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 Yonan wrote:
Even if the price stays the same, the value can decreases if the quality of the product goes down. Poor(er) rules, less balance (Taudar was fun!) and the DLC flood all decrease the value of every product in the game for many people. Decreased value works similarly to a price increase in peoples purchasing decisions so yeah... less sales is the result.

Even more so, that DLC creates "hidden" price increases. Prior to dataslates - if you wanted all your armies options, you bought the Codex and maybe downloaded a few PDF rules from the website. Since they started the DLC, you buy the Codex (which prices have climbed a good bit on) and have to get 3 or 4 dataslates as well. Many of those represent things which were a core option in prior codices.

 Thud wrote:
Back in the day, I'd rarely leave my local shop without a new blister pack. What now? I'm obviously not picking up a Stompa on a whim every couple of weeks, and not glue either, despite how quick those blasted things dry up. So, my impulse purchases have pretty much dried up. And they haven't been replaced by more spending on planned purchases either.

Now, obviously, this is just anecdotal to me, and and isn't proof of GW's inevitable downfall. But it shows that their business and pricing strategies are not driving up sales. After all, there is a reason why other businesses have sales, have potential impulse buys taking up shelf space, try to retain old customers and recruit new, and why they base their prices on their direct competition.

That's another thing too they really need to work on. I feel weird walking out of my FLGS without buying something even if I'm just dropping in there on the way home from work. Cool dice, X wing blisters and TCG boosters are all great for that, a $32 (AUD) finecast blister is just laughable.

 Crimson wrote:
Increased release pace is certainly a good thing,

Or not so much.

I think GW has really hit the wall with their customer base. 15 years ago, a lot of players would buy all the Codices and pretty much one of everything for their chosen armies. Today, a player might buy the rules a couple of the supplements for their army and only the options that make sense. They are still spending the same amount - just that they are getting much less out of it. As opposed to selling 50,000 copies of Codex Daemons or whatever - they are selling 10,000 copies to the players who play that army.

This leads to many of the die hard supporters dropping out. Many serious tournament players drop out, because they can't afford to keep up with all the rules for the other armies (Know thy Enemy). Many collectors can't afford all the options for their army and they get disillusioned or just realize that they don't actually need one of everything so they drop back to only getting what they will game with.

Both end up leading to drops in sales overall, without even necessarily loosing customers. Even worse though is that when that collector or competitive gamer stops buying one of everything from GW, it frees up hobby money. Sure, they could invest it in an IRA or other sensible choice - but more often then not, they still spend it on gaming...just instead of buying only from GW, they might be two kits from GW and spend the rest on FFG, PP, Infinity or some other game system.

 heartserenade wrote:
When you have complaints from your customers, you don't run away from them. You answer them.

No you don't. You run screaming away from your fans in the opposite direction and secretly hope that Facebook goes away tomorrow like that Internet fad and that Pokemon thing no one remembers these days.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

Even more so, that DLC creates "hidden" price increases. Prior to dataslates - if you wanted all your armies options, you bought the Codex and maybe downloaded a few PDF rules from the website. Since they started the DLC, you buy the Codex (which prices have climbed a good bit on) and have to get 3 or 4 dataslates as well. Many of those represent things which were a core option in prior codices.

Apart from that's not true. The "Day one DLC" has been completely overblown. There has only been 12 dataslates (And only one in the last 4 months), non for the last two codex's, and only two of which are new units, Cypher and Be'lakor. The rest are formations, which have never been in codex's, or even existed outside apoc games, and many people are refusing to even use them. The only thing recently has been the Ork Looted wagon, which the designers said in WD that, basically, they cut from the codex then realized to late it was a mistake as it would upset allot of people, which is something that has been done for many years as part of chapter approved.

 jonolikespie wrote:

That's another thing too they really need to work on. I feel weird walking out of my FLGS without buying something even if I'm just dropping in there on the way home from work. Cool dice, X wing blisters and TCG boosters are all great for that, a $32 (AUD) finecast blister is just laughable.

