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The pricing is one of their biggest failings, but I mean that regarding how products are priced, not the prices themselves. The prices are actually set by the design team, not the accountants. The sales figures also contribute towards the sculptors' salary negotiations. That is why there is so much inconsistency in prices (£23.50 for 10 eternal guard, but £35 for witch elves, £25 for a tac squad, but £21 for a 5 man tempestous scion box). Honestly, it's a over excited kid trying to ride a massive space hopper and falling off, not Darth Vader in the death star.

That's interesting to hear, although it's odd that you get the same sculptors producing stuff for both GW and other companies, and the GW stuff is so much more expensive?

Take for example the Perry's work, and compare it to the price of their historicals ranges (for their own company!) which are a fraction of the price of the miniatures they sculpted for the Hobbit.

Hobbit has licensing royalties to pay don't forget, which is why the range is more expensive than whfb and 40k

 JamesY wrote:
The pricing is one of their biggest failings, but I mean that regarding how products are priced, not the prices themselves. The prices are actually set by the design team, not the accountants. The sales figures also contribute towards the sculptors' salary negotiations. That is why there is so much inconsistency in prices (£23.50 for 10 eternal guard, but £35 for witch elves, £25 for a tac squad, but £21 for a 5 man tempestous scion box). Honestly, it's a over excited kid trying to ride a massive space hopper and falling off, not Darth Vader in the death star.

Wow. That is really interesting to hear. Thanks for that!

JamesY = font of knowledge.

There must be some guidelines, though, because 10-man troops are all in one price strata, 5 man FA/Heavies are in another, 50mm ones another step up, et cetera. BA Tacticals, for instance, would never have been priced at $50 per 5, right? As Blacksails put it, there's a suggestion on Reddit for AoS to be balanced just on the basis of MSRP

Prices are not set by designers, they are set by management accountants and marketers, who have to do a lot of work to track all kinds of costs to ensure the true production cost of a unit is known as accurately as possible, WIthout this info you might be selling stuff at a loss. Once the production cost is known, marketers take over and work out how much can be charged for the item by comparing with rivals, the general state of the market, and how much they can boost demand by things like advertising, premium pricing and other strategies. Etc.

With regards to bitetyhthumb's points, there are some grains of truth in what he says.

GW operates a large retail chain that soaks up about 70% of turnover to keep it going. Obviously if sales dropped further, GW could start closing a lot of shops to save money. There are some possible problems with this:

1. Shops held on leases cannot necessarily be disposed of quickly. Also, there are redundancy costs for getting rid of staff.

2. Most importantly, GW actually sells a lot of kits through its shops and they are the major source of recruitment of new customers. Closing shops is likely to have an adverse effect on these factors, so it is possible that the money saved by closing shops would be more than outweighed by the reduction in sales. However, GW have over 30 years experience in retail, and it really is the heart and soul of the company, not model making or rules-writing. So I think GW could manage this pretty well.

The 80/20 rule that Blacksails referred to is called the Pareto Principle and states that 80% of the results ceom from 20% of the causal factors. It is surprisingly widely applicable as a rule of thumb.

The danger for GW of relying on this principle is that they are selling games that have an important social component and network effect. The more people who (buy and) play a GW game, the more likely it is for more people to want to (buy and) play the same game. This also affects licensing revenue.

In this scenario GW would be reliant on the true super fans who buy everything GW put out because they like to buy everything GW put out. GW would therefore tailor their new products more and more to this group of customers.

At that point GW have ceased being a wargame company and would have little relevance for the rest of the market.

The release of AOS does not look as if it is following that strategy, though. AOS is clearly intended to be a widely appealing game.

Trasvi wrote:

I don't know enough about Gundams or whichever pricier-than-GW 5-total-sculpts boutique you're talking about, but...

I didn't know much about Gundams either other than their reputation, but I picked up a few and the sprue technology is easily a decade or 2 ahead of GW (and everyone else in the space), I mean they have multi-coloured, multi-plastic sprues, and can even put hinged parts on them.

