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 Talys wrote:

Herzlos wrote:I can't, it's in a sealed bag so my only option is to buy it, and I just can't bring myself to do that.

Stores were actually given a copy to leave unwrapped for a couple of issues, when the new format came out.

I did not know that. But then I haven't been in a GW store in probably 11 months. They really make a poor job of advertising to people who wouldn't buy it anyway.

Herzlos wrote:Did they explain that stuff to you, along with how to do it? Or do you just know that's what's done because you're familiar with the models and technique?

No. A lot of the models in there are 300+ hour models. The fun is just in seeing them; I'm not looking for a masterclass book on painting a Golden Demon.

For the money, a lot of us would quite like at least a hint about how it's done, rather than a 5 word description. For less money, I can get a magazine that gives me a brief guide, or for a little bit more, I can get an actual book.

Herzlos wrote:They didn't used to be like that though, they were all for you augmenting your GW stuff with whatever you wanted. Hell, WD used to contain patterns to make vehicles out of cereal packets! Now the emphasis seems to be on buying GW.

For White Dwarf, I would agree. In the current incarnation, 75% of the magazine is there to push next week's releases. But Visions is clearly NOT a catalog. It might serve zero purpose to people who mostly just game, or would prefer to look at models on the Internet, where it's free, and there's more than ample supply at any number of websites. However, some of us still enjoy printed magazines of such things, you get a good mix of stuff, and see some things that some of us otherwise wouldn't.

I love printed magazines (I buy 3 on a regular basis), but because of what they provide - a coherent editorial on a subject matter, with considered articles. WD:W is certainly lacking in that regard, and so is Visions. Maybe it's changed but the first issue was a serious case of WTF and disbelief.

Again, to me, it's a reflection of GW's pro-modelling/painting priorities, as there is no similar magazine for people who mostly want to game. If the population of this microniche is nearly zero, the sales of the magazine should be so poor as to be unsustainable. As to its cost (or perceived high price), it's entirely because the magazine is targeted to a very small niche. Heck, go check the price of an issue of Architectural Digest on the news stand. Specialty magazines are really expensive; for the number of pages it is, Visions is actually cheap, though useless if you don't want what's in it..

Why does it cost so much more than, say, Figure Painter, or scale modeller? Both sit beside it on the racks here and contain much better content for the painter/modeller.

Also if it's such an obscure niche, why are they bothering? Why not just go the whole hog and make it a quarterly boutique coffee table book instead of this half-assed thing. I'd be more likely to buy that than a £7.50 magazine.

GW themselves have admitted that sales are poor, and almost no-one seems interested in it, so there's obviously not enough demand. I'm also curious as to how many of the customers are still on the old £3/month direct debit and just can't be bothered cancelling it.

I get that you're happy to pay $10 for a magazine with photos of GW mini's, but most of us wish it could be a little bit more. Because personally, there's probably 100 items in the newsagents I'd rather spend my $10 on (I can get a Black Library paperback for £0.49 (~$0.80) more over here, let that sink it for a moment).

So I think we'll need to disagree. Some people think Visions is awesome, some people think Visions is a waste of time. The poor sales of it indicate that there are more of the latter than the former.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Xca|iber wrote:
So what you're saying is... "Got mine, don't care."

You're only just seeing this now?

And no, I'm trying to interject another snarky remark about Talys. I'm being dead serious. "Got mine, don't care" is his whole shtick. You telling me none of you have noticed the none-too-subtle arrogance coming from Talys since he first showed up? His "don't care 'bout no but but myself" way of referring to anything GW does?

There's a difference between "This does not effect me, so I don't have an opinion" and Talys' more specific "This does not effect me, therefore it isn't really a problem" attitude.

First, it's *affect* not *effect*.

Second, you're putting words in my mouth. If you want to be innacurate, cold and callous, an observation might be: "This does not affect Talys. Therefore, he does not care." Which isn't true at all. The more accurate version would be,

"This does not affect Talys. Therefore, he does not care enough to do anything differently."

