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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
The world of business as GW sees it:

Advertising is bad. The less people know of your new product, the more people will buy it.

If high prices are restricting sales, then the solution is even higher prices.

If a popular product is selling well, stop selling that product

If your customers are asking for X, give them Y

You forgot:

We have no competition but if we did, people would forget about them as quickly as D&D and Pokemon.

Im assuming we've attributed the potentially poor performance of the last 6 months to a year because of the drop off in LotR and the implosion of Fantasy.
I'd be shocked if fantasy sales reached any sort of threshold since pre Xmas due to the end times acomming.

Hence would it not be better to judge next years performance when Fantasy gets a reboot, the last of the 40k codicies get updated and released and any new stand alone games come out?

Its a bit hard to judge GW when two of their major lines of the last 10 years have effectively stopped being supported/made sales, leaving only 40k to fly the flag.

 Ratius wrote:
Im assuming we've attributed the potentially poor performance of the last 6 months to a year because of the drop off in LotR and the implosion of Fantasy.
I'd be shocked if fantasy sales reached any sort of threshold since pre Xmas due to the end times acomming.

Hence would it not be better to judge next years performance when Fantasy gets a reboot, the last of the 40k codicies get updated and released and any new stand alone games come out?

Its a bit hard to judge GW when two of their major lines of the last 10 years have effectively stopped being supported/made sales, leaving only 40k to fly the flag.

I don't think the LOTR sales are impacting that much. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, the LOTR fans are a loyal bunch - there will always be a market for LOTR models. I think GW could sell them for a while longer.


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 agnosto wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
The world of business as GW sees it:

Advertising is bad. The less people know of your new product, the more people will buy it.

If high prices are restricting sales, then the solution is even higher prices.

If a popular product is selling well, stop selling that product

If your customers are asking for X, give them Y

You forgot:

We have no competition but if we did, people would forget about them as quickly as D&D and Pokemon.

I feel like an idiot for forgetting that

You're right though - they seem to think they exist in a vacuum.

My thoughts from last years report:

The loss of money isnt as important as the loss of players. (Although i wouldnt surprised at all if the 4mil website designation was so high because they wanted to make and excuse for a drop off in online purchasing)

This is GW's MO really...

Warhammer online: made more than enough money to survive... couldnt keep players in game due to bugs/terrible patches/no improvement of rules. Axed when player pool dwindled to low.

Dawn of war (all of them): made more than enough money to survive... couldnt keep players interested due to bugs/terrible patches/no improvement of rules. Axed when player pool dwindled to low.

Specialist games (BFG, EPIC, necromunda, inquisitor, blood bowl, etc: made more than enough money to survive... couldnt keep players in game due to bugs/terrible patches/no improvement of rules. Axed when player pool dwindled to low.

Hobbit: made more than enough money to survive... couldnt keep players in game due to bugs/terrible patches/no improvement of rules. Axed when player pool dwindled to low.

warhammer fantasy: made more than enough money to survive... couldnt keep players in game due to bugs/terrible patches/no improvement of rules. soon to be axed when player pool dwindles to low.

The plain and simple fact is that whereas for the past 10-20 years the people playing the game were the primary advertisers... now most of us dont even try to sell the game to fresh blood.

this game is like golf without any of the positive stereotypes: expensive, time consuming, most of peoples enjoyment is derived from thinking about it rather than actually experiencing it. Wargaming in general is viewed as childish and archaic, and generally a negative light by most of the modern world, and thats a hard stigma to overcome just to get abused fiscally by the same company that adult society mocks you for enjoying.

EDIT:
1. i know that the vidja games arnt necessarily in GW's control... but they were the owners of the IP. And greenlit the developers who were to blame
2. most of the specialist games were fairly solid, holistically.

Sauce: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1380/607499.page#7082241

 Ratius wrote:
Im assuming we've attributed the potentially poor performance of the last 6 months to a year because of the drop off in LotR and the implosion of Fantasy.
I'd be shocked if fantasy sales reached any sort of threshold since pre Xmas due to the end times acomming.

Hence would it not be better to judge next years performance when Fantasy gets a reboot, the last of the 40k codicies get updated and released and any new stand alone games come out?

Its a bit hard to judge GW when two of their major lines of the last 10 years have effectively stopped being supported/made sales, leaving only 40k to fly the flag.

Why white knight it?