What's more, you can get Gundams that are approximately Dreadnaught sized for 210 Yen, that's ~$2. I think I paid 2000Y (~$20) for one about riptide sized, which must have had 200 parts. Of course, that was in Japan, but even in the UK/US, I can import Gundams that utterly humiliate any wargaming manufacturer for a fraction of the price.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Prices are not set by designers, they are set by management accountants and marketers, who have to do a lot of work to track all kinds of costs to ensure the true production cost of a unit is known as accurately as possible, WIthout this info you might be selling stuff at a loss. Once the production cost is known, marketers take over and work out how much can be charged for the item by comparing with rivals, the general state of the market, and how much they can boost demand by things like advertising, premium pricing and other strategies. Etc.

With regards to bitetyhthumb's points, there are some grains of truth in what he says.

GW operates a large retail chain that soaks up about 70% of turnover to keep it going. Obviously if sales dropped further, GW could start closing a lot of shops to save money. There are some possible problems with this:

1. Shops held on leases cannot necessarily be disposed of quickly. Also, there are redundancy costs for getting rid of staff.

2. Most importantly, GW actually sells a lot of kits through its shops and they are the major source of recruitment of new customers. Closing shops is likely to have an adverse effect on these factors, so it is possible that the money saved by closing shops would be more than outweighed by the reduction in sales. However, GW have over 30 years experience in retail, and it really is the heart and soul of the company, not model making or rules-writing. So I think GW could manage this pretty well.

The 80/20 rule that Blacksails referred to is called the Pareto Principle and states that 80% of the results ceom from 20% of the causal factors. It is surprisingly widely applicable as a rule of thumb.

The danger for GW of relying on this principle is that they are selling games that have an important social component and network effect. The more people who (buy and) play a GW game, the more likely it is for more people to want to (buy and) play the same game. This also affects licensing revenue.

In this scenario GW would be reliant on the true super fans who buy everything GW put out because they like to buy everything GW put out. GW would therefore tailor their new products more and more to this group of customers.

At that point GW have ceased being a wargame company and would have little relevance for the rest of the market.

The release of AOS does not look as if it is following that strategy, though. AOS is clearly intended to be a widely appealing game.

Mate, I used to chat to quite a few of the sculptors, and that is straight from the mouths of one of the most senior and respected sculptors in the business. They aren't blindly pricing, they know very well the production costs and break even points of everything they make. I don't agree with it at all and had quite a heated discussion about the blasé and boarder line insulting nature of the pricing differences, but that is how the prices are determined.

The pricing system you describe is, unfortunately, only observed by companies that are good at retail. I am very very fond of gw, but retail is not their strong point.

Trasvi wrote:

GW does many things very well - it just happens to include things that you don't value: complete ranges of rank&file, characters, monsters and vehicles.

Assuming scale is consistent-ish, you don't need a single company to produce the complete range, or the rules. My 28mm WW2 Soviet army has troops and vehicles from a host of manufacturers and can be used with any ruleset. Neither of those have anything to do with scultping quality though.

GW's done remarkably well to convince people you must buy everything from the same company. It's probably the best thing they've managed and I think the only reason they are still on the go.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Talys wrote:

2. I bang on about Apple, as you put it, because it illustrates a point. You can't admire one company for making expensive things that are unaffordable to many, being secretive, being arrogant, and not listening to its customers just because it makes a lot of money; while at the same time disliking another company for the same reasons. How much money they make is irrelevant.

Apple managed to make themselves appear to be a status symbol, due to being popular with designers a decade or 2 ago. They are somewhat secretive but always leak stuff with plenty of notice to drive huge hype. They listen to customers, sort of. They also aren't that unafordable to many now - which is partially why they are becoming less popular with the 'cool' folk, being upset because even the guy who serves them coffee has one. They also make devices which, for the most part, are pretty slick, even if they don't have feature parity with competition. Their markup is huge, they make billions in profit and have expanded widely covering various markets (phones, mp3 players, PC's) whilst making lots of money from other people (30% iTunes royalty). They were also run by a pretty big personality.