I'm perfectly capable of seeing a problem, like high prices of models in Australia. I certainly have an opinion on it. I definitely care. But I don't care enough, or have a strong enough opinion to stop buying toy soldiers. Guess what who else doesn't care enough to stop buying their toy soldiers?

AUSTRALIANS AND NEW ZEALANDERS!

Enough to generate 7.5% of Games Workshop's Trade & Retail sales. -- 7.6m GBP out of about 93m GBP of non-mail purchases.

And since the population of Australia plus New Zealand is MUCH SMALLER than 7.5% of the populations of Europe and North America combined. Even accounting for higher prices, AU+NZ populations don't even account for half that. So one would actually argue that Australians are more price insensitive than either North Americans OR Europeans!

Sheesh.


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Herzlos wrote:
Why does it cost so much more than, say, Figure Painter, or scale modeller? Both sit beside it on the racks here and contain much better content for the painter/modeller.

Also if it's such an obscure niche, why are they bothering? Why not just go the whole hog and make it a quarterly boutique coffee table book instead of this half-assed thing. I'd be more likely to buy that than a £7.50 magazine.

GW themselves have admitted that sales are poor, and almost no-one seems interested in it, so there's obviously not enough demand. I'm also curious as to how many of the customers are still on the old £3/month direct debit and just can't be bothered cancelling it.

I get that you're happy to pay $10 for a magazine with photos of GW mini's, but most of us wish it could be a little bit more. Because personally, there's probably 100 items in the newsagents I'd rather spend my $10 on (I can get a Black Library paperback for £0.49 (~$0.80) more over here, let that sink it for a moment).

So I think we'll need to disagree. Some people think Visions is awesome, some people think Visions is a waste of time. The poor sales of it indicate that there are more of the latter than the former.

Figure Painter Magazine is ridiculously expensive at the only hobby shop that carries it here (I think it's $10) -- I think it must be freight. I have no idea. But I do buy it

Also, keep in mind the cost of freight for WD. A lot of the independents only get 5 copies autoship (it comes every week by itself, and independent of any other product). That's $20 retail, less 40% trade discount = $12. Less free courier shipment via UPS, and what do you think the profit to Games Workshop is? Can't be huge. Even for a store that buys 10 copies, that's not much.

Once a year, stores may also send back any unsold printed product for credit.

I can only imagine that White Dwarf and Visions are actually at least break-even, because GW doesn't do a whole lot that isn't profitable. If it were truly not a money-maker, they would go back to a monthly magazine, right? The production and distribution costs would be a lot lower.

The Digital versions, for sure, are great money makers.

 Talys wrote:


Figure Painter Magazine is ridiculously expensive at the only hobby shop that carries it here (I think it's $10) -- I think it must be freight. I have no idea. But I do buy it

So it's the same price as Visions? How do you compare the two magazines?

I can only imagine that White Dwarf and Visions are actually at least break-even, because GW doesn't do a whole lot that isn't profitable. If it were truly not a money-maker, they would go back to a monthly magazine, right? The production and distribution costs would be a lot lower.

Visions obviously costs little enough that they can design, print and ship it to people paying £3/month via Direct Debit. And lets face it, there's almost nothing to Visions - it's allmost all photos of mini's; no artwork, no real descriptive text, nothing expensive. Sure you need the photos taken, but that's a fairly quick process with a studio set up, it's invariably the same pre-made terrain, in the same room, with the same setup. I'm curious as to how long it'd take to design Visions, I'm assuming maybe 2 or 3 man days start to finish.

The compare it to literally any other magazine, that has words in it. They must take dozens of man days to do, and still cost half the price.

Figure Painter was/is mainly intended as a digital publication (where it costs US$2 an issue.) IIRC they decided to make a very small number of physical copies each issue, and consequently the price is very high.

Or not, if you compare it to Visions.

I may be thinking of something else with a similar name. I'll check tonight.

It's quite possible you've seen it out there, I've only ever bought digital copies, so never looked, either way, for an approximately equally price to visions, it is way more diverse with a much larger quantity of editorial content.

