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 Brutus_Apex wrote:
Indeed, Fantasy was too costly to get into at the end there. One of it's major downfalls for sure.

Sadly Age of Sigmar did not fix this problem though. Product was just as expensive as Fantasy. Only thing AoS did was we didn't need as much. All the other problems Fantasy had, AoS had. Just a shame that Fantasy had to go when when the same problems still existed. GW still had the same policies in place that destroyed Fantasy. It looked like it was going to destroy AoS as well. Only January 2016 changed things for AoS. Maybe we cans say it changed GW. So here is hoping that Mr Roundtree can steer the ship straight first, and then someone how bring back Fantasy and fix the bridge that got destroyed so everyone can be happy. Thing is that takes time, so we just have to wait and see what happens now.

Let me preface this that, typically at my club, I'm seen as the "anything but GW" guy,

Warhammer Fantasy had a ton of support during the end times period, from GW, didn't it? And pretty poor support before then.

So, it would seem to me that if Age of Sigmar is compared to End Times, then that's a pretty good feather, and even if it was a jerky move fanwise, financially it would appear to have been a good idea. Conversely, if End Times is lumped in with AoS, then, with all the support it had it's NOT kicking rear and is not a "shouting from the rooftops" style increase, then that's pretty shockingly bad. So basically, there seems to be a lot of factors one way or another, that I'd have to agree that statement is relatively meaningless.

Overall as the "anything but GW" guy, I would quite happily admit that GW at least *look* like they're doing better now. They've even done better than the last cynical thing I had, which was the "these new board games are just ways to get people to spend £85 for 4 new models" with Silver Tower at least appearing to be a proper attempt at a game.

I do feel like, unless GW radically diversifies, they are completely doomed. - Taking advantage of Total Warhammer is the first step, though. - However, they'd need to go in for AAA console titles and film deals too.

Otherwise, I think GW are just going to die a slow death. It's no real surprise to me that the top selling miniatures games now include Star Wars and Star Trek. You then add in Marvel (Covering both Avengers AND the X-Men), Batman (Including TV's Arrow and The Flash), Halo and even a frigging Doctor Who miniatures game now.

Then you add in the Board Games with (surprisingly fair) quality miniatures such as Ghostbusters, Turtles, Dark Souls and Walking Dead.

Unless GW can get themselves into the same level of public awareness as them, I think it's only a matter of time until they're dead. EG: "Oh, I want to start this modelling wargaming malarkey. What's that a Sylvaneth Drycha Hamadreth... How the heck do I pronounce that... Nevermind know what it is Wait. Is that The Incredible Hulk?!"

@Brutus_Apex, Thanks for that, honestly.

@Shinros, yeah, even if AoS could get GW enough money to surround their headquarters in golden Stormcast statues the haters would still say "doesn't prove anything".

Like you said, better to just enjoy the hobby and ignore them.

Not sure why profits from 9th and KoW players is used as a anti-AoS position, though. They keep buying the models and converting them for their armies which is just more profit for GW.

There's plenty of those players continuing to buy non-legacy figures and even after a year or two they'll continue to because they like new stuff, good deals and nice models.

In anycase, awesome to hear GW are going strong.

Er, they're not? Their revenue is flat and their profits have fallen, for the third or fourth year in a row.

This is the danger of "ignoring the haters," you stick your fingers in your ears and don't notice that the building's collapsed around you.

Yeah I don't think they are going "strong" but they are correcting the ship I think that's what I gather from this report. At least it's flat instead of a huge loss like the last time and the fact they invested a lot of money in opening stores and new tech.

As I said before more people play the warhammer video games that's the thing that is going to keep them going I think.

Hmm, okay, going strong was too positive a term. Staying afloat and fixing the leaks is a better description, I believe.

@Azreal13, that's true up to a point but giving into the haters can result in a worse situation as well. Broken base and all that.

@Compel, that's a good point.

If they do a AoS mini-movie they need to get the guy who made that first Marvel Thor movie and tell him "remember the awesome first part of that movie? Yeah, just keep doing that through the whole film."

@Shinros, The videogame profits are impressive...