Anyone with half a functioning brain stem could read the paper and see the last of the LotR movies was coming out and plan in advance that their would be a drop off in LotR sales. Further, a 5th grader should be able to read sales statements and see an impending implosion in fantasy sales. While GW has said they don't do market research they presumably do look at the data they have in house and can at least act upon it.

Every six months its "well these don't show the sales from Codex X, or 40K reboot Y, or obviously show onetime decline in product Z." At some point they stop being inconvenient aberrations to the bottom line and become indicative the inability of management to plan for obvious and foreseeable circumstances.

If you lived in a tent held up by three solid foundational poles, would you find it acceptable when it was discovered that one of the poles was actually so rotten to the core that it no longer had any structural worth and the third pole, that you actually borrowed from someone else, was due to be returned with no replacement in site?

As a consumer it is easy to judge GW. They offer me nothing of value. There is a large and growing majority that agrees that GW no longer offers products of value. I am certain that GW is aware of this growing sentiment in their customer base, however as a publicly traded company they will continue to confuse and obfuscate the issue because it isn't the customer that needs to be appeased, it is the investor. That will continue as long as they can mask falling sales with marginal profits.

The public exclaim from on-top is very confusing when they claim to be "only" a model company.
Never mind comments of being a "Ferrari", I basically devolve into cost / value comparison below of how they conflict with various interests and invariably lose.

It is said by Kirby they are a high end collectable model manufacturer, done, fini.
Did some searches of the "best" models and found this "Supermarine Spitfire", they even provide masking for the canopies.
http://www.hyperscale.com/2009/reviews/kits/tamiya60319reviewbg_1.htm
$107 at Amazon Canadian funds.
Closest cost equivalent in a single model is the Tau "Riptide" for $100. No comparison.

Yet they sell books of various rules for up to 3 times what a high end graphic novel would cost.
(Here, supposedly "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" Deluxe edition, hardcover $34.99, I had to reference this one because they are selling it "worse" than the original... in black and white!!!!)
http://www.dccomics.com/graphic-novels/batman-noir-the-dark-knight-returns-deluxe-edition

Their paint costs more than a mouthful of high end scotch ($5 for 0.4 of an oz US = $12.50 per oz).

Their individual unassembled models are almost at par in cost with X-wing fully assembled, fully painted models with cards, tokens and stands.

Any one of their craft tools costs more than a 15 piece set at the local hardware store (Verified "detail cutters" at $40 and kit at Canadian Tire).

So the line of "we do no market research" comes into play of where the competition for all those dollars to buy their models: when does their apparent "worth" bring them to the front of the purchasing cue? I am more a "gamer" so if there is less game to be had for those fine models, their apparent worth (is) less.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
Here's a question:

If GW's sales have declined overall, but mail order sales have increased, doesn't the higher profit margin from mail order sales mean that fewer units were sold?

Sales and profits are different things.

If GW sell $100 through a shop, they make sales of $100. If the shop costs them $60 to operate and make that sale, their profit is $40.

If GW's webstore sells $100, it's sales of $100, but the profit might be $50 because the webstore only costs £50 to run to make that sale.

In either case the sales is still $100.

All figures have been made up for the sake of illustration.

Obviously. I wasn't sure if the blurb was referring to "sales" in the sense of revenue, or if GW was referring to profits. There might be rules that dictate what such words mean in that context.

You would think that if GW's profitability went up, the company would have touted that in the press release. So if it is the case that mail order revenue has cannibalized trade revenue, wouldn't GW have a higher profit margin on the cannibalized revenue?

That's a gross oversimplification, of course. I'm just spitballing.

Kiwidru wrote:

Specialist games (BFG, EPIC, necromunda, inquisitor, blood bowl, etc: made more than enough money to survive... couldnt keep players in game due to bugs/terrible patches/no improvement of rules. Axed when player pool dwindled to low.

Welcome, traveller! Once your biological functions have aligned to this dimension's physical laws, we'll show you how the SG were actually good on this side of the void.

 Vermis wrote:

Kiwidru wrote:

Specialist games (BFG, EPIC, necromunda, inquisitor, blood bowl, etc: made more than enough money to survive... couldnt keep players in game due to bugs/terrible patches/no improvement of rules. Axed when player pool dwindled to low.

Welcome, traveller! Once your biological functions have aligned to this dimension's physical laws, we'll show you how the SG were actually good on this side of the void.

