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Talys it is very simple

Dreamforge Valkir 59$ (now 37$) for 20
GW Terminators 50$ for 5

Difference overhead Dreamforge 1 guy (As far as i know)
GW stock holders and Kirby's wife needs a new Jacuzzi! (And a zillion employee's)

Jokes a side the production costs are the same, material costs are the same, only design costs and how much profit the maker wants to create is different.

 Yodhrin wrote:
In the end though, the "correct" market price is the one people will pay, so we'll have to wait and see if this hilarious gambit of GW's to double-down on the "sell less for more" strategy that has been doing so well for them of late will work.

We don't need to wait, they've shown significantly falling sales for a while now.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Talys it is very simple

Dreamforge Valkir 59$ (now 37$) for 20
GW Terminators 50$ for 5

Difference overhead Dreamforge 1 guy (As far as i know)
GW stock holders and Kirby's wife needs a new Jacuzzi! (And a zillion employee's)

Jokes a side the production costs are the same, material costs are the same, only design costs and how much profit the maker wants to create is different.

Only the Valkir are Tactical Marine equivalents, not Terminator. And they're cheap only if you live in the US. And they're produced in China. And the line appears to be dead.

 Talys wrote:
By that logic, the $75 digital download of Halo 5 cost Microsoft $0.0001 to upload to my Xbox, so surely I am being ripped off, since I could have gotten a box and a disc that cost $1 to produce.... right? Especially when I can go to Steam and buy a game that might be just as fun for $5. That also costs $0.0001 to upload to my PC.

I'm not sure comparing physical product (minis) to digital product is such a good idea. Both of them have their development costs, but:

1 - physical products costs vary based on medium. Changing from one medium (metal) to a cheaper medium (plastic) reduces costs
2 - the software industry has remained relatively stable in price (i think there's been a 10-20$ increase over like 10+ years at most)
3 - software comes down in price over time

 Talys wrote:
If you don't like GW minis and don't think they're worth the price... don't buy them I don't understand the, "Not worth the price we're being forced to pay for them" thing, because nobody's forcing you to do anything. If you think they're beautiful and you really want them, go at it. It's pointless to compare them to Gundam (as has been done endlessly in zillions of other threads); they're *different*, the people who like one or the other will simply buy that. For me, blinking LED lights in an 14" model that I spent 100 hours painting sounds very unappealing, but hey, if you want that... there's plenty of like-minded people, and the kits can be readily had.

People agree with you. That's why total revenue is falling year on year - people don't think they're worth the price and they stop buying. If i'm going to do a quality comparison for a non-gamer reason, gundam kits end up being superior. If i'm going to do a quality comparison for a gamer reasons, most other rulesets are superior.

 Torga_DW wrote:

 Talys wrote:
By that logic, the $75 digital download of Halo 5 cost Microsoft $0.0001 to upload to my Xbox, so surely I am being ripped off, since I could have gotten a box and a disc that cost $1 to produce.... right? Especially when I can go to Steam and buy a game that might be just as fun for $5. That also costs $0.0001 to upload to my PC.

I'm not sure comparing physical product (minis) to digital product is such a good idea. Both of them have their development costs, but:

1 - physical products costs vary based on medium. Changing from one medium (metal) to a cheaper medium (plastic) reduces costs
2 - the software industry has remained relatively stable in price (i think there's been a 10-20$ increase over like 10+ years at most)
3 - software comes down in price over time

1. Depends on the volume. Plastic is cheaper per pound, but the molds are more expensive by an order of magnitude. Anybody can cast metal models in their basements, HIPS, not so much.

2. Not true. DLC's are running rampant, games are routinely released incomplete or in alpha as "early access"... In effect you're getting less for more, but with prettier graphics and voice acting. Add to that the fact that the video game market has expanded manifold over the past 25 years. The miniatures market is relatively stagnant (do not confuse it with the boardgame market). Besides, have you seen the prices of other wargames? They'd be considered huge rip-offs 10-20 years ago. The prices of miniatures have risen sharply this millenium. This is a fact, GW is not an outlier.

3. Which is utterly unsurprising. Video games are essentially consumables that provide at best a 10-hour single player experience nowadays, and technology is advancing at such a rapid pace, it makes games look outdated within a couple years. Would you pay as much for Call of Duty 1 as you would for Black Ops III? Conversely, miniatures are stable and the sculpting quality progresses much slower. They can also be used indefinitely. Old sculpts are also much cheaper than new.