None of that applies to GW; They don't make status symbols, they aren't must haves, they don't have a wide product range, they don't leak things or drive up hype, their products aren't slick (whilst still not having feature parity), and they ignore everyone else.

They like to think they are like Apple. But like most other companies in the world, they aren't.

So, GW makes bigger and more models. I don't see how that means they make the best. Again, their Walmart. They have a bigger selection of mediocre stuff, but unlike Walmart they charge too much.
Also, I get it. No one else makes Space Marines. So everyone is inferior.

And Wyrd makes some amazing plastics.

Painting can forgive and cover many sculpt issues.
The "flow" of cloth and chains seem to contradict where they are moving... all directions? Very showy poses. Matter of tastes as mentioned.

Since "quality" of models is to a great degree a personal aesthetic choice, it is useless to praise or criticise any particular firm's output except in relation to consumers' perception of price/value leading to sales.

What I mean is that whatever people say about GW's models having technology that is more or less sophisticated, or better/worse scaling, or poseability, in the end nothing matters except purchasing behaviour.

In this respect GW's continuing slide in sales revenue can only tell us that however good their models may be, consumers increasingly find them overpriced.

Of course this is only a trend of the past few years. The company is still in profit and can stop the rot.

 Vertrucio wrote:
I think you can blame a multimillion dollar company for being "lazy, toxic, smug, self interested, and self entitled, and over (or under) invested" more than you can blame individual players.

Sorry, but you have to realize, corporations are still people, and those people from top to bottom can be just as flawed. What's worse is that those flaws have even greater effect as its amplified by the corporate decisions at the top.

Technically, Corporations are Meta-People.

The technical term is a "Rational Economic Agency" (REA)

It is essentially a rule-based consciousness, composed of sub-agents, each acting with their own agenda, but toward the goal of achieving the overall Utility Function of the larger meta-person or Agent.

This is why you can see Corporate Behavior that seems to be so counter-productive to the function of the corporation (because Sub-Agents have learned how to game the Utility function without providing any actual value).

As an example. An REA has a Utility Function of producing a maximum number of widgets for the reported resources. A set of Sub-agents, each with their own utility function, reports the resources available to the REA's main Agent. Another Sub-Agent is in charge of actually making widgets, and reporting back to the REA's main Agent whenever a widget is produced.

And, these sub-agents get a "Cookie" (A reward) whenever a widget is produced.

But, let us say that a group of sub-agents discover how to trick the Sub-Agent in charge of producing widgets into telling the REA Main Agent that a widget has been produced (when one has not), so that they all get their reward "Cookie."

Suddenly, the REA thinks to its "Look how awesome and successful I am! All of my agents are being rewarded, I am making all these widgets! Things are GREAT!"

Only to have the whole thing fall apart later due to a pileup of underutilized resources that have been warehoused and not used, and accounting problems arise when an audit is done, and it is discovered that the warehouse supposed to have stored all of the created widgets is empty....

GW would fall into this sort of REA. Not quite as bad as the example, but it looks to be heading that way.

Kirby has found a way to give cookies (Dividends) to the shareholders without actually producing the widgets to deserve those Cookies (Dividends).

MB

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Talys wrote:


I think that GW has the most detailed plastic tooling in the industry, though. I don't think anyone produces plastic kits that are comparable to the Sigmar models in detail, though that might not be important to many people, or be the criteria which they judge "best".

Wyrd. Their plastics are flat out the best I've seen.

You have no idea how much I wanted to dislike the PC models for Through the Breach.... (I missed the Kickstarter by one minute....)

On the other hand, I really do not like the Sigmarines at all. If AoS had been a Kickstarter then I would have skipped it at half the price.

The Angels are okay, though.

The Auld Grump

[Moderation: Please make comments that relate to the purpose of the thread, not your disdain of another user.]