 Azreal13 wrote:

motski wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
I bet they count all those last chance to buy sales as AoS though, I'd be incredibly surprised if panic buying of old miniatures didn't outstrip AoS.

I was wondering how the hater crowd were going to try and spin this.

You can't keep using that excuse forever I'm afraid.

What excuse?

Based on the information presented, hobojebus' assumption is as valid as any.

Here's what Lady Atia had to say about the 'Last Chance' sales and their effects on AoS from her BLOG

Lady Atia wrote:Too bad that the "panic buying", at least for the last chance to buy section stuff isn't really huge - the warehouses weren't full of the stuff, especially characters. That's why most of it was sold within minutes

Again, without numbers, that statement from Atia has no context. While no doubt true, whether that small amount of stock selling out was insignificant or a critical amount of the total we just don't know.

As for AoS doing better than Warhammer... I can say that is not the case in the local market.

But I can only directly comment on that local market. It is possible that in the broader theater the game is doing better than what I can see locally.

But I think that the bulk of the sales had been lost with 8th edition - that AoS is not competing with Warhammer at its prime, but rather with the game at its nadir.

I have no interest in the games for either 8th edition or AoS. And I like the miniatures for AoS considerably less - which matters not a whit, since I had already stopped buying GW miniatures before AoS fell in a steaming pile on the gaming scene.

I know that it was 8th edition that sent local players to Kings of War, and that in my own circle more people bought the boxed Warhammer for use in Kings of War than wanted the game for its own sake. (The high elves in the box are excellent. The skaven... maybe not so much. But both armies have seen use, so....)

It is possible that adding points costs has helped AoS, but... meh.

The Auld Grump

Truth be told, I dunno what to think. I know, for example, that Age of Sigmar is very much so NOT the game for me. I would also say that it is objectively NOT the game for people who want the 'mass battle' total war style experiences on the tabletop, where I would point someone towards Kings of War.

In saying that, I know that locally is one of the strongest places in the country for AoS fans. - EG, local tournaments sell out, all the local players are well known in "The Scene." All that sort of business. Additionally, Kings of War never even got a look in.

However, what I want in a game, may not be what the majority of the paying public want. OR, and I think this is a big factor, economically speaking. People who are playing fantasy for a while already own their fantasy armies. I imagine there could be a critical mass of those who moved over to Age of Sigmar and decided to start a round base army from scratch for AoS, which could account for an improvement of X% over the moneywise people were putting down for fantasy.

EG, hypothetically less people *playing* the game, but instead of many people buying 2 boxes each release, you have significantly less people, but with each person *buying* literally 15 boxes each release.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Total War:Hammer is getting a lot of good press and seems to be genuinely a great game.
Given the pedigree of the Total War series that's not surprising.
It's all the more disappointing that GW canned WHFB the year before this potential big boost to recruitment came on stream.
I'll put that down to the tail end of the baleful Kirby era.

Them partnering with Total war was smart. The series has not had a bad game yet.

Well, Rome 2 wasn't well received...

The rest are great though with TWW excelling.

Baron Klatz wrote:
In anycase, awesome to hear GW are going strong.

Except they aren't going strong. Their core profit fell by 27% or so. That's huge. Their sales keep declining. Now if AOS sales are roughly on bar with FB or bit more than it was in the end(which wasn't that much due to GW deliberately cutting support from FB which killed their sales. Last 2-3 years low sales were GW's own doing...) then this means 40k, despite hugely popular calth box, started stalling big time.

And that's _very bad_ for GW. If their flagship and biggest money maker started to stall 27%+ worth of profits then this is very grave news. 40k has been for years what's kept GW going up. Remove that...

Problem with license income is that it's not something you can count. What total war caliber release there is going to be this year? Dawn of war doesn't seem to be particularly loved by testers so unless there's big changes there it's entirely possible that game flops. Then what?

Just because there was total war:warhammer one year doesn't mean there's same every year. Assuming there is so core sale drops don't matter is foolish. Also unless they can reverse the trend with 40k then doesn't matter if they release new total war(in terms of sales). You would STILL have profits dropping again. You need BIGGER than total war warhammer and THAT is tough order.

