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Look at it from a salesman's POV - once you have qualified your customer, and you determine she is looking for a game she can play with miniatures she has assembled and painted herself, you aren't going to try to sell her X-Wing. Of course, if she just wants to buy a fun game, you could show her X-Wing but you could show her pretty much anything in the store. Now, let's say she wants to play a game with miniatures but is skeptical about the hobby stuff; you are not going to steer her towards 40k. Put it another way, a lot of Dakka posters who like X-Wing like it in addition to miniatures games with the hobby component. So like I said, if I spend $100 on X-Wing I can't spend that same $100 on 40k. But it has nothing to do with whether I spend another $100 on 40k.

Manchu wrote:A license, like any other contract, can be breached. GW and FFG are sophisticated enough to have foreseen the potential for overlapping growth when the license was first negotiated so that they could have contracted around such issues. Nothing that FFG did with regard to the X-Wing line appears to have triggered GW to sue FFG for breach of contract.

Exactly. X-Wing wasn't enough to breach the contract, so the contract couldn't be annulled, but that doesn't mean that GW was happy watching X-Wing's popularity surpass 40k.

It really doesn't make any sense for GW and FFG to have fallen out over X-Wing. This perception is probably a mirage generated by the extremely flawed, overly-generalized, and entirely anecdotal ICv2 reports, which bizarrely lump X-Wing and 40k into the same sales category - probably because X-Wing doesn't really fit anywhere else.

Based on the people I know who play X-Wing, I think the game does take business away from other miniature games - particularly 40k. I know one guy who traded all his 40k army for X-Wing stuff.

As to who broke up with whom ... I am not so sure that it was GW. To say that Asmodee is growing faster than GW is a massive understatement. FFG wants to make traditional miniatures wargames (hence why they are doing so with RuneWars). I could imagine the GW license specifically precludes this. It is also easy to imagine that GW would not budge on this at the negotiating table. But GW would almost certainly be happy to sit back and collect the licensing fees otherwise.

RuneWars is a chicken/egg situation. We don't know whether it was started before or after FFG knew they wouldn't get the renewed license. Timewise, it could go either way (if you assume a two year development window). And while Asmodee is a huge company that is gobbling up board game companies like they were PacMan pellets, it isn't really a competitor to GW like FFG was. They got Days of Wonder (Memoir 44), Catan, Z-Man Games, Pretzel Games, and a dozen more - not a single one of which competes with the same products or in the same market as Games Workshop - unlike X-Wing/Armada.

Davor wrote:Let me get this straight. GW is leaving partnership with FFG because FFG is taking business away from GW because GW can't run a business?

Well, it seems more like Rountree wanted to focus GW in a different direction with more specialist games, and doing something like Warhammer Quest or Blood Bowl would directly compete with FFG's games. GW would've already been wary with regard to X-Wing, but having the competition go both ways would mean that FFG would be less inclined to produce their best work for GW properties.

I am sure it's not FFG taking money away from GW it's GW making people not to want to buy their product and people want to buy so start looking else where. So for GW to say FFG "you are taking money away from us and we don't want to partner with you no more" is just mind boggling. If GW did what a business should have done, and give people what they want instead of their own agenda with shareholders money this would have never been an issue then.

By all accounts, GW is working on it and has made great strides in the last year or so. I think in another year, GW may be able to compete with FFG on even terms - but that still doesn't mean that it is a good business decision to produce Blood Bowl while your biggest competitor produces Blood Bowl Team Manager, or to produce a Horus Heresy version of Relic while your competitor is producing Relic and Talisman, or to make Warhammer Quest while your competitors makes Warhammer Quest the Card Game, or Space Hulk while your competitor produces Space Hulk: Dark Angels, and so on.

The notion that "X-Wing surpassed 40k in popularity" assumes that the two product lines are direct competitors, and I don't think there is a strong case for that.