The impulse buy is a really big thing. I'm going to a convention on Saturday with no fixed plans to buy anything other than MDF bases and a couple of minis, but I'm sure with impulse purchases I'll come out £200 lighter and with a bag of stuff to put into the bare metal box.

More specifically; the last few times I've been in a GW store I've had a flick through the IG Infantrymans handbook, and been tempted to buy it until I remember it costs £17.99, so keep putting it back. If it was £7.99 I'd have bought it ages ago, even though that's still expensive for what is a mini-book. In Impulse buying Warlords Dick Winters mini from their webstore, I had a look at what else I could buy to get the free shipping, and on impulse ended off getting a couple of paints (£2.20 each), some metal bicycle infantry (£6 for 3) and a resin ammo trailer for £12. Now GW has paints and I quite like them, but I've got most of the paints I need for now, and there's really very little in my impulse purchasing bracket (under about £10-15). Long gone are the days of just buying a box of Ork Warriors because they were cool. The only other thing I spotted was the goblin fanatics plastic box for £9.50, but I've passed for now as they won't fit in with my Malifaux gremlins and I don't need any more goblins to paint; at £6 I'd have bought them without even thinking.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

 Yonan wrote:
Even if the price stays the same, the value can decreases if the quality of the product goes down. Poor(er) rules, less balance (Taudar was fun!) and the DLC flood all decrease the value of every product in the game for many people. Decreased value works similarly to a price increase in peoples purchasing decisions so yeah... less sales is the result.

Even more so, that DLC creates "hidden" price increases. Prior to dataslates - if you wanted all your armies options, you bought the Codex and maybe downloaded a few PDF rules from the website. Since they started the DLC, you buy the Codex (which prices have climbed a good bit on) and have to get 3 or 4 dataslates as well. Many of those represent things which were a core option in prior codices.

Yep exactly. Not only is it more expensive, it's fething annoying. Codex + supplmenent(s) + dataslates + White dwarf only rules when it was all released at the same time and could easily have been in one book. Feth that.

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

Even more so, that DLC creates "hidden" price increases. Prior to dataslates - if you wanted all your armies options, you bought the Codex and maybe downloaded a few PDF rules from the website. Since they started the DLC, you buy the Codex (which prices have climbed a good bit on) and have to get 3 or 4 dataslates as well. Many of those represent things which were a core option in prior codices.

Apart from that's not true. The "Day one DLC" has been completely overblown. There has only been 12 dataslates (And only one in the last 4 months), non for the last two codex's, and only two of which are new units, Cypher and Be'lakor. The rest are formations, which have never been in codex's, or even existed outside apoc games, and many people are refusing to even use them. The only thing recently has been the Ork Looted wagon, which the designers said in WD that, basically, they cut from the codex then realized to late it was a mistake as it would upset allot of people, which is something that has been done for many years as part of chapter approved.

Bollocks. If it was a mistake and they wanted their players to have it they could have released it free online rather than sold piecemeal - coincidentally something that exactly lines up with their business strategy, whereas "giving the players what they want" does not. They've literally said "we don't ask what they want, they buy what we make."

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
In my defence, I mentioned your name because it was one of the few that sprung to mind. It was wayshuba's name that I meant to use. I didn't have time to think it out properly because I had something on the cooker, golden eagles were attacking me, a running bath was in danger of overflowing...anybody buying this?

Fair enough. I considered myself in the "et al" part of that. However, if you look, you will see both here and on WarSeer, where I also commonly post, I have not ever discussed the demise of GW before this year after the last period financials came out. As someone who has looked for troubled companies for the greater portion of my career, the half year financials stood out as a company in a lot of trouble. It has nothing to do with my feelings about the game or their contempt for their customers. It was strictly looking at it from a business perspective.

As far a predicting the demise of GW from strictly that same business standpoint, as I have contended all along, GW is in very serious trouble. Anyone who wants to deny that is simply sticking their head in the sand as to the realities.

With that said, I will end with an appropriate quote:

"Facts do not cease to exist because the are ignored" - Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Baragash wrote:
... but any forum posts by Mr Mystery are bound to be.....irrelevant.