GW has been doing very good job of bandaiding falling sales but problem with that is that the more you lose your customer base the more bandaid you need. What was enough last year isn't enough this year. What's enough this year isn't enough next year. You need constantly bigger bandaid because shrinking customer base leaves every year bigger hole to fill. That just ain't sustainable. They need to start actually selling more. They have been selling less and less for years. Otherwise this "buff profits in other ways" strategy will eventually run into dead end.

Well, as you can see above, I corrected my overly optimistic response with a more subdued one.

Total war warhammer should see alot of growing strength and profits if their massive expansions that include more races, lands and content are delivered right.

You are correct on 40k, that's GW's juggernaut that keeps them up. No clue on how they'll address the issues but here's hoping they make the most out of their community interaction and give the player-base a game they can continue to enjoy and draw new players in.

Only time will tell, though.

While it's good they'll beat market expectations... I don't see how it's positive at all that they are relying on licensing to do it.

When your company's core business is stagnate for years that's not the best sign.

The top line results are similar to the last few years. Revenue down a bit. Still profitable, still throwing off lots of cash. This year there is great licensing income, certainly thanks to Total War:Hammer. Without this, sales of the core lines (40K, AoS and LoTR) were down nearly 5%. That is not good.

GW stated AoS has done better this year than WHFB did the year before. Given an entire new line of figures, books and terrain pieces I should hope that would happen. There have also been several boxed games that should have lifted sales.

The bad news is that this means 40K sales must have weakened substantially. There haven’t been any major 40K releases for a year, because GW concentrated on AoS and boxed games. That may be a bad strategy.

I don’t think GW can rely on a major success in video games every year. I don’t think it can be supported with only two core games to licence. Where are they going to find 800,000 people to buy Total War:Hammer 2 in 2018?

On the plus side, GW can look forwards to a bonanza in the coming year due to the weak GBP. AoS may forge ahead and become the major success that WHFB used to be years ago. There are the Specialist Games to be revived, and the opportunity to relaunch 40K.

Thus, things are not all bad in the longer term. We've seen a lot of reversals of Kirby's policies. This may start to produce actual growth over the next year or two.

There's no doubt that something needs to be done about 40K, though.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Total War:Hammer is getting a lot of good press and seems to be genuinely a great game.
Given the pedigree of the Total War series that's not surprising.
It's all the more disappointing that GW canned WHFB the year before this potential big boost to recruitment came on stream.
I'll put that down to the tail end of the baleful Kirby era.

Them partnering with Total war was smart. The series has not had a bad game yet.

Rome 2, E:TW.

And there is a general feeling that TW dumbed down a lot for Warhammer.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
On the plus side, GW can look forwards to a bonanza in the coming year due to the weak GBP. AoS may forge ahead and become the major success that WHFB used to be years ago. There are the Specialist Games to be revived, and the opportunity to relaunch 40K.

Thus, things are not all bad in the longer term. We've seen a lot of reversals of Kirby's policies. This may start to produce actual growth over the next year or two.

There's no doubt that something needs to be done about 40K, though.

Yeah. Bad news is GW needs to do something. No matter how one tries to spin it the current situation is not good or sustainable. Good news is they do have possibilities to fix the problems and have been taking good steps toward that.

Low key releases in 40k has likely some effect on 40k sale stalling so getting big releases there should help. Campaigns don't seem to catch same selling spree as codexes do. Which is bit unfortunate. And 8th ed(for which the long silence lends credit to. Feels like they are preparing for something big) could certainly change course if it's good.

Also the GBP is certainly going to help them at least in short term. That's good.

GW is btw now good example of why you shouldn't try to piss of your existing customer base. They kept increasing prices which drove unit sales down. Now that they made some correction moves with discounted boxes seems the number of boxes sold hasn't increased in same rate as price discount was. Too many people who got burned and aren't going to come back at least that easily. They could cut prices to what they were in '90's without factoring inflation(so effective price drop to '90's...) and sale # wouldn't go to same levels nevermind profits which would crash...