For what it is worth. GW's Gencon presence was pitiful. The "Age of Simgar" display was around 10x10 and contained the box contents on display plus their AoS diorama display. That's it! No demos, no product, no nothing. Just two guys giving vague answers to questions. On top of this, it was way in the back of the hall behind a bunch of independent retailers next to the artists section. I was told by the other blokes I went with that apparently GW had another stand somewhere selling product, but it's not listed anywhere on the Exhibit Floor map.

On the upside, they confirmed that the wall terrain kits seen in the AoS diorama were going to come to market. Eventually. On the downside, they confirmed that the lack of points cost and unbalanced issues with summoning was a problem that the gaming community was supposed to figure out on their own!

To give some perspective:

Privateer Press' section was gigantic. Probably 20x bigger than GW's. It had a full sales section, displays, demo tables, and area for P3 Grandmaster Painting Contest displays.

Wyrd's section was at least 10x bigger than GW's. It had full displays, demo tables and sales area.

Ninja Division, Corvus Belli and DARK AGE'S section was at least 5x bigger than GW's. It also had full displays, demo tables and sales area.

Spartan Games, GREENBRIAR GAMES: (Some guys I was unaware of: Did the Fairy Tale Fights kickstarter) had a section 3x the size of GWs!!!!!!

Kingdom Death had a booth the same size as GW, and sported a demo table in addition to showcasing the swag they had in their prerelease box!

I realize Gencon may not represent their intended target market, but considering how pathetic their presence was, I'm surprised they attended at all.

-edit- On an aside: The painting contest at Gencon attracts some very talented painters, now that Golden Demon is kind of a non-event in North America. Even the P3 Grandmaster has very high level entries.

 keezus wrote:
For what it is worth. GW's Gencon presence was pitiful. The "Age of Simgar" display was around 10x10 and contained the box contents on display plus their AoS diorama display. That's it! No demos, no product, no nothing. Just two guys giving vague answers to questions. On top of this, it was way in the back of the hall behind a bunch of independent retailers next to the artists section. I was told by the other blokes I went with that apparently GW had another stand somewhere selling product, but it's not listed anywhere on the Exhibit Floor map.

Forge World had a decent sized booth. Bigger than last year's GenCon booth, and about the same size as the one they had at Adepticon. While I was in line on Thursday, I saw 3 Warlord Titans get picked up (pre-ordered). The location sucked, though. It was in the far right corner, where there is a narrow walkway and a side entrance from the play-testing/demo hall. I had to throw my shoulder into a few people to get through. I'm sure that grandmother's hip will grow back, though.

I snagged FW HH book 5, an Adeptus Mechanicus Coffee Mug, and the Event-Only Princep model.

@Kronk: The Forgeworld booth was just a sales kiosk though, like last year? No demo games, no displays?

 keezus wrote:
@Kronk: The Forgeworld booth was just a sales kiosk though, like last year? No demo games, no displays?

Right. They had some banners, and a table full of FW goodies to buy! But no displays, sadly.

Herzlos wrote:

 Talys wrote:


Figure Painter Magazine is ridiculously expensive at the only hobby shop that carries it here (I think it's $10) -- I think it must be freight. I have no idea. But I do buy it

So it's the same price as Visions? How do you compare the two magazines?

No, no, you misunderstand. Figure painter is SUPPOSED to be cheaper. I mean, it is elsewhere. But where *I* live, they charge $10 for it, after my 25% discount (not because they hate me, because for whatever reason, my guy's cost is higher on it than just the cover cost).


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 Azreal13 wrote:
It's quite possible you've seen it out there, I've only ever bought digital copies, so never looked, either way, for an approximately equally price to visions, it is way more diverse with a much larger quantity of editorial content.

Yes, Visions is cheaper digital too. I am someone who really enjoys his paper magazines. Codex too. I'm weird that way I have a very bizarre affinity to paper. By the way, I do buy Figure Painter.