4. Gundam kits are superior and sell at volumes any wargaming company can only dream of. They're also not system- or army-bound, and thus each kit can potentially sell to any customer interested in gunpla. A Stormcast player will rarely buy a Chaos kit, and vice versa.

Yeah, what's with the Gundam models? Why would you even compare Gundam to GW?
And then why would you rage about the price? Go buy your pre-wired, oh so superior in price-plastic-anything else Gundam and zoom it around your room.

GW's profits are still over 20kk, making majority (if not all) miniature manufacturers look likedirty peasants.

-DE- wrote:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Talys it is very simple

Spoiler:

Dreamforge Valkir 59$ (now 37$) for 20
GW Terminators 50$ for 5

Difference overhead Dreamforge 1 guy (As far as i know)
GW stock holders and Kirby's wife needs a new Jacuzzi! (And a zillion employee's)

Jokes a side the production costs are the same, material costs are the same, only design costs and how much profit the maker wants to create is different.

Only the Valkir are Tactical Marine equivalents, not Terminator. And they're cheap only if you live in the US. And they're produced in China. And the line appears to be dead.

Hm, there are normal troopers making the valkir similar to terminators and if the line is dead is irrelevant to the discussion

CragHack wrote:Yeah, what's with the Gundam models? Why would you even compare Gundam to GW?
And then why would you rage about the price? Go buy your pre-wired, oh so superior in price-plastic-anything else Gundam and zoom it around your room.

GW's profits are still over 20kk, which makes it the undisputed king of the hill, making majority (if not all) miniature manufacturers look likedirty peasants.

Better value for money simple.
And about the profits

 -DE- wrote:
1. Depends on the volume. Plastic is cheaper per pound, but the molds are more expensive by an order of magnitude. Anybody can cast metal models in their basements, HIPS, not so much.

GW bought the necessary equipment to manufacture in house and keep costs down around ~lotr times iirc. Costs go down a lot once you start doing things completely inhouse.

 -DE- wrote:
2. Not true. DLC's are running rampant, games are routinely released incomplete or in alpha as "early access"... In effect you're getting less for more, but with prettier graphics and voice acting. Add to that the fact that the video game market has expanded manifold over the past 25 years. The miniatures market is relatively stagnant (do not confuse it with the boardgame market). Besides, have you seen the prices of other wargames? They'd be considered huge rip-offs 10-20 years ago. The prices of miniatures have risen sharply this millenium. This is a fact, GW is not an outlier.

DLCs don't tend to comprise a significant portion of the game. Also, computer games can generally be modded for free. Early access games don't tend to cost full price to join, and then you're in already when they finally do launch. Would the video game market have expanded if they kept increasing prices with every release? I don't think so. Yes, the miniatures market is stagnant, and gw is the leader. It seems likely there is a correlation.

 -DE- wrote:
3. Which is utterly unsurprising. Video games are essentially consumables that provide at best a 10-hour single player experience nowadays, and technology is advancing at such a rapid pace, it makes games look outdated within a couple years. Would you pay as much for Call of Duty 1 as you would for Black Ops III? Conversely, miniatures are stable and the sculpting quality progresses much slower. They can also be used indefinitely. Old sculpts are also much cheaper than new.

Depends what you play, as i said above games can be modded and come down in price. I wouldn't pay as much for call of duty 1 - literally. At this point it is down in the $10 pile. Miniatures can theoretically be used indefinitely, only not with games workshop. They frequently invalidate the effectiveness of 'old' models to force the 'competitive' gamer to purchase new models. Call of duty 1 will always be call of duty 1 - with or without mods. Old sculpts in gw-land only became 'cheaper' when gw switched to increasing prices on new models instead of annual prices hikes. Otherwise, yeah they became more expensive over time.

 -DE- wrote:
4. Gundam kits are superior and sell at volumes any wargaming company can only dream of. They're also not system- or army-bound, and thus each kit can potentially sell to any customer interested in gunpla. A Stormcast player will rarely buy a Chaos kit, and vice versa.

The question is why. Why is one plastic kit more superior (in retail terms) than another? This is where the practices of the companies involved comes in, and gw seems to fall short in a lot of aspects.

Better value for money simple.

So why post this "better value for money" thing here, while you can be assemling you 'better value for money' gundam right now and being happy about it? Why even bother yourself with things about a company, that in your opinion, doesn't give a better value for money?

CragHack wrote:

Better value for money simple.