 Ghaz wrote:

Here's what Lady Atia had to say about the 'Last Chance' sales and their effects on AoS from her BLOG

Lady Atia wrote:Too bad that the "panic buying", at least for the last chance to buy section stuff isn't really huge - the warehouses weren't full of the stuff, especially characters. That's why most of it was sold within minutes

'Panic buying' wasn't just the last chance to buy stuff though, as soon as it became obvious that GW was going to kill WHFB people would have started buying stuff to finish off armies before they were Squatted. People with absolutely no interest in AoS would have been buying WHFB stuff all year and those sales are all but certain to have been classified as being for AoS.

At this stage that process should have been completed by now so AoS will be standing on its own feet for next years report.

 Selym wrote:

And there is a general feeling that TW dumbed down a lot for Warhammer.

I don't see how given its strong similarity to Rome 2.

-

 Bottle wrote:
Saying AoS currently has better sales than WHFB did for the past few years means it is selling better than the End Times too, and most people say the End Times sold very well.

Without any breakdown, it's all just guessing. We don't know how well ET sold, even if ET sold well it was followed by 6 months of silence where I'm sure many people halted their buying, we don't even know if or how ET numbers were added to WHFB numbers to make the statement....

"we finished the year with sales of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years".

To me it sounds like they had to do some dodgy fudging of the numbers to make that statement because the wording is such that their calculation method could have been damned near anything. There is soooo many ways that could be interpreted.

What does "we finished the year.... at a higher rare" mean? Does that mean the rate for the entire year, or just some portion at the end of the year?

What is "several years"? What time period did they use?

How did they calculate their rate for WHFB? Was it a year by year rate, was it averaged over several years?

What does "Warhammer" mean? All their games are called "Warhammer", does that include "Warhammer: End Times"?

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Selym wrote:

And there is a general feeling that TW dumbed down a lot for Warhammer.

I don't see how given its strong similarity to Rome 2.

Well off the top of my head from the complaining TW players:

Magic siege ladders troops pull out of their pants, no dismounting cavalry, formations being race-based, lords begin at same position at campaign's beginning, knights use lances constantly without changing to side-arms, heroes are OP and restriction on region conquests.

Reason why mod support was so highly requested.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Saying AoS currently has better sales than WHFB did for the past few years means it is selling better than the End Times too, and most people say the End Times sold very well.

Without any breakdown, it's all just guessing. We don't know how well ET sold, even if ET sold well it was followed by 6 months of silence where I'm sure many people halted their buying, we don't even know if or how ET numbers were added to WHFB numbers to make the statement....

"we finished the year with sales of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years".

To me it sounds like they had to do some dodgy fudging of the numbers to make that statement because the wording is such that their calculation method could have been damned near anything. There is soooo many ways that could be interpreted.

I'd also just like to point out that Hastings posted on Warseer sometime between October last year and January this year that AoS is doing badly in all markets. I'd link to the thread but Warseer is, well...

The point I'm trying to make is if that were true, assuming October last year, what have they done between then and now that boosted those sales to be in a better position? Last chances? Raft of new models? Silver tower? Other factors? Sounds like a combination of those factors along with the accelerated release schedule for AoS and prominence over 40k which has a more modest year. However, has that affected their 40k cash cow? What a pickle GW find themselves in. Continue what they are doing with AoS to boost its appeal or refocus on 40k. Of course, in an ideal world, they'd do both. But that means investing in the creative studio which may possibly end up with some of the GW marketing department loosing out and we can't have that!

It is interesting to look at the royalties over the years.

2005 - can't find, the year DOW 1 was released.
2006 - 1.2M
2007 - 1.4M
2008 - 1.7M
2009 - 3.5M (year DOW2 was released)
2010 - 3.1M (I think Blood Bowl came out under this financial report)
2011 - 2.4M
2012 - 3.5M (year Space Marine video game was released, also the year THQ died)
2013 - 1.0M
2014 - 1.4M
2015 - 1.5M
2016 - 5.9M (Total War, Vermintide)

I can't remember when GW started giving out their IP like candy to mobile developers, would that have fallen under the 2014 or 2015 reports?