Some of my buddies (I think) are really strange. They buy both the paper AND digital versions of White Dwarf/Visions/Codex releases. This is something I cannot really fathom Their reasoning is that they like to read it the first time in print, and then in the future digital. To which I've offered to just lend them my print version of the expensive ones -- they can even have first dibs, because it's not like I'm in a rush -- but they're all good O.o

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Herzlos wrote:

Visions obviously costs little enough that they can design, print and ship it to people paying £3/month via Direct Debit. And lets face it, there's almost nothing to Visions - it's allmost all photos of mini's; no artwork, no real descriptive text, nothing expensive. Sure you need the photos taken, but that's a fairly quick process with a studio set up, it's invariably the same pre-made terrain, in the same room, with the same setup. I'm curious as to how long it'd take to design Visions, I'm assuming maybe 2 or 3 man days start to finish.

The compare it to literally any other magazine, that has words in it. They must take dozens of man days to do, and still cost half the price.

Visions is something like a $10 magazine here. It's effectively 100% photography -- but actually, that's what I want out of it -- I enjoy it more than White Dwarf, or even the old monthly White Dwarf. But like I said, the great thing about Visions, and I think to GW's credit, is that it bundles no other value, giving people who are NOT interested in model photography NO reason to buy it or waste money on a product where they have zero interest in 95% of it, and buy it for some content that is interesting and only 5% of the product.

No offense to the blokes that like Visions. I think that GW is vastly overestimating who is going to BUY this product given the proliferation of hobby blogs and the ability for anyone to use Google/CMON to find high quality versions of just about any model. Sure, it's a product targeted at a very tiny segment of the market - but what's not apparent is if this tiny segment can keep Visions afloat. GW has axed other less profitable products in the past *cough* Fantasy.

@keezus - well, I think at nearly 2 years into the magazine, they won't be overestimating anything they should know exactly (a) how many get sold to trade & retail and (b) how many get returned.

By the way, Issue 19 (the one that came out last week) uses a cheaper paper than previous issues. It is not as glossy, colors don't pop as much, and feels cheaper. I mean, it's still *nice*, just not super premium nice, like prior issues, and I can tell that some of the colors are not accurately represented, based on models like the Sigmarites that were previously featured in WD77. The photo of the Howling Banshee was taken out of #19.

That's interesting.

As a former magazine publisher, I can say that using a cheaper paper is a standard way of reducing costs but as noted by Talys can lead to adverse effects like reduced colour fidelity, feel in the hand and less value for money.

 keezus wrote:
No offense to the blokes that like Visions. I think that GW is vastly overestimating who is going to BUY this product given the proliferation of hobby blogs and the ability for anyone to use Google/CMON to find high quality versions of just about any model.

Also if people want a slightly more curated experience than CMON they can use puttyandpaint (including stuff like this Daniel Craig/Vladimir Putin Crimson Fists Terminator Captain).

It's not like there's anything wrong with great models and photos online for free. But, Visions will still appeal to some people like to flip through paper magazines (like me) or others, who are looking specifically for GW stuff organized into neat chunks and released as a periodical, or even others to whom $6-$12 is just not a lot of money (it can be less than a beverage and snack at Starbucks), so why not?

At the end of the day, it doesn't have to be "either / or", but can be both. It's like saying, who would buy Newsweek when CNN.com (or newsweek.com) is free? Well, the content isn't exactly the same, and some people buy the print magazine just because they want it. If there aren't enough people to make it financially viable, then GW should (and will) kill the print version, or perhaps make it a quarterly or semi-annual, and just mostly focus on Golden Demon. If it at least breaks even, I think it's worthwhile for GW to continue. It's right up their alley of "things they like to do" IMO.

 Talys wrote:
And since the population of Australia plus New Zealand is MUCH SMALLER than 7.5% of the populations of Europe and North America combined. Even accounting for higher prices, AU+NZ populations don't even account for half that. So one would actually argue that Australians are more price insensitive than either North Americans OR Europeans!

Sheesh.