 Talizvar wrote:
Painting can forgive and cover many sculpt issues.
The "flow" of cloth and chains seem to contradict where they are moving... all directions? Very showy poses. Matter of tastes as mentioned.

They're supposed to be. They're homages to movie kung fu. Wyrd really to make some fantastic plastics. Likeing the aesthetics all depends what they're going for, as Malifaux is a melting pot of styles and themes.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
Painting can forgive and cover many sculpt issues.
The "flow" of cloth and chains seem to contradict where they are moving... all directions? Very showy poses. Matter of tastes as mentioned.

They're supposed to be. They're homages to movie kung fu. Wyrd really to make some fantastic plastics. Likeing the aesthetics all depends what they're going for, as Malifaux is a melting pot of styles and themes.

Spoiler:

Is that a Malifaux model? If it is I am doing some more investigating!

 Mr. Burning wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
Painting can forgive and cover many sculpt issues.
The "flow" of cloth and chains seem to contradict where they are moving... all directions? Very showy poses. Matter of tastes as mentioned.

They're supposed to be. They're homages to movie kung fu. Wyrd really to make some fantastic plastics. Likeing the aesthetics all depends what they're going for, as Malifaux is a melting pot of styles and themes.

Spoiler:

Is that a Malifaux model? If it is I am doing some more investigating!

Limited Edition, there's another available that doesn't have so many Gremlins on it. It's a Whiskey Golem. For that model you could hunt eBay, it's the Nightmare Whiskey Golem.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
Painting can forgive and cover many sculpt issues.
The "flow" of cloth and chains seem to contradict where they are moving... all directions? Very showy poses. Matter of tastes as mentioned.

They're supposed to be. They're homages to movie kung fu. Wyrd really to make some fantastic plastics. Likeing the aesthetics all depends what they're going for, as Malifaux is a melting pot of styles and themes.

Spoiler:

Is that a Malifaux model? If it is I am doing some more investigating!

Limited Edition, there's another available that doesn't have so many Gremlins on it. It's a Whiskey Golem. For that model you could hunt eBay, it's the Nightmare Whiskey Golem.

Or just wait until the end of the month when Gencon rolls around and it (and the other le sets) should be available on Wyrd's online store.

Apple fox wrote:
For GW to lose 30 % of there buyers(not players) it would be a disaster, you only need 10 people to spend 100$ to match a 1000$ a month spender, and that super fan will certenly be a far rarer occerance than lesser purchasers.
if GW is propped up so drastically by super fans I would think that there game is shrinking far faster than it even appears.

Super fans make up more than 30% in Talys' example... a sample size of 8 is pretty big, so this must be representative of the market as a whole.

Trasvi wrote:
For a lot of people, many of those criteria are crucial to wargaming. Where a company does offer rules to play and miniatures to buy, it is very rare (outside of GW games) to be playing with third party minis. I've never witnessed people subbing in cheaper miniatures into Infinity or Malifaux games. Plus when you're playing a game and it calls for a 'Lothern Sky Cutter' and you're thinking, 'great, lets just scour the internet and see how many companies make a sky chariot pulled by an eagle and crewed by elf archers'; or maybe you're trying to field a Leman Russ squadron with 3 different types of turret on the same vehicle and don't want to go to three different manufacturers to get that. GW has a very large, distinct advantage in the sheer size and compatibility of their range.