Agreed. Epic and BFG needed rule improvements? Bloodbowl, really? Maybe they needed the odd quirk or rule FAQ'd (which was produced quite regularly) but a re-write? Hardly. But, I see what point you were trying to make. Sorry for the derailment!

Blood Bowl did need fixing. In particular, they needed to get rid of the bloody stupid idea that it's a good thing if some teams are flat out better than others. Liking the idea of a Halfling team does not mean you should not get to win games - if you don't want to win games, you are more than capable of setting your own handicap to achieve that without the developer stacking the deck against you.

 zedmeister wrote:

 Vermis wrote:

Kiwidru wrote:

Specialist games (BFG, EPIC, necromunda, inquisitor, blood bowl, etc: made more than enough money to survive... couldnt keep players in game due to bugs/terrible patches/no improvement of rules. Axed when player pool dwindled to low.

Welcome, traveller! Once your biological functions have aligned to this dimension's physical laws, we'll show you how the SG were actually good on this side of the void.

Agreed. Epic and BFG needed rule improvements? Bloodbowl, really? Maybe they needed the odd quirk or rule FAQ'd (which was produced quite regularly) but a re-write? Hardly. But, I see what point you were trying to make. Sorry for the derailment!

^^ What these two fine gentlemen said. Also, the DOW series didn't get axed because of losing players/bad support, it was discontinued because THQ, which owned the developer Relic, went bankrupt and its projects were auctioned/dissolved.

That being said, the basic point that GW has not made an effort or lifted a finger to support anything except their two flagship lines is quite true, and I feel like the increasing lack of entry-level GW games really hurt their influx of new players over the last 5 years.

OT: These threads get me so excited; the GoT/TV Drama analogy was very apt.

 Xca|iber wrote:

OT: These threads get me so excited; the GoT/TV Drama analogy was very apt.

It's why I like watching The Apprentice, too. You get the feeling that, while you're definitely no business guru yourself (or... myself, even), you could hardly miss the fundamental principles in the way this pack of jokers do.

weeble1000 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
Here's a question:

If GW's sales have declined overall, but mail order sales have increased, doesn't the higher profit margin from mail order sales mean that fewer units were sold?

Sales and profits are different things.

... ... ...

Obviously. I wasn't sure if the blurb was referring to "sales" in the sense of revenue, or if GW was referring to profits. There might be rules that dictate what such words mean in that context.

Accounting terminology is controlled by rules founded in law.

weeble1000 wrote:You would think that if GW's profitability went up, the company would have touted that in the press release. So if it is the case that mail order revenue has cannibalized trade revenue, wouldn't GW have a higher profit margin on the cannibalized revenue?

That's a gross oversimplification, of course. I'm just spitballing.

If cannibalisation of retail sales by webstore increased profits, you might expect them to shout out that good news indeed. It might not be effective though in terms of the distribution sales.

It actually is possible that sales through independents would be more profitable than sales through GW's own outlets whether high street or web, because while the selling price of each unit is lower, there are no additional costs involved.

Agreed with the quoted posts about my specialist games and vodka games points. (as shown at the bottom of the post yall didn't get to because you were triggered already)

Bloodbowl went up to six editions, by which time the rules were maintained by an enthusiastic committee of players and members of GW's own design studio, available online as the Living Rulebook. By all accounts it was a pretty tight rulebook by the end.

Some of these committee members were the guys whose fan web sites GW then proceeded to gak on for having names like Bloodbowl.com, and so on.

However we are getting a bit off the topic.



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 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If this six month report is negative, it will be the fifth in a series of negative six month reports. In other words, two and a half years of falling sales.

Almost certainly a lot longer than that by several years, its only recently that GW's revenues have been falling faster than their regular price rises could mask.

I totally agree. It is pretty clear that unit sales have been dropping for at least five years if not longer, but rapidly rising prices concealed the problem.

However if we are looking at financial reports we have to look at the figures presented which are naturally money amounts.

 AlexHolker wrote:
Blood Bowl did need fixing. In particular, they needed to get rid of the bloody stupid idea that it's a good thing if some teams are flat out better than others. Liking the idea of a Halfling team does not mean you should not get to win games - if you don't want to win games, you are more than capable of setting your own handicap to achieve that without the developer stacking the deck against you.

Then don't play them, some of us do quite well with them. Blood Bowl was a solid rule set and it had nothing to do with GW. In fact GW is why the system isn't even better then it already is they actively made it worse. As a world wide community playtested the rules headed by a group of fans, and got a free rulebook made for them. Fluff and all.

