".

 agnosto wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Next Thursday is the last day of July.

This might be a non-issue arising due to English not being my first language, but next Thursday is tomorrow, the 24th of July, you still have a whole nother week after that.

It's ok. In common usage, tomorrow will be "this Thursday" and the Thursday of the following week will be "next Thursday".

Though, like all things in english, that doesn't hold true all the time

 agnosto wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Next Thursday is the last day of July.

This might be a non-issue arising due to English not being my first language, but next Thursday is tomorrow, the 24th of July, you still have a whole nother week after that.

It's ok. In common usage, tomorrow will be "this Thursday" and the Thursday of the following week will be "next Thursday".

Learn something new everyday. Thanks.