I'm not entirely sure that providing a specific character model or peculiar vehicle, for a specific character or peculiar vehicle concept that they made up themselves and wrote highly specific special rules for (often a whole packaged-with cardful of them), counts towards a company's claim of 'the best models in the world'. The claim of the most specific or peculiar models in the world, maybe, but not the best.
There are some relatively generic models that might be swapped out - I have an old Inquisitor cyber-mastiff standing in for a Malifaux Guild hunter, for example - but how many alternative models can there be for e.g. a Victorian-themed inventor propped up by an exoskeleton bristling with dangerous-looking equipment; cybernetic chinese rail-workers; undead cowboys slinging coffins around; hillbilly-themed goblins; a cross between Jack the Ripper and a leprechaun on acid, etc. etc? And how different are you willing to go with proxies, without getting confusing or losing the essential character that may have attracted you to all these... characters?
To be honest this is something that mildly narks me about companies trying to use GW's old method of hooking people with a one-stop-shop package game, with tightly intertwined minis and rules and fluff, accept no substitutes. With the caveat that GW's old generic-fantasy theme for many minis was IMO one of it's strengths, allowing you to mix and match minis and rules a little more, before the prices went too goofy. And that's one of the things that mildly narks me about this move towards specificity in AoS...
(And not that I want all rules to go utterly generic, like HoTT or something, but more wiggle room in some areas would be nice)

Oh, and on the topic of Malifaux Guild hunter minis and one reason why I swapped mine out: earlier someone said the wee, fine bits and connection points on Malifaux minis glue and stay much more easily with styrene and poly cement. Didn't stop them trying with their metal minis, though!

 JamesY wrote:
Hobbit has licensing royalties to pay don't forget, which is why the range is more expensive than whfb and 40k

Yet the very same range under the LotR name was cheaper, with many of the models being the exact same miniatures they were ten years ago.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
You have no idea how much I wanted to dislike the PC models for Through the Breach.... (I missed the Kickstarter by one minute....)

On the other hand, I really do not like the Sigmarines at all. If AoS had been a Kickstarter then I would have skipped it at half the price.

The Angels are okay, though.

The Sigmarites are clearly targeted for the crowd of folks who like the World of Warcraft paladins with big pauldrons and giant weapons This is a big demographic, though (look how well space marines sell). I'm actually surprised that more companies don't go after this type of aesthetic, or exploit it as fully as GW, because clearly, there is market demand.

But I wasn't really talking about aesthetics, but rather, the technical aspects of the sculpting and the manufacture quality of the plastics -- they are really, really good. I think even people who hate the aesthetic would concede that. The material is perfectly clean and the details are crisp and deep. There are no artifacts, nor imperfections. If they are like the WD75 model, the pieces have excellent fit, and excellent cast, which is NOT always the case with multipart models, including GW ones.

For example, if you look on the Dark Vengeance kit, which has excellent models, many of the tactical squad markings require remediation (the shoulder markings and/or the point at which the shoulder pad connects to the arm is not crisp); many of the bolters across the chest don't have a perfect fit (without cutting a little off). Neither is the end of the world, but I do appreciate it when models work out just the way the sculptors intended, and there's no remediation required.

 JamesY wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Prices are not set by designers, they are set by management accountants and marketers, who have to do a lot of work to track all kinds of costs to ensure the true production cost of a unit is known as accurately as possible, WIthout this info you might be selling stuff at a loss. Once the production cost is known, marketers take over and work out how much can be charged for the item by comparing with rivals, the general state of the market, and how much they can boost demand by things like advertising, premium pricing and other strategies. Etc.

With regards to bitetyhthumb's points, there are some grains of truth in what he says.

GW operates a large retail chain that soaks up about 70% of turnover to keep it going. Obviously if sales dropped further, GW could start closing a lot of shops to save money. There are some possible problems with this:

1. Shops held on leases cannot necessarily be disposed of quickly. Also, there are redundancy costs for getting rid of staff.

2. Most importantly, GW actually sells a lot of kits through its shops and they are the major source of recruitment of new customers. Closing shops is likely to have an adverse effect on these factors, so it is possible that the money saved by closing shops would be more than outweighed by the reduction in sales. However, GW have over 30 years experience in retail, and it really is the heart and soul of the company, not model making or rules-writing. So I think GW could manage this pretty well.

The 80/20 rule that Blacksails referred to is called the Pareto Principle and states that 80% of the results ceom from 20% of the causal factors. It is surprisingly widely applicable as a rule of thumb.