That kinda goes without saying, but I am interested to know how he might try and defend this. I mean, how does one spin a report like this and make it sound good (outside of Kirky double-speak and playing the victim).

You don't have to spin it, you just have to chose to believe it...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/900/607499.page#7072013

Though I'm not sure that even Kirby really believes it.

Or, in other words:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Baragash wrote:
... but any forum posts by Mr Mystery are bound to be.....irrelevant.

That kinda goes without saying, but I am interested to know how he might try and defend this. I mean, how does one spin a report like this and make it sound good (outside of Kirky double-speak and playing the victim).

TBH after he diverted the conversation into something about add-on sales and TVs with the "customer is not always right" I lost interest. Anyone who doesn't understand the difference between a customer (or a small number of customers) as an individual (who could well be talking complete gak) and the aggregate customer (that is, the total demand/potential demand for your products - and who is always right) probably isn't going to justify the time you give up to read it.

EDIT: someone actually explained it on p9 of that topic.

Kirby obviously doesn't even know his own business as stating that GW is a model company, not a rules company is stupid. You need a reason to buy figures, or buy figures at the amount that GW needs to keep running. Just because they look good is enough.

Rules give people a reason to buy more models, to change armies to have multiple armies. If GW is truly just a "model" company then they should either stop producing rules and just make nice models that can be used with any generic system or produce a solid set of rules that can last 5 - 10 years as they are. The mechanics stay the same, but you introduce new stuff via the codexes.

One thing I've been wondering is why GW let itself become the WH40K 28mm miniatures company.

I get that the LoTR expansion was a flash in the pan, yet it gave GW a massive secondary revenue source. Even if the LoTR revenue was not sustainable (which I doubt), wouldn't that experience indicate that GW could make a regular business of selling movie and video game tie-in miniature games? Ideally self contained and limited runs around the Movie / its Sequels. One can note that the original LoTR miniatures, in their not-heroic poses, didn't fit into the Warhammer game. GW could distinguish between the two games, even though their both fantasy.

If the market for WH40K is saturated, which is a possibility, then it would make sense to open secondary markets.

For example, the fan base for Star Citizen would buy Star Citizen branded toilet paper. Why couldn't GW go to Start Citizen and offer to make a 'Carrier Battles in Space (tm)' miniatures game in the Star Citizen universe? That game will fit nicely between BFG and X-Wing, more detailed than BFG but larger scale than X-Wing. It would tie into a successfully funded game and could be sold in self-contained boxes at a wide range of retailers.

Or look at movies, GW should have been bidding for the Alien vs Predator or Starship Troopers IP and selling those as 30mm Skirmish or 15mm Big Battle games. (Vary the scale to avoid conflict with WH40K) GW could point to its large scale and global distribution network as a competitive advantage over smaller and newer companies.

Granted, all of the above requires that GW release good rules and competitively priced miniatures, a distinctly unlikely possibility.

Other question, cross posted from the "GW Going Under" thread: why doesn't GW try to make its core unit boxes the most common in the miniature gaming universe? Release the IG and a wide range of flavor add-ons so that someone could tune his IG to fit any other gaming system. GW has the scale to out design, out produce, and under sell everybody else in the market. Why can't they do that?

Side Question: Who is Alan Merritt?

That raises a good question, is 40k now over saturated? Can they milk this cow any longer?
If not, do you think they'll find another cow?

They could try to resurrect fantasy, but it would need a lot of work, more work than they seem willing or able to do lately.

They could resurrect their smaller games like Blood Bowl and Space Hulk, but those have games that have come in and taken their spot already.

All I can see is either a new faction for 40k. (And they have more than they can handle already) or an entirely new game.

I personally think that Wh40K is not oversaturated, as one could only determine that after seeing a broad marketing campaign with a well designed game. In its current state, WH40K is likely alienating a large number of active miniature gaming customers and ignoring an even larger number of non-miniature gaming customers.

However, GW has steadfastly refused to deal with alienating customers or marketing the game more widely with lower entry costs.