It seems we all agree that the rules improvements of blood bowl came after corporate axed its support, and a few diehard developers took it upon themself to tighten the rules as a pet project once the company interference was removed? At least that's the point I was making, and that by then the vast majority of the player pool had already burned out or lost interest.

Sorry for the derailment on that, but it is relevant in the same way that GW mishandles its constituency currently. I don't think it's any stretch to say that most fantasy sales are to people who are already invested to some degree; and round bases, unknown new rules, wild speculation, changing of the races, etc are all changes that inconvenience players proportionally to how invested they already are (I might not mind having to go back and round base 500 points worth of stuff, it's just not worth it for me to do that to my 4.5k combined chaos force).

 AlexHolker wrote:
Blood Bowl did need fixing. In particular, they needed to get rid of the bloody stupid idea that it's a good thing if some teams are flat out better than others. Liking the idea of a Halfling team does not mean you should not get to win games - if you don't want to win games, you are more than capable of setting your own handicap to achieve that without the developer stacking the deck against you.

Sounds quite a bit like the state of 40k these days...

When is it we get the proper report? July?

 Ratius wrote:


Its a bit hard to judge GW when two of their major lines of the last 10 years have effectively stopped being supported/made sales, leaving only 40k to fly the flag.

It's actually quite easy to judge GW because if the two lines stumbled then it was due to GW's making. People don't just buy stuff because of a GW sticker on the box. There might be some outside problems that could cause a drop in sales but I don't really see an iPhone hitting Blackberry situation for GW here (with them being Blackberry in this case). They are a company and need to manage their product output and balance sheet so if there is a sudden drop for no real reason then they are the only one to blame. Other options (for blame) would be some competition but I don't really see anyone who could influence them to such a high degree is such a short time or the consumer. But how do you blame consumer for just not buying something? That would be ridiculous so the only real option (in my opinion) would be GW having done it themselves (probably unintentionally).

I think GW is a MAJOR acquisition target. Declining sales numbers. closing stores. "Archaic" and "fringe" pursuit. Significant new entrants to the industry. Mantic snd Privateer mainly.

What they have: Major IP asset. Loyal fanbase. Great Creative department.

What they need. Social Media footprint. Strategic Partnerships including a REAL movie studio or Netflix partnership (major US), a real video game partnership (major US). Game balance. Corporate recognition that it is FIRST a content creator. SECOND a game company. THIRD a miniature manufacturer. Not vice versa.

Until a true SWAT analysis is made, this corporate team is going to see continuing declines until it is bought by a visionless conglomerate that will spin it off.

Wasn't there some debacle over the 6th edition of the Bloodbowl living rulebook where GW decided they didn't want to cooperate with them releasing it with rules for star players and things and made them gut it before release? Then to show exactly what they thought of the player base they started throwing C&Ds at various sites related to Bloodbowl.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Wasn't there some debacle over the 6th edition of the Bloodbowl living rulebook where GW decided they didn't want to cooperate with them releasing it with rules for star players and things and made them gut it before release? Then to show exactly what they thought of the player base they started throwing C&Ds at various sites related to Bloodbowl.

Yep. GW does like to attack loyal fans while standing imotently aside as competitors treat them better and steal them away.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Wasn't there some debacle over the 6th edition of the Bloodbowl living rulebook where GW decided they didn't want to cooperate with them releasing it with rules for star players and things and made them gut it before release? Then to show exactly what they thought of the player base they started throwing C&Ds at various sites related to Bloodbowl.

Yeah, GW noticed that there was a thriving third-party market, and so just removed any of the Star Players that lacked models from the game.

The C&Ds were slightly unrelated... That happened around the time the Bloodbowl computer game was in the works. They started hitting up any fansite that used their IP in the domain name, in case they wanted to use that name themselves to promote the computer game. Technically well within their rights, but still a gakky thing to do to sites that had been putting in all the work to keep the game alive that GW clearly had no interest in doing themselves.

A properly scaled 40k back down to Epic and then making the main game into Infinity would be great at this point, but I doubt that's going to happen. 28mm 40k right now is just a hot mess of random rules, junk codecis being thrown out, and a lot of fan service at mile high costs.

Plus, whatever is happening to Fantasy.

Keep spiraling around the drain a bit longer, it seems.