So why post this "better value for money" thing here, while you can be assemling you 'better value for money' gundam right now and being happy about it? Why even bother yourself with things about a company, that in your opinion, doesn't give a better value for money?

Because this is a forum and he has a right to post his opinion. Do try not to act like a child and tell him to go away just because what he says doesn't match your opinion. It's rude and it just makes you look bad, not the other way around.

CragHack wrote:

Better value for money simple.

So why post this "better value for money" thing here, while you can be assemling you 'better value for money' gundam right now and being happy about it? Why even bother yourself with things about a company, that in your opinion, doesn't give a better value for money?

New Antares plastic boxes are £50 each. Contain a full army and solid starting point. That's value for money.

GW - well, some nice models but not worth the money.

 Talys wrote:

 GraywarTS wrote:
The really scary part is, what if they are raising prices on models to close the gap of lost profit?

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, I'm pretty sure this is exactly what's happening. GW perceives that its customer base is shrinking, or at least the number of people spending big on its type of hobby, so its solution is to raise the prices. Note that I'm not endorsing this; it just looks, to me, like writing on the wall that this is GW's playbook.

...
...
....

GW started a price raising strategy in about 2008, with swinging annual across the board price rises that brought many complaints from players. Volume of sales started falling but revenue was sustained by the increased prices.

In 2010 the policy was extended to doubling the price of army books for WHFB on the basis that being hardback justified the new pricing. WHFB began its ultimately terminal decline.

In 2012 this same policy was applied to 40K rules and codexes. 40K began to decline in sales.

My statements above are based on my interpretation of the financial evidence presented in GW's annual reports.

In the past couple of years, GW have adopted a new pricing strategy, which is to leave most prices static year to year, but put out lots of expensive new model kits -- Nagash, terrain for AoS, the Archaon, Knight Titans and so -- they also are dramatically increasing the price of replacement kits like the new Tau Fire Warriors, which are 50% more expensive then the set they replace.

This strategy seems to have been partly successful given that their latest annual results showed a slower decline in sales than the previous two years. To be sure, slower decline is not as good as an increase.

Talys is of course quite correct that people will spend what they feel is right for a particular product.If you absolutely love the Chaos Knights, you will pass up the opportunity of buying lots of alternative products to have them. But there is a danger of running out of customers to buy these expensive kits.

 Hive City Dweller wrote:
Costs aside, these models are getting more and more intricate! The trend is that the newer plastics are far superior in terms of technical detail and posing to plastics that are from as recent as 5 years ago. Compare these to Grey Knights and Dark Eldar for example. I sure hope they continue to modernize the rest of the fantasy races to match this new level of detail!

If they ever released a new faction of new dynamic-style orc kin I would probably go bankrupt. Here's hoping!

I would prefer lower quality models that I can afford. Don't get me wrong, I like the centerpieces and epic elite units, but there should be some things anyone can buy.

DarkBlack wrote:

 Hive City Dweller wrote:
Costs aside, these models are getting more and more intricate! The trend is that the newer plastics are far superior in terms of technical detail and posing to plastics that are from as recent as 5 years ago. Compare these to Grey Knights and Dark Eldar for example. I sure hope they continue to modernize the rest of the fantasy races to match this new level of detail!

If they ever released a new faction of new dynamic-style orc kin I would probably go bankrupt. Here's hoping!

I would prefer lower quality models that I can afford. Don't get me wrong, I like the centerpieces and epic elite units, but there should be some things anyone can buy.

Not only that, GW is repeatedly losing customers over this exact situation. Will anyone's wallet REALLY be able to stomach spending 500$ on 15 really big and flashy Ork models? (Do note that I am going by the current pricing of one Varanguard being pretty much 33$)

I mean, seriously, how many players that would've gladly paid 45$ for a Varanguard box are they actually losing with these ridiculous prices? My bet is on the triple digits to say the least.

Well, we've probably all said enough for or against the pricing of the Chaos Knights.

Let's leave that line of argument and wait for a genuine item of news to appear.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Well, we've probably all said enough for or against the pricing of the Chaos Knights.

Let's leave that line of argument and wait for a genuine item of news to appear.

Although a couple of points I didn't see mentioned. Just food for thought:

1) I find it a bit silly that GW has invested in plastic technology that allows them to churn out millions of copies for pennies, and then they are limiting the amount of buyers by pricing them ridiculously high. Perhaps they have very limited time on the machines for each kit, nowadays, so they rather produce smaller batches at a time and price them higher? Then again, GW doesn't lose much by pricing any new models high, they can always drop the prices later, and moulds don't take too much storage space. "High novelty price" is a model that works for some products like phones etc., so why not for minis?