With respect to other IPs, I'm starting to think its too late. GW choose to focus down on a single game inside a single IP, so to reverse that course would require an equal, or greater, level of management overhaul as making WH40K competitive with newer games. A new WH40K army will be too expensive and too late, expensive because of the wide range of units required, too late because GW is not demonstrating the development and design qualities to sell a new race. The new race would work only if GW changed enough practices and in that case the changing practices would be more important than the new race.

It isn't a surprise that the two new 'armies', Knights and new-Stormtroopers, have highly limited ranges. (Less than 5 new units between the two?) GW may not be able to spend the money to develop a whole new race in the first place.

I don't see Blood Bowl or Space Hulk as a replacement to WH40K miniature's game. Rather, I see them as part of an essential broad range of miniature games. They wouldn't replace WH40K, they would diversify GW's sales away from purely 28mm mass skirmish games. GW should have those games, even if they won't in aggregate make as much as Wh40K.

As for IPs, Warhammer has been around forever, GW would need radically different IPs which would let them reach a hitherto untouched audience.

A few quick notes after reading the entire thread:

1 - The core problems with GW are ultimately now time and management.

Time, in that the best time to begin fixing most of the issues they had was with the 7th edition release of 40k, and instead of fixing them, they doubled down on what was wrong. This has shortened their runway to survive (I think moderately, others think more dramatically).

Management, in that the beliefs of their management are both strongly held and strongly incorrect. Without replacing the management (Kirby included), GW cannot be cured. At best, an untimely demise can be delayed.

2 - All of GW's problems are fixable.

I've written about this at length on a certain other forum which I will reference later, but the sad/tragic/comic/all-too-common punchline to the GW story is that they appear to be a football (in the European sense) club dead set on scoring own goals. There will be nobody to blame at the end other than themselves, though they will inevitably go down blaming everyone else, as the ignorant always do.

3 - 40k is not over-saturated, the products are limited in scope (due to lack of vision, not lack of possibility) and overpriced.

If they fixed the core issues with rules / game size / pricing, they would grow (like everyone else in this space). We are in a geek renaissance. Comics have all but gone mainstream. Video gaming is ubiquitous. GW should be able to grow.

4 - On the topic of other forums, and the community view of GW, I think the real issue is just lack of understanding.

Obviously, that's easy for me to say - I'm a finance professional (I work on Wall Street, I run a trading desk, I have an MBA, etc.), but the level of discourse around GW's financials is, on average, low on information.

I find that most of the supporters of GW, from an economic standpoint (which is very different than just liking 40k), don't understand how a business works and have no experience with it. You get statements of a quality equivalent to "they are profitable, how could things be wrong?" without realizing that many firms have flipped from profit to dead quickly. You get things like not understanding how to compute falling unit sales, so people think higher revenue = more customers (that's not true if revenue went up 5% and prices were up 25%).

I've sparred with people on Warseer in particular and have very sharp elbows at times, and I will say I feel I've always been treated fairly by the mods there (and, in reality, some of the most virulent trolls have probably been banned as a direct result of their attempts to flame me, though the mods there are too decent to admit that). So if the tone of the discourse about the company is off base in places, it's probably due to lack of information and individuals who are clueless more than anything else.

BoLS in particular has a very low bar of competence, B&C is so narrowly hobby focused they don't really want threads about the economics there (and thus I don't have a view on the average knowledge of posters, as I suspect a lot of the more informed parties just don't post there on this topic at all), but Warseer has been fine. Master Minis has had a very good series on the economics of GW as well. So it's out there, but you have to dig to find informed parties. Or read all the annual reports yourself. I have them going back to 1997 if anyone really enjoys being super bored.

 MWHistorian wrote:
That raises a good question, is 40k now over saturated? Can they milk this cow any longer?
If not, do you think they'll find another cow?

They could try to resurrect fantasy, but it would need a lot of work, more work than they seem willing or able to do lately.

They could resurrect their smaller games like Blood Bowl and Space Hulk, but those have games that have come in and taken their spot already.

All I can see is either a new faction for 40k. (And they have more than they can handle already) or an entirely new game.