The danger for GW of relying on this principle is that they are selling games that have an important social component and network effect. The more people who (buy and) play a GW game, the more likely it is for more people to want to (buy and) play the same game. This also affects licensing revenue.

In this scenario GW would be reliant on the true super fans who buy everything GW put out because they like to buy everything GW put out. GW would therefore tailor their new products more and more to this group of customers.

At that point GW have ceased being a wargame company and would have little relevance for the rest of the market.

The release of AOS does not look as if it is following that strategy, though. AOS is clearly intended to be a widely appealing game.

Mate, I used to chat to quite a few of the sculptors, and that is straight from the mouths of one of the most senior and respected sculptors in the business. They aren't blindly pricing, they know very well the production costs and break even points of everything they make. I don't agree with it at all and had quite a heated discussion about the blasé and boarder line insulting nature of the pricing differences, but that is how the prices are determined.

The pricing system you describe is, unfortunately, only observed by companies that are good at retail. I am very very fond of gw, but retail is not their strong point.

Really, does GW still use freelance sculptors anymore. aren't they all in-house now?

 keezus wrote:

Apple fox wrote:
For GW to lose 30 % of there buyers(not players) it would be a disaster, you only need 10 people to spend 100$ to match a 1000$ a month spender, and that super fan will certenly be a far rarer occerance than lesser purchasers.
if GW is propped up so drastically by super fans I would think that there game is shrinking far faster than it even appears.

Super fans make up more than 30% in Talys' example... a sample size of 8 is pretty big, so this must be representative of the market as a whole.

I don't think the average player spends $1,200 per year.

In my opinion and experience, a 40k fan spending $500 a year on GW product is really generous -- over 20 years, that's $10,000.

Of course, there's a big gap between $500 per year and $12,000 per year, with people all between. My point was simple: the people fleeing first will be generally be the people buying the least; the people who are currently spending a lot are probably pretty happy with GW. I don't think that this is an irrational hypothesis.

Also, the GW big spender and casual spender has a HUGE gap, unlike Infinity or Malifaux, and even WMH. I mean, when was the last time that you heard of a Malifaux or WMH player who spent $50,000 or more (in their lifetime) with Wyrd or Privateer Press? On the other hand, if you're into FW and such it's really easy to hit. A 30k army can run you $10,000 without trying very hard, and plenty of popular models are in the $1k range.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

In this respect GW's continuing slide in sales revenue can only tell us that however good their models may be, consumers increasingly find them overpriced.

Of course this is only a trend of the past few years. The company is still in profit and can stop the rot.

I still maintain that there is no evidence that a lower price would result in a higher profit for Games Workshop, as we have no data on pricing elasticity. There are people that may leave GW or play other games for plenty of reasons other than price -- for example, "GW can't write good rules" or, "All my friends play X-Wing".

Lower prices will certainly increase unit sales, but I don't see data that would indicate revenue or profit would increase.

Talys, while I agree that lower prices on models will not necessarily draw more people in, I think the costs of playing a standard game are too high.

With 40k, there are significant issues with game bloating and frequent rule book replacements. In that regard, the models are not so badly priced (may 15-20% higher than I'd like), but to get the standard experience- the range between 1500 and 2000pt- the cost is increasing, despite the experience not necessarily becoming anymore enriching.

WH-AOS has actually done a *fair* job at resolving this. I feel that this game's problems have to do more with there not being a way to make a standardized experience. However, the concerns are less to do with the cost directly, and more with the mechanics of the game itself, so steps in the right direction.

Beyond these, I think GW is going to have to do something about their perception within the customer base as incredibly expensive. They may enjoy these limited edition, two-year cycle books and gaming accessories (I'm looking at you, Khorne dice shaker!) set at ridiculous costs, but it creates the impression that the game is for people with more money than sense.

 Talys wrote:
I don't think the average player spends $1,200 per year.

In my opinion and experience, a 40k fan spending $500 a year on GW product is really generous -- over 20 years, that's $10,000.