One might argue that if one was silly enough to think price sensitivity was the only or even the primary measure of market penetration. Of course it's not, so to argue so would mostly just show a lack of understanding

The far more logical thing is to note GW has more stores per head of population in Australia than anywhere else in the world other than the UK itself (noting also that the UK has the highest sales per head of population in the world for GW). If one were to look a little bit deeper one would also note Australia has the worst ratio of retail:trade of any region, indicating to me that GW downunder is living off the backs of the superfans that are willing to buy direct from GW (quite possibly because they also game in the GW stores) while prices and bad marketing practices is destroying 3rd party sales.

So it's not really logical to assume Australians are more price insensitive in general, rather that superfans are more price insensitive and for whatever reason Australia has more superfans per head of population. Going by the estimate that the average GW gamer spends about 800GBP per year (based off a recent poll**) we can guess around 1 in 2500 or less people of the general population in Australia are actually GW customers, so it's a stretch to make any comment about the general population based on that


**recent poll: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Q3mp07LWw-Bz_hxksF08H0uYWSShcMeLPQFUDmBVEsY/viewanalytics?usp=form_confirm

@AllSeeingSkink -

Given the revenue numbers, either a small number of Australians buy a super-duper amount of stuff, there are relatively more superfans generally, or there are a higher ratio of regular fans. You might be right that Australia has a higher ratio of superfans, but I think that it is more likely some combination of the above.

At the end of the day, *of course* some people are more price sensitive than others, with higher wage earners generally being less price sensitive.

I did mention the extra stores earlier on, by the way. But it is notable that independents' revenues was essentially flat (insignificant uptick).

My point was really in response to HB saying that 'Talys thinks if a problem doesn't affect him, he thinks it isn't a problem'. While that is patently untrue, I wanted to note that Australians (collectively, not one homogenous group) spent more so it isn't a problem at least for some Australians. If we accept that some Australians are priced out, either others bought more stuff or there are new customers (since prices basically stayed flat).

In my own defense, as I said, I do understand and empathize with the problem of hobby (GW and/or other companies) being too expensive, but I'm not going to stop my own hobby activities because of that, no more so than I would skip buying an iPhone because it was too expensive for others (just to give a hypothetical example -- I'm actually a windows phone guy, though I did buy a 5S ).

 Talys wrote:

I did mention the extra stores earlier on, by the way. But it is notable that independents' revenues was essentially flat (insignificant uptick). .

Revenue down here overall had been essentially flat for the last 15 years, from a quick dig back over the financials. Given how much the prices have increased in that same time, that would seem to indicate that either fewer Australians are buying, or they're buying less.

Or, at least, buying less from Australian stores...

Given how much 40k gaming boomed down here through 4th and 5th edition, it seems likely that it's the latter, and more people who are buying are doing so from elsewhere.

 insaniak wrote:

 Talys wrote:

I did mention the extra stores earlier on, by the way. But it is notable that independents' revenues was essentially flat (insignificant uptick). .

Revenue down here overall had been essentially flat for the last 15 years, from a quick dig back over the financials. Given how much the prices have increased in that same time, that would seem to indicate that either fewer Australians are buying, or they're buying less.

Or, at least, buying less from Australian stores...

Given how much 40k gaming boomed down here through 4th and 5th edition, it seems likely that it's the latter, and more people who are buying are doing so from elsewhere.

Yep, in a long term trend, I would certainly agree -- worldwide, too, not just Australia. However, looking at the last fiscal year, that's not so, because prices didn't go up, and revenues stayed (essentially) flat. So either less people each bought more, or the number of fans and their volume of purchases stayed the same. I really don't think the third option, of more people buying less stuff, is very likely; nor that a deficit is entirely borne by people who buy extraordinary amounts of stuff..

I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between the first two.

GW probably didn't bleed as many customers as some people think based on personal and anecdotal observations; and of the customers that remained (and no doubt, some new and returning ones) probably bought a little more, based on a more rapid release schedule. In other words, I don't think GW lost half its Australian customers, and made up for it by the rest buying twice as much.

 Talys wrote:
However, looking at the last fiscal year, that's not so, because prices didn't go up,...

Yes, they did.