I think it's important to remember that we have just climbed out of [or are still climbing out of] the worst global recession since the Great Depression. It makes sense that GW restrict their business to their core products during this time and avoided risky new releases. Risk aversion, coupled with Dreadfleet, probably put paid to any new box sets and risky new directions during this time. I also think tying themselves in to the LOTR/Hobbit franchise for so long was a mistake, but then again I never understood the appeal. I like 40k because I can paint and model them any way I want.. Gandalf will only ever look like Gandalf, and we all know how LOTR ended.

Having said that I think now is a great time for new box sets to be released, both re-boxing of older games and entry level new ones. I would be all over a re-release of Epic or Bloodbowl, and a high level of sales is virtually guaranteed from nostalgic 30 somethings like me. I am also baffled by the lack of simple entry level games like HeroQuest/Space Crusade. Those helped get me into the game, and also opened up the Warhammer world to a more mainstream audience. They can also be placed in mainstream shops such as WH Smiths and bookshops. They do have computer games in development I believe, but these take time to get to the point of release.

What I found surprising after reading the report is the volume of sales that come from their shops [around 40% iirc, by far the largest source of sales]. The GW shops near me are virtual ghost towns - the manager of the nearest one is away on holiday for a week so the shop has closed for a week. Rather than get rid of shops, I think they should focus instead on making them inviting places to visit, with lots of different sample games going on, in-store discounts, campaigns, gaming nights etc. At the moment there is absolutely no reason for me to go into a GW shop despite one being a 5 minute walk away.

The problem is that something like Blood Bowl or Space Hulk appeal to a different clientele that like smallish, almost boardgame type of games (see also Warhammer Quest). Which is fine, except to GW who think it detracts from the real product.

A true miniatures company would be like most historical companies - produce figures, probably not rules or if they do then something fairly generic to let your players fine tune it, for free or very cheap, like a slim paperback or something. They would also create miniatures in different scales for collectors or whatnot. GW had this too (Inquisitor) and again got rid of it because it was detracting from 40k.

Imagine if GW had 54mm plastic Space Marines, say five to a box, and put out some skirmish type of rules for let's say the Heresy era (because more Space Marines) for a few bucks to buy softcover or free PDF download. Collectors might pick up some because hey 54mm Space Marines can have a lot of detail. Gamers might buy a couple of boxes for some cool narrative skirmishes.

GW seems to think that those skirmish games are silly and lame because people could buy less of them to play (the horror!), and even if they were 28mm you'd have people who would choose to play the skirmish game instead of 40k (egads!). Large scale games like Epic are worse because they'd have to be cheaper (gasp!) and people would play that for large battles, not buy hundreds of 40k figures at high prices (zwounds!).

EDIT: Glad to see Reinholt here explaining things as he always does

Here are a few ideas that have been rolling around in my head that maybe could help GW. If they can survive the storm. (in full disclaimer I dropped out of GW gaming 3 years ago and have not bought anything GW since).

1. Bring out the specialist games, bring em all (minus Dreadfleet) roaring back. Make it a huge worldwide event. Lots of coverage, make it something special for the independant stores out there. (and use it to buy good will with the independent stores, like a big ole apology).

2. Use the capital that is raised from the specialist games to go into development mode and work on a new core game. Hire TECHNICAL WRITERS to create the rules books along side your studio so that you have a comprehensive rules book at does not chase it's own tail. Also have a selectively open Beta. The way PP did this when they went from MKI to MKII (and they way Weird Games did too) should be used as the text book on how to get great rules and customer buy in all at the same time.

2a. I say a new core game for a few reasons. I just can't see a scenario where people don't flip out over revamping 40k again so soon after a new core rules release, even if they are complete gak (and I have not read or played them so I don't know if the rules suck or not). Also people are so invested (money and emotionally) That asking them at this time to change it all up seems foolish and a waste of dwindling resources.
.
3. Hire a social media director that knows what the heck they are doing. Recruit someone out of DC or London (or pick a capital) that deals with political scandal. Someone that has a lot of experience in smoothing ruffled feathers. Give them the budget they need and let them do their thing.