Of course, there's a big gap between $500 per year and $12,000 per year, with people all between. My point was simple: the people fleeing first will be generally be the people buying the least; the people who are currently spending a lot are probably pretty happy with GW. I don't think that this is an irrational hypothesis.

Also, the GW big spender and casual spender has a HUGE gap, unlike Infinity or Malifaux, and even WMH. I mean, when was the last time that you heard of a Malifaux or WMH player who spent $50,000 or more (in their lifetime) with Wyrd or Privateer Press? On the other hand, if you're into FW and such it's really easy to hit. A 30k army can run you $10,000 without trying very hard, and plenty of popular models are in the $1k range.

I think you are vastly underestimating the buying power of the average hobbyist. $500/year isn't enough for you to buy one 40k box a month...

There's two scenarios: 1. Startup and 2. Maintenance. I believe you are correct that the average 40k hobbyist is unlikely to spend $500/year + on maintenance of their force. There will be spikes when their army gets updated, but these spikes are spread over the course of the non-update years. Startup is another animal. To get your army up to speed, the initial cost is going to blow that $500 out of the water. Even games with lower entry levels such as Warmachine and Infinity are going to result in sunk costs of a few hundred dollars just to get to the minimum accepted playing level. Then you start buying options. You can easily get to $300 mark with Infinity and beyond that with Warmachine in the first year. These are not "enthusiasts" but represent the core demographic of a miniature game's customers, and IMHO, these guys are the first guys that are going to drop out if the system see's a huge customer base die-off, not the $1-200/year passer-bys.

I agree that $50k lifetime Warmachine is unlikely due to the more limited scale of the game (Malifaux and Infinity even less likely), but lifetime $10k isn't a stretch. In 2014, one-of-everything faction-complete was in the $2.5k range, and many players who are faction complete have multiples. With the new book, I'm sure faction complete is closer to 3k.

 Talys wrote:

I still maintain that there is no evidence that a lower price would result in a higher profit for Games Workshop, as we have no data on pricing elasticity. There are people that may leave GW or play other games for plenty of reasons other than price -- for example, "GW can't write good rules" or, "All my friends play X-Wing".
.

Of course there's no evidence, for there to be evidence a thing needs to have happened!

But you're not taking a holistic approach. I wouldn't be surprised that for many people who have walked away from GW, or rejected it, the price needed to illicit a purchase may be lower than break even. There's plenty of ways GW could address the issue of value without necessarily cutting prices, chiefly by focusing on getting people excited to play again, I've always maintained that price ceases to be such an issue if people are excited by the product, and I believe the root cause of the decline is the decreasing popularity of the games systems they sell.

Work on improving the game, throw the odd extra sprue in to boxed sets to improve value, alongside a more flexible option for new players, judicious price cuts where they hurt the least to show willing and then you're just left with the dreadful millstone that is the retail chain to deal with.

 keezus wrote:

I think you are vastly underestimating the buying power of the average hobbyist. $500/year isn't enough for you to buy one 40k box a month...

Yeah, I don't think the average 40k player buys a box a month, though. I mean, if you play 1 army, once you have your army, you don't need to do that. There isn't even enough stuff that comes out (for that faction) to justify it. Most people who play 2 armies that are casual don't concurrently maintain both. And of course you're right, the buying patter is spikey.

To your point of startup, absolutely. New players are worth a few hundred bucks. But then it tapers off (as people expect, and as it should) for most games.

The problem is that many times when they are doing something that could, in theory at least, add value, they increase the price at the same time.

Which counters the increased value in one swell foop.

Adding the bits to make elite Witch elves to the frames for dark elf witches - great idea!

Doubling the price, at the same time - bad idea!

Guess which one they went with?

They are also amazingly adept at taking the wrong lesson from things, such as dciding to rename everything, because it turns out that they do not own terms like 'space marine', 'dark elf', 'Roman numerals'....

The Auld Grump