We didn't have an across-the-board price rise, but we had a lot of new codex releases with shiny, new and improved pricetags.

 insaniak wrote:

 Talys wrote:
However, looking at the last fiscal year, that's not so, because prices didn't go up,...

Yes, they did.

We didn't have an across-the-board price rise, but we had a lot of new codex releases with shiny, new and improved pricetags.

I guess you're right, to an extent. But let's go on the theory that superfans don't constitute half of the fanbase (that would be extraordinary). But even so, they'd have to buy twice as much if the non-superfan half fled -- and that just doesn't sound possible to me.

I think I'm a pretty big GW fan, and I didn't come close to doubling my spend in 2014. At most, maybe I spent 20% more, and part of that was because I wanted to do a Blood Angels reboot (where I basically decided to start the faction from scratch, because I wanted everything painted to a higher and more consistent standard). I doubt that even really dedicated fans buy everything that GW puts out, even if you limit it only to game related books, core models, and hobby supplies (ie excluding FW, BL, etc.).

Not that I'm disagreeing with you in principle. My theory is that some people left, and the ones that stayed (or started up) spent a little more.

Mario wrote:
(including stuff like this Daniel Craig/Vladimir Putin Crimson Fists Terminator Captain).

That is ridiculously good.

 insaniak wrote:

 Talys wrote:
However, looking at the last fiscal year, that's not so, because prices didn't go up,...

Yes, they did.

We didn't have an across-the-board price rise, but we had a lot of new codex releases with shiny, new and improved pricetags.

GW even declared they believe the price rises to be equivalent to 3% across the range in the report.

 Talys wrote:
By the way, Issue 19 (the one that came out last week) uses a cheaper paper than previous issues. It is not as glossy, colors don't pop as much, and feels cheaper. I mean, it's still *nice*, just not super premium nice, like prior issues, and I can tell that some of the colors are not accurately represented, based on models like the Sigmarites that were previously featured in WD77. The photo of the Howling Banshee was taken out of #19.

It was also unwrapped in my local newsagent this time, so maybe they are listening to feedback / trying to improve it, and has a decent heft to it. A quick skim showed decent pictures but still minimal content. I didn't see any painting specific magazines to compare it to as I didn't have much time. I didn't buy it because I can't justify it.

It's a fairly big book for the money, but I think it'd sell so much better if they halfed the page count and the price, and they could probably do that without losing much (there's still a lot of almost duplicated images).

 Baragash wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Talys wrote:
However, looking at the last fiscal year, that's not so, because prices didn't go up,...

Yes, they did.

We didn't have an across-the-board price rise, but we had a lot of new codex releases with shiny, new and improved pricetags.

GW even declared they believe the price rises to be equivalent to 3% across the range in the report.

Well, I think the uptick in revenue for the region was something like 0.7%. So I would be happy to agree that prices accounted for 3% revenue in the region, overcompensating for some of the difference reflected in customer loss. But that's a really small number.


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Herzlos wrote:

 Talys wrote:
By the way, Issue 19 (the one that came out last week) uses a cheaper paper than previous issues. It is not as glossy, colors don't pop as much, and feels cheaper. I mean, it's still *nice*, just not super premium nice, like prior issues, and I can tell that some of the colors are not accurately represented, based on models like the Sigmarites that were previously featured in WD77. The photo of the Howling Banshee was taken out of #19.

It was also unwrapped in my local newsagent this time, so maybe they are listening to feedback / trying to improve it, and has a decent heft to it. A quick skim showed decent pictures but still minimal content. I didn't see any painting specific magazines to compare it to as I didn't have much time. I didn't buy it because I can't justify it.

It's a fairly big book for the money, but I think it'd sell so much better if they halfed the page count and the price, and they could probably do that without losing much (there's still a lot of almost duplicated images).

Yeah, the first section is all photography that we've seen or will see (at least a part of) elsewhere. Like, they show the whole diorama, and in other photos, they show a smaller part of it. In some ways, it is useful if you want to paint things to the studio scheme (for instance, this time around, I used the Visions as a guide when painting my Space Hulk set, because I wanted 1 set more or less "just like" the box/studio art for the board game).