4. It's time to get roving bands of game promoters out in the trenches. Dust off the Outrider (or what ever you want to call them now) program and get people into FLGS and demo games, run tournaments and generally be out there showing the flag.

5. Slowly (like over several years slowly) start shutting down the retail stores. They are an albatross around GW's neck, and the capital it takes to run it is reckless. All that money could be used to develop new games. Let the FLGS out there be your brick and mortar stores. They can pay for the electricity and the lease. GW needs to make the games, pump out the plastic crack, and work on the next big thing.

There thats my business plan for the GW.

GW needs to diversify their offerings rather than tripling down on 40K.

Imagine if, instead of doing The Hobbit, they had done Game of Thrones? However, I do not expect GW to license other properties anytime soon, as they want total control and ownership.

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
What I found surprising after reading the report is the volume of sales that come from their shops [around 40% iirc, by far the largest source of sales]. The GW shops near me are virtual ghost towns - the manager of the nearest one is away on holiday for a week so the shop has closed for a week. Rather than get rid of shops, I think they should focus instead on making them inviting places to visit, with lots of different sample games going on, in-store discounts, campaigns, gaming nights etc. At the moment there is absolutely no reason for me to go into a GW shop despite one being 5 minutes away.

This is interesting to me as well. There used to be a large GW store in Charlotte, NC many years ago; I had just moved up to the state and was lucky enough to discover it.

The store definitely had a massively different vibe than the ones I visit now. The terrain was scratchbuilt with a lot of interesting details put into it, the staff was friendly and not overly pushy...heck, I remember them giving my brother and I some of the swamp tiles they had made that had been slightly damaged and were going to end up being scrapped.

The place had a bit of a crowd typically; people playing 40k or fantasy or LOTR. And the customer range was interesting. I actually remember one of the Carolina Panthers players coming in- he had a Warriors of Chaos army from back in the day. The guys in the store joked that they had gotten someone to put "Death to the False Emperor" on one of the scroll-by's at the Panthers stadium one time during a game or practice (can't remember which).

It was just an exciting place and felt like a community rather than an Apple boutique store where you're made to feel special for the privilege of buying the product...

 MWHistorian wrote:
That raises a good question, is 40k now over saturated? Can they milk this cow any longer?

40k is absolutely saturated. I believe GW has already hit the wall on this one. And I mean saturated in two different ways at once:

First, I believe they've basically saturated the market for 40k miniatures (at their current price point). This is the more obvious sense. They aren't bringing in enough new players, and they're actually driving away old players. The apparent decline in volume (based on their declining revenue) supports this.

Second, and more subtly, I think they've "saturated" 40k as a game system, and I think they really reached that point sometime in 5th edition to be honest. With specialist games cut, and LOTR and Fantasy failing, they clearly focused on 40k as their cash cow. This was the start of the focus on ramming new content into codexes that didn't need it, in order to sell new models to players who already had complete armies. Not every codex was like this, obviously (Necrons and Dark Eldar were fertile ground for new ideas, Blood Angels and Space Wolves were not - thus the former got much needed makeovers while the latter got poorly conceived Blood- and Wolf- Everything). This was just the start, saturation on an army level. But it didn't stop there, it couldn't stop there. So as 6th edition rolled around, rather than working on perfecting the ruleset, more bloat was added, Flyers and Fortifications in particular. Two things the game could certainly do without, but the company must keep growing, so therefore their only remaining successful game must keep growing.

This trend has continued into 7th. Codex releases invariably include ugly or stupid or otherwise poorly thought out units that the army did not need, and 7th edition was rushed out the door to fix zero issues with 6th, while adding Lords of War and making sure you have no restrictions on what nonsense you can put in an army.

GW has been putting all their eggs in the 40k basket for a long time now. Since they need to keep producing new products, that basket has become increasingly crowded and unwieldy. Rather than take the philosophy that they are a game company, and they should seek to produce high quality games (plural!) with complete ranges of miniatures, GW decided to be a "Warhammer 40k Toy Company". Where everything is secondary to the goal of, each month, making *something, anything* new out of plastic and selling it, with little concern over how this affects their game ecosystem, or even whether their costumers will want it.