They definitely make more royalties if they can get their IP in to the hands of developers who are willing to make AAA games occasionally rather than the shotgun effect of lots of cheap games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 zedmeister wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Saying AoS currently has better sales than WHFB did for the past few years means it is selling better than the End Times too, and most people say the End Times sold very well.

Without any breakdown, it's all just guessing. We don't know how well ET sold, even if ET sold well it was followed by 6 months of silence where I'm sure many people halted their buying, we don't even know if or how ET numbers were added to WHFB numbers to make the statement....

"we finished the year with sales of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years".

To me it sounds like they had to do some dodgy fudging of the numbers to make that statement because the wording is such that their calculation method could have been damned near anything. There is soooo many ways that could be interpreted.

I'd also just like to point out that Hastings posted on Warseer sometime between October last year and January this year that AoS is doing badly in all markets. I'd link to the thread but Warseer is, well...

The point I'm trying to make is if that were true, assuming October last year, what have they done between then and now that boosted those sales to be in a better position? Last chances? Raft of new models? Silver tower? Other factors? Sounds like a combination of those factors along with the accelerated release schedule for AoS and prominence over 40k which has a more modest year. However, has that affected their 40k cash cow? What a pickle GW find themselves in. Continue what they are doing with AoS to boost its appeal or refocus on 40k. Of course, in an ideal world, they'd do both. But that means investing in the creative studio which may possibly end up with some of the GW marketing department loosing out and we can't have that!

I had forgotten about Silver Tower, including that in the AoS numbers may sway things a bit, though I'm not really sure how popular it was.

One thing that is a worry for GW is they are a company that seems to rely on perpetual new releases. They can't take a break for a few months to let the games settle, they constantly have to release 2-3 new boxes each and every month.

frankr wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Mymearan wrote:
AoS is doing well and getting better then.

We really have no basis for making an argument either way. Too many things occur over the course of a financial year to pin anything down unless GW gave us an actual breakdown, which I don't think they ever will.

From page 6 of the financial report:
"we finished the year with sales of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years"

Does Warhammer Quest count as AoS? What about all of the "Last Chance to Buy" WHFB?
Is that "rate" a percentage or a cash total? If a percentage, does that mean AoS sales have gone up, or 40K sales have gone down?
Reports are that WHFB sales stopped dead first half of 2015, between End Times and AoS, so it shouldn't be hard for AoS to beat that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Baron Klatz wrote:

@Shinros, yeah, even if AoS could get GW enough money to surround their headquarters in golden Stormcast statues the haters would still say "doesn't prove anything".

I think if GW releases a report that shows growth, a lot of the haters will stop. Currently we're still seeing a decline.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Baron Klatz wrote:
Total war warhammer should see alot of growing strength and profits if their massive expansions that include more races, lands and content are delivered right.

Will it bring in as much licensing revenue as the first couple of months after launch? Presumably we're into the longer tail now where whilst some people will still be buying it at full price, that number will be dwindling, and in a year people will be buying a half price legacy edition or whatever. It'll bring in lots of money, but not as much as it's already done.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Saying AoS currently has better sales than WHFB did for the past few years means it is selling better than the End Times too, and most people say the End Times sold very well.

Without any breakdown, it's all just guessing. We don't know how well ET sold, even if ET sold well it was followed by 6 months of silence where I'm sure many people halted their buying, we don't even know if or how ET numbers were added to WHFB numbers to make the statement....

"we finished the year with sales of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years".

To me it sounds like they had to do some dodgy fudging of the numbers to make that statement because the wording is such that their calculation method could have been damned near anything. There is soooo many ways that could be interpreted.

What does "we finished the year.... at a higher rare" mean? Does that mean the rate for the entire year, or just some portion at the end of the year?

What is "several years"? What time period did they use?

How did they calculate their rate for WHFB? Was it a year by year rate, was it averaged over several years?

What does "Warhammer" mean? All their games are called "Warhammer", does that include "Warhammer: End Times"?

Based on the information we have, we can make some fairly decent guesses.

1. Assumption: WHFB didn't do particularly well. Why? Because it was axed.

2. Assumption: AoS started off terribly. Why? Because they did a 180 on one of the major changes (points) from WHFB nine months after release, including the (for GW) unprecedented step of actually telling everyone before doing it.