2) If it was just a bunch of collectable models, I wouldn't mind the price. However, if it's something you're supposed to play a game with, I find it sad that they are pricing new (and old) players out of the game - less players around hurts everyone who's into The Hobby. Of course, AoS stopped being a proper game when they dropped the army building limitations, but generally speaking.

What baffles me is how they decide their prices...

On one hand you have Horus heresy box, with 30 marines, 2 characters, 5 termies and one dread with the books, rules, cards and dices, for 150$...

And on the other you have 3 models for 100$...

Don't tell me that it took less ressources and work to make the HH box, then the 3 dudes on their horsies, its nonesens.

Even if the price cost of the box is a bargain it still has 12 times more models in.

The Chaos knights are undoubtly good looking and well done, but for 100$?, you can have 20 of the actual knights that are still pretty decent.

3 Knights at 30-35 would have been decent, still more expensive then the 5 man box, but still manageable, but 100 for 3?.

Yeah i know " its a hobby just like golf and gak" except that Golf if you're good at it, it pays, never met anyone that could life off investing in plastic crack apart from a FLGS or equivalant, and even then sometimes i see the face of the manager and that he wish he did another, well paid job, because the guy just earned like 50$ for the day, by selling 2 boxes and some dices or Magic cards...

This makes FW look cheap. xD

EVERYONE - PLEASE - TIME TO GET BACK ON TOPIC IN HERE.

Thanks!

I can't even tell if I like the look of them because they're hidden under such a thick crust of stuff.

This is one of the problems - minis are inflated like they had a bicycle pump stuck in 'em, get covered in a million and one fiddly little details, and that gets confused with 'quality'.

Price... to paraphrase Kilkrazy and Alpharius, 'nuff said.

Alpharius wrote:Was "Varan" Archaon's pre-Archaon name?

I thought it was one of those guys who had a pop at Tokyo.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:of course there's more to it, Disney makes more with one successful film than they can in 50 years of comic publishing

Fixed that for you.

I personally thing the riders are some of the best sculpts I have seen in some time. I am blown away with how cool the riders are.

As for the horse heads... god... they are horrid and draw all the attention..

But those riders!

I prefer the old Chaos Knights. Just the right amount of Chaosy goodness. But these are pretty well made like all of the AoS stuff.

I still can not unsee the "Whiffle ball in the face plate" thing with one of the riders.

On repeat viewing, it strikes me that these guys are going to be spectacularly unposeable too.

 Vermis wrote:
I thought it was one of those guys who had a pop at Tokyo.

Now I understand why nobody was making any joke about their name. Reading your post was required for my brain to compute that, unlike in my country, Varan is actually not a lizard name in English.

Here "Varanguard" basically sounds like "Monitor Lizard Guard" which is... better than Gekkoguard I suppose. But when it comes to striking fear in the heart of your enemy they sure start with quite a handicap.

Maybe a little late, but if you really want to see how big the Archaon model is...

That's pretty big.

 Chief wrote:
So does this mean the old knights will go away? If so i'll have to pick some up.

The new knights could be a completely new unit or they could be a replacement unit for the old regular knights adapted to the new naming scheme. Nobody knows and GW doesn't tell. You have old models, new models, old rules, and new rules and I don't see any clear indicators what this unit will be in the end. Will it be a replacement, an upgrade, or an addition to the army? They have AoS rules but their connection to old knights is not apparent.

Wulfson_40K wrote:

Now I understand why nobody was making any joke about their name. Reading your post was required for my brain to compute that, unlike in my country, Varan is actually not a lizard name in English.

Not in english, no, though most people with a passing interest in herpetology should be familiar with the genus Varanus.

That said, I don't think that's a huge proportion of the english-speaking population - maybe about the same number who recognise the kaiju Varan - and I'd agree with earlier posters that it's likely a play on the name 'varangian guard'.

(At least it's not as bad as a new Incredible Hulk villain: Gammon.)

 Azreal13 wrote:
On repeat viewing, it strikes me that these guys are going to be spectacularly unposeable too.

If the horses are stuck in those poses. I'd rather the old metal ones

 Vermis wrote:
(At least it's not as bad as a new Incredible Hulk villain: Gammon.)

Named after the WWII Gammon bomb, no doubt.