Ultimately I believe the strategic decision to cut the specialist games and double-down on 40k and Fantasy was a potentially fatal one. Not only did they cede all those various niche game markets to competitors (seriously, look at how many new and popular competing games there are, and for almost every one I believe you'll find an analagous Specialist game that's older and with the right support could have smothered said competitor in its cradle). They also left themselves with little room to grow in terms of new products without adding bloat to their main games, nowhere within their ecosystem for their customers to turn when they temporarily "burn out" on said main games, and no cheap introductory games to snag new players. This has all led directly to the saturation of 40k both in terms of market share (again, at this price point), and in terms of the amount of new releases one could possibly add.

Edited to add: In my view, Games Workshop should have been focused all along on "perfecting" 40k and Fantasy. By the 7th or 8th edition of a game, you should be zeroed in on a tight, balanced, well-written ruleset that really needs no future changes. Similarly for each army's codex - there comes a point when you have fleshed out the relevant ideas for an army, achieved good internal and external balance, and gotten all the models up to a good standard in plastic. This is the point where you should stop. Don't add new things to this army unless you actually have a good idea, and the army actually needs it. If you have factions within your game universe that are not covered, now would be a good time to make a new army for one of those factions. Done with that? Now you have your "ultimate" edition of the rules and very solid codexes for your armies. Only update things from here on out as needed (replacing dated models, publishing new editions to include fixes and errata, etc).

"But how will we make money if we can't sell a new edition of the rules with random untested changes, and new codexes with dinosaur robots no one wanted?" The answer is you don't do that. You publish expansions, campaign material, supplemental codices, etc to keep people energized, you organize tournaments and local or global campaigns, and most importantly, you *make new games*. They might never be as profitable as your main lines, but they keep players within your ecosystem, keep them from burning out, and stifle competition. Just as importantly, they give you room to expand that doesn't involve mutating your golden goose until it turns into a chaos spawn.

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
I think it's important to remember that we have just climbed out of [or are still climbing out of] the worst global recession since the Great Depression. It makes sense that GW restrict their business to their core products during this time and avoided risky new releases. Risk aversion, coupled with Dreadfleet, probably put paid to any new box sets and risky new directions during this time. I also think tying themselves in to the LOTR/Hobbit franchise for so long was a mistake, but then again I never understood the appeal. I like 40k because I can paint and model them any way I want.. Gandalf will only ever look like Gandalf, and we all know how LOTR ended.

No.

The global demand spike never really impacted GW in a severe way; the rest of the gaming space (tabletop and board games) has been growing significantly over the past five years. The recession is a primary limiter for housing, certain forms of economic growth related to finance and capital expenditure heavy businesses, and in idiosyncratic parts of the world. It is not a generic excuse for a company like GW (and, if it's such a big problem, why are their competitors growing rapidly?).

If anything, GW has benefitted dramatically from this, as the massive currency re-valuations were a huge boon to the GW bottom line in 2009, and this effect has continued going forward.

GW's issues have nothing to do with the global economy, or they would be felt across the space. Everyone else is growing; GW is not. The issue is not a widespread economic one.

Now don't say that. Facts do nothing but stain our bright white armour. Let's talk about the GFC some more, 'cause that only happened 6 years ago and is totally the reason why GW's 13/14 report is bad (except it's not bad - everything is fine!).

GW is basically screwed no matter what they do, I think. They can't just slash prices across the board, but they can't just keep raising them either.

While longterm the best strategy would be to do a complete rewrite of 40k's rules, going back to its roots as a platoon-level game with additional rules to scale down to skirmish a la Infinity (more detail?) or up to large battles (more streamlined), they'd likely face a huge amount of backlash for it; I was too young to care but does anyone from the 2nd -> 3rd transition remember if it happened then?

Same as above goes for WHFB, but might actually be a reality as there was a rumor of them going to a LOTR style game for WHFB when the license is up; while again that would be a good option it has the potential to destroy them completely as it would piss off entire swathes of customers if everything they had was suddenly invalidated with a new edition, although given the decline of WHFB it'd be better to testbed it here than with 40k.