I'm sure most people posting here know someone who has gotten out of 40k and into X-Wing. We probably also know people who have gotten out of 40k and gotten into some hobby totally unrelated to miniatures gaming. Disposable income is finite, sure.

Sqorgar - not sure if you are aware but FFG is a subsidiary of Asmodee

 Manchu wrote:
So like I said, if I spend $100 on X-Wing I can't spend that same $100 on 40k. But it has nothing to do with whether I spend another $100 on 40k.

Miniature games are expensive. I had to cut back on Age of Sigmar because at a $50 a month budget, I couldn't afford anything (I'm finding Infinity to be much more agreeable to that budget). So if you only have $100 to spend and you spend it on X-Wing, then that's $0 you can then afford to spend on 40k.

And sure, you could make that claim about anything ($100 on beer, $0 on 40k), but X-Wing has a customer overlap that means that spending $100 on X-Wing probably means you are good for a while, and you don't spend more on 40k because you don't feel like you have to or want to.

 Manchu wrote:
. It's true that $100 spent on X-Wing is $100 not spent on 40k (and is $100 not spent on Mayland board games). It's not necessarily true that every $100 spent on X-Wing translates into GW losing $100 of sales.

That's of course correct. Not every $100 spent on X-Wing translates into GW losing $100 of sales. But in some cases it does.

You don't need to look far for anecdotes about people spending money on X-Wing, that would previously have been a part of their 40K budget.

In other words, GW's target demographic is customers with high levels of disposable income. X-Wing does not lean anywhere near as much on that demographic.

 Sqorgar wrote:
X-Wing has a customer overlap that means that spending $100 on X-Wing probably means you are good for a while, and you don't spend more on 40k because you don't feel like you have to or want to.

This argument is specifically the one I find unconvincing. X-Wing and 40k (or WMH or Malifaux or Bolt Action, etc, etc) simply don't scratch the same itch. If you are the type of customer interested in building and painting miniatures, no amount of X-Wing purchases are going to tide you over.

 Manchu wrote:
Sqorgar - not sure if you are aware but FFG is a subsidiary of Asmodee

Of course I'm aware. But X-Wing predates the merger, and the CEO of FFG is still the CEO of FFG. In all honesty, outside of an increased production ability (FFG now has a card printing factory, and grew to accommodate the increased needs of miniature manufacturing), FFG hasn't really changed what they do or how they do it. The rest of Asmodee's acquisitions have been concentrated around European board game developers, so it seems like Asmodee is pretty hands off with the US branch (which I believe the FFG CEO is in charge of).

 Manchu wrote:
.... with miniatures she has assembled and painted herself..

How is that relevent? You can easily repaint X-wing stuff should you desire.

It is a wargame and a popular one at that. It is a commonly played game at both clubs that I attend as well as being the subject of a lot of chatter on various wargaming forums/blogs etc so quite clearly wargamers are spending money on it.

 Manchu wrote:
X-Wing does not lean anywhere near as much on that demographic.

Good luck providing evidence for that claim.....

 Sqorgar wrote:
But X-Wing predates the merger, and the CEO of FFG is still the CEO of FFG.

That's kind of the point. Asmodee bought FFG to expand into markets it previously did not access; specifically, we aren't just talking about regions but also product lines - such as miniatures gaming.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
Good luck providing evidence for that claim.....

It's self-evident; for example, see Sqorgar's $50/month budget. If you want to discuss the relative price points, feel free to start another thread and I will post in it. The "which is cheaper" debate is off-topic ITT.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
You can easily repaint X-wing stuff should you desire.

You can repaint your HeroClix. You can paint your board game pawns. This doesn't amount to assembling and painting a 40k or AoS or WMH or KoW, etc, etc, army.

 Manchu wrote:
This argument is specifically the one I find unconvincing. X-Wing and 40k (or WMH or Malifaux or Bolt Action, etc, etc) simply don't scratch the same itch. If you are the type of customer interested in building and painting miniatures, no amount of X-Wing purchases are going to tide you over.