3. Assumption: AoS has ended the year better than it started. Why? Otherwise it would have been difficult to include any positive mentions of performance in the report.

My end assumption about AoS is that sales compared to itself are growing more than WHFB sales grew over the last 2-3 years, which, another assumption, isn't terribly amazing as WHFB was probably declining in its last years. Why? If AoS were doing better, the language would have been very different. Instead of even mentioning expectations, they compare it to the swan song of a product line so bad it had to be axed.

I don't get why people have such sandy vags about some of the comments. It is not meant as an attack on AoS it is just a summary of the facts (as far as we can tell because sales are not broken down in the report)

Fact
WFB is in effect contributing to the AoS sales this past financial year. The interest in WFB will continue to wane and die out over the next year(s) and there will be no more last chance sales so this will reduce. This is why it is difficult to state 100% how well AoS has done this year, it will become progressively clearer in subsequent years. I do not see why this is hard to grasp and is "hating"

GW sales this year have fallen 0.8% so they are doing no better than they were last year (which was also down on the year before)


I think it is safe to infer from this AoS has not been a runaway success. It is probably doing something in the region of WFB but has had a massive amount of support

 Bottle wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Baron Klatz wrote:
In anycase, awesome to hear GW are going strong.

Except they aren't going strong. Their core profit fell by 27% or so. That's huge. Their sales keep declining. Now if AOS sales are roughly on bar with FB or bit more than it was in the end(which wasn't that much due to GW deliberately cutting support from FB which killed their sales. Last 2-3 years low sales were GW's own doing...) then this means 40k, despite hugely popular calth box, started stalling big time.

You're looking at profits in isolation and drawing the wrong conclusion. Revenue of core products only fell by 0.9% the drop in profits is due to the increased spending which is investment which will hopefully see a return in the years to come.

Saying AoS currently has better sales than WHFB did for the past few years means it is selling better than the End Times too, and most people say the End Times sold very well.

Relative to how WHFB had been selling up to that point.

GW just spent the best part of a year pushing AoS including more new model releases than WHFB saw in five+ years, End Times included, plus what was apparently a pretty popular reboot of WHQ, and the result was "it's doing a bit better than ET did" and a dip in 40K.

So, what do you think is going to happen this (financial)year when 40K is apparently going to be getting a much more "normal" share of the release slots and at least two of the new SGs(Adeptus Titanicus, looks set for April '17 if the tie-in novel's release date is anything to go by, and ofc Blood Bowl later this (calendar)year) plus one or two new box games(the new HH one later this year for sure) will be coming out, and most of the people buying up kits to finish off their WHFB armies will have bought all they're going to buy?

Don't get me wrong, I no longer think AoS is going to be a complete failure, but AoS fans should maybe do a bit less "ignoring the haters" and recognise how precarious their chosen game's position is right now; the General's Handbook and associated volte face on strategy was a positive move by GW but the coming release schedule slowdown will offset that benefit to a not inconsiderable degree and as far as I can tell the main reason GW are willing to overlook AoS not being the saviour of Fantasy they wanted, is the studio being bored of creating content for WHF and wanting to do something new for the sake of doing something new.

If the coming year's schedule results in a proportionate drop in AoS sales it'll be back down to the region of pre-ET WHFB, and the money-men part of the compnay's management won't be prepared to tolerate that forever as we know from experience.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Selym wrote:

And there is a general feeling that TW dumbed down a lot for Warhammer.

I don't see how given its strong similarity to Rome 2.

I haven't played TW:Warhammer, but the points I'm aware of are:

Previous TW games had Warhammer mods that were much more extensive
Rome 2 was never liked, and being reminiscent of it is hardly a boon
There are far fewer factions to interact with
Half the playerbase feels that TW have gone off their rocker and forgone all sense of realism by making a fantasy game
TW tried to screw people over by making a faction that was guaranteed for release into a DLC

Im sure AOS will grow much more strongly now there is the Generals Handbook, and some genuinely popular factions coming out (ironjawz, sylvaneth etc).