Specialist Games seems like the most risk-free option, but they'd have to get it through their heads that any profit is good profit, it's not garbage if it's not your big game. If someone would rather buy 20 figures for Necromunda or Inquisitor or Mordheim rather than 200 for 40k, then so be it. They're likely to buy different factions anyways. Also, given their past record though how many people would believe that SGs would stick around?

That's why I think they're screwed. Every option they could do has an equal chance of killing them as saving them. It's like a tumor that will guaranteed kill you in 5 years, or you can get an operation done in 1 year that has a 50% chance of killing you.

Also agree 100% with CalgarsPimpHand. 40k and WHFB should have been streamlined and balanced by now, and the supplements should have been things like FW has done - Vraks, Damocles, etc. Hell what they should have done is make Citadel the bulk, cheap plastic option to bulk out armies with generic guys, and FW be for special characters, and the big kits that are the every so often for a cool battle type of deal.

The reason GW has pigeonholed itself into a one-trick pony of only really going after 40k is a combination of risk-aversion and lack of market research:

1. They know 40k sells.
2. They know Dreadfleet didn't sell.
3. They have no idea why #1 and #2 happen.

Ironically, most companies diversify their offering to avoid risk; i.e. if the bottom fell out of 40k tomorrow, ideally they would still have revenue from WHFB, LoTR, and side games to fall back on.

However, since they don't do market research and don't care to find out what people want to buy, they effectively back themselves into a corner of either taking a HUGE risk on a product like Dreadfleet because they don't know what the reception will be, or taking essentially no risk in just cranking out another 40k boxed set.

Given those parameters, guess what decision every corporation is going to make every time?

 slowthar wrote:
The reason GW has pigeonholed itself into a one-trick pony of only really going after 40k is a combination of risk-aversion and lack of market research:

1. They know 40k sells.
2. They know Dreadfleet didn't sell.
3. They have no idea why #1 and #2 happen.

Aaahaha, humorous *and* accurate!

I think they have plenty of flexibility on 40k-related games.

After all, you could introduce a 40k skirmish game that uses the bones of the current rules, but modernizes it (IGOUGO for starters), without invalidating 40k. Just make it a scale slightly larger than kill team (call it a 500pt ish game). Put the rules out for free, put the army books out for free (or maybe put unit cards out for free and put them in boxes); you have now added a product that will drive sales and new purchases of models, and dramatically lowered your cost of entry. It's a trivial step.

If that achieves wide acceptance, you port the rules to the next 40k, and they will be well received.

Similarly, 40k's setting still has more room to explore all kinds of things. You can alter without invalidating previous works until you are sure it works. Iteration, measured advancement, and fast following (steal the best ideas of other games) are all legitimate tactics running a business of this sort.

There is no reason GW can't make things work; they just won't.

 Reinholt wrote:
There is no reason GW can't make things work; they just won't.[/color]

Pretty sure there's been a substantial brain drain hasn't there? All the skilled people have been replaced by those that can say "yes!" emphatically enough. They may very well be completely unable to release a good system now.

 Yonan wrote:

 Reinholt wrote:
There is no reason GW can't make things work; they just won't.[/color]

Pretty sure there's been a substantial brain drain hasn't there? All the skilled people have been replaced by those that can say "yes!" emphatically enough. They may very well be completely unable to release a good system now.

I have the sinking feeling that's the case; the people there can't write good rules (maybe Kelly since he was around in the old days, maybe he picked something up from Rick and Alessio) or just think that things need to be more convoluted because they're from the old school (Jervis).

I'd try to do everything in my power to get Alessio back writing rules, whether it was as a contractor/consultant or an FTE.

Designing a strategy game is not rocket science; you can find designers. Hell, you could broadly copy the ideas of other good games and just playtest them. If GW lacks the internal talent to do this, the solution is fire the terrible employees and hire better ones.

Again, it's not that they cannot do things, it's that they refuse to do them. A healthy management team could turn GW around quickly by displaying merely an average level of competence.