Unless you mean, images that are really similar to each other, which is true, especially in that first section, too.

Also, in the back, there are a few pages of readers' models that are decent, but often unspectacular. But in fairness, I like this: I'm sure the folks that get their stuff printed there that don't have award-winning quality art are tickled pink, so if it fits into the budget to make a few people really happy, why not?

I am not at all opposed to a section in every magazine with some tutorial, in lieu of some of the photography, especially stuff we've seen elsewhere, or a page containing "this month's releases", white-dwarf style.

Baragash wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Talys wrote:
However, looking at the last fiscal year, that's not so, because prices didn't go up,...

Yes, they did.

We didn't have an across-the-board price rise, but we had a lot of new codex releases with shiny, new and improved pricetags.

GW even declared they believe the price rises to be equivalent to 3% across the range in the report.

I wonder how they calculated that.

We know from previous data that stuff sells the most when it is new, so if everything that is new in a year goes up by 6% (random number plucked from the air) it's probably better than raising the entire range by 3% (again, random number plucked from the air).

Talys wrote:@AllSeeingSkink -

Given the revenue numbers, either a small number of Australians buy a super-duper amount of stuff, there are relatively more superfans generally, or there are a higher ratio of regular fans. You might be right that Australia has a higher ratio of superfans, but I think that it is more likely some combination of the above.

I think the fact spending at GW stores outstrips spending through trade by a large margin and the total volume of stores says more about it than anything else.

Because we can estimate that the number of active GW customers is possibly around 1 in 2500 (probably less) and I personally think the actual potential market is far larger than that, the observation should be "how big could their customer base be if prices were lower? Maybe Australia is even more price sensitive than the rest of the world, but we just love wargames more and/or have more exposure to wargames?"

Anecdotally, 40k is a shadow of what it was 10-15 years ago over here and WHFB is less than a shadow.

I tend to think the fact GW has reasonably high revenue in Australia is mostly a commentary on how the dedicated GW store is more effective in Australia than it is in the USA (but not as much so as the UK).

 Talys wrote:
I guess you're right, to an extent.

No, he's not right to an extent. He's just right. Period.

You can try and get a bunch of true Scotsmen to help you move those goalposts again Talys... as you immediately started doing in the next sentence of your post... but you cannot change the fact that insaniak is 100% factually correct. GW raised their prices. Maybe they didn't in your reality, and I'm quite willing to accept that in your dimension GW's prices are reasonable, but in this world which you've chosen to visit, the prices went up.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Talys wrote:
I guess you're right, to an extent.

No, he's not right to an extent. He's just right. Period.

You can try and get a bunch of true Scotsmen to help you move those goalposts again Talys... as you immediately started doing in the next sentence of your post... but you cannot change the fact that insaniak is 100% factually correct. GW raised their prices. Maybe they didn't in your reality, and I'm quite willing to accept that in your dimension GW's prices are reasonable, but in this world which you've chosen to visit, the prices went up.

If GW's price increase is about 3%, and sales are flat (or up half percentage point), but more products were released more rapidly (are any of these in dispute?)... in YOUR estimation:

1. What percentage of GW's Australian customers left GW?

2. Given that Australian prices are higher than European prices, in YOUR reality, why did Australia so dramatically outperform Europe, in terms of revenue per capita and year over year revenue?

My conclusion, looking at the data, is that Australian GW fans aren't as price sensitive as Europeans. Also, that the anecdotal observations of some Australians that GW support in their country has disappeared is not supported by regional revenue numbers. I believe that more likely, it's confirmation bias: I think it's too expensive, I see him think it's too expensive, so EVERYBODY who is rational must think it's too expensive.

Anyways, clearly, there are a lot of Australians that don't think that GW's prices aren't a problem, or that don't care about it, or don't care enough to stop buying GW. In fact, more so than any other core region. That was my point, and if you wish, take a stab at refuting that.

I thought GW had stopped reporting sales by geographic region and changed to doing it by channel, e.g. retail, web.