 Ratius wrote:
Its a bit hard to judge GW when two of their major lines of the last 10 years have effectively stopped being supported/made sales, leaving only 40k to fly the flag.

LOL, what? I assume you're being sarcastic because that is crazy.

If WHFB sales have dropped off, it's entirely because GW are stupid for ending the End Times and leaving customers hanging. Of course we can judge them on that, it's just those kind of stupid things they should be judged on.

As for the Hobbit, GW had only put in a token effort to support The Hobbit right from the moment Escape From Goblin Town sold so poorly. Instead of getting a boost in sales from the last film being released I'm sure all they got was a bunch of customers saying "WTF? Why is it all resin and priced as if it were made from gold?".


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 doktor_g wrote:
What they have: Major IP asset. Loyal fanbase. Great Creative department.

I think the 40k IP is over rated. It's big in the context of a wargame, but it's small in the context of many other IP's. Firstly, a recent 40k poll would suggest there's not much more than 120k active 40k customers globally and I'm sure many of those come from GW's wide array of stores which are costing a fortune to keep open. Secondly, GW have already expanded 40k to the nth degree, any new company that picks it up will be left wondering "err, what do we do with this now?". I'd suggest many companies would rather have the IP for a movie or maybe even a book or video game than for 40k.


This is the poll I was talking about: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/650391.page

Specialists games were just a money pit for GW, That they were entry games and gotta a lot of love from the Veterans was not relevant, need to reduce costs away Specialist games went!

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Specialists games were just a money pit for GW, That they were entry games and gotta a lot of love from the Veterans was not relevant, need to reduce costs away Specialist games went!

No, they weren't. All the SG's were profitable to some extent. They were axed because of the move away from metal and, I reckon, GW erroneously believed that all the SG buyers would move over to the main games. Well, the cancellation of the Specialist Games has allowed myriad competitors to spring up filling that niche quite nicely.

 TheKbob wrote:
A properly scaled 40k back down to Epic and then making the main game into Infinity would be great at this point, but I doubt that's going to happen. 28mm 40k right now is just a hot mess of random rules, junk codecis being thrown out, and a lot of fan service at mile high costs.

This is what needs to happen but of course it won't until the entire company melts down. A revamped 40K 2nd ed would be perfect, ironically the 2nd ed rules were simpler than the hideous mess that 40k is today. I would also be worried about GW meddling with Epic given that all that is really required is some updated official army lists and models.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Specialists games were just a money pit for GW,

Were they? Given that smaller companies can survive and thrive of the back of similar games I don't see how they could have been losing GW money if they had been managed correctly. The reason why 'Specialist' games are still being played over a decade after GW abandoned them is that they are, on the whole, quality rulesets that reach the gaming nirvana of simple rules+complex gameplay.

I think it is indicative of GW's cackhandedness they they were allowed to die in the first place.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Firstly, a recent 40k poll would suggest there's not much more than 120k active 40k customers globally.......

Thats a pretty strong conclusion to draw from a self selective poll with under 3k respondents. I doubt that anyone really knows just how many people play 40K, not even GW. The 40K IP is strong, it is just about a household name and most if not all young males (<30) in the west will have heard of it (probably)

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

Thats a pretty strong conclusion to draw from a self selective poll with under 3k respondents. I doubt that anyone really knows just how many people play 40K, not even GW. The 40K IP is strong, it is just about a household name and most if not all young males (<30) in the west will have heard of it (probably)

I really don't think so. 'Almost a household name' is really stretching it. This is a niche hobby. It might be more well known (or less well unknown) in the uk, but 'the west' is stretching it.

Deadnight wrote:

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

Thats a pretty strong conclusion to draw from a self selective poll with under 3k respondents. I doubt that anyone really knows just how many people play 40K, not even GW. The 40K IP is strong, it is just about a household name and most if not all young males (<30) in the west will have heard of it (probably)

I really don't think so. 'Almost a household name' is really stretching it. This is a niche hobby. It might be more well known (or less well unknown) in the uk, but 'the west' is stretching it.

This. The amount of people that I had to explain to what miniature wargaming was (let alone Warhammer) who came into the game store I worked at was astounding. And this was a destination store, not a mall location. Amongst a certain subset of geeks it's a familiar name, but after the 90s when GW stopped advertising in the different gaming rags (I remember seeing them all the time in my Dragon subscription) their name recognition dropped rather heavily.