Let's assume that the marketplace is made up of different customers with different needs and desires. A customer who is interesting assembling, customizing, and painting models will not be swayed by X-Wing. Not all miniature gamers are like that though. Half the Warmachine players I played against never bothered to fully assemble their models and occasionally played with just empty bases. Customers who are interested in the social club aspect, list building, mixed with the tactical competition - the Magic the Gathering style involvement - they may not feel like they need two (expensive) games that scratch that same itch.

I agree, there are a lot of different customers out there. But GW is not after the ones who want pre-painted miniatures at relatively affordable prices.

 Manchu wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
But X-Wing predates the merger, and the CEO of FFG is still the CEO of FFG.

That's kind of the point. Asmodee bought FFG to expand into markets it previously did not access; specifically, we aren't just talking about regions but also product lines - such as miniatures gaming.

Asmodee is a group of investment bankers. FFG, as the largest and most popular board game developer in the US, probably represented a safe investment. They also had Chinese contacts for producing cards and miniatures cheaply, perhaps more so than other companies they acquired. I don't think Asmodee bought FFG as an entry to miniature gaming, but rather because of the boost they get in production and distribution to one of the largest markets in the world.

 Sqorgar wrote:
I don't think Asmodee bought FFG as an entry to miniature gaming, but rather because of the boost they get in production and distribution to one of the largest markets in the world.

Those aren't mutually exclusive. As specifically mentioned above:

 Manchu wrote:
we aren't just talking about regions but also product lines

 Manchu wrote:
I agree, there are a lot of different customers out there. But GW is not after the ones who want pre-painted miniatures at relatively affordable prices.

Just because GW makes a distinction between those customers doesn't mean that the actual customers do. I have disposable cash. What I don't have, however, is a desire to feel like I'm getting ripped off with $30 single sprue character model blisters.

Lots of people think GW's prices are too high. I'm one of them.* But it's irrelevant to this topic generally and to this tangent of this topic specifically.

*I also placed a $100+ order with GW within last 24 hours

 Manchu wrote:
You can repaint your HeroClix. You can paint your board game pawns. This doesn't amount to assembling and painting a 40k or AoS or WMH or KoW, etc, etc, army.

Why? There is little difference as far as I can see given that they both result in effectively the same thing.

 Manchu wrote:
It's self-evident.

Except, of course, its not. Simply because it is cheaper does not mean that X-wing is targeted at poorer people any more than Warzone, Saga, Dystopian Wars or virtually any other wargame is. They are different games, on different scales.

There are a few differences. The most obvious two are (a) re-painting a pre-paint is an entirely optional step (i.e., it plays no role in the marketing of the product) and (b) scale of the project. But honestly there's nothing I can say that will matter to someone who sees no difference between re-painting a handful of X-Wing ships and building a 40k army. Likewise, there is nothing I can say to someone who disputes that GW's target customer has significantly more hobby dollars than are required to buy a couple of X-Wing starters from an online discount retailer.

But let's remember how we even got here: the assumption that FFG no longer has the GW license because FFG makes X-Wing. Without even touching on the Star Wars brand appeal, X-Wing appeals to customers who want to buy pre-painted miniatures largely priced below $20 "per unit." GW sells nothing like that.

 Manchu wrote:
there is nothing I can say to someone who disputes that GW's target customer has significantly more hobby dollars than are required to buy a couple of X-Wing starters from an online discount retailer.

You miss a crucial point (or two actually).

Money is not the only resource that's limited. Time is as well. I'd say it's fair to assume that a good part of the people whose hobby cash is going to X-wing instead of 40K does indeed have the financial muscles needed to collect and play 40K as well as X-wing, but hobby time is limited and even if someone can afford both games, if he only have time for one then he'll stop buying stuff for the other. Especially if one of the games (40K) is steadily becoming less and less fulfilling and more and more time consuming and just generally a chore to get through due to rules bloat and lack of quality design.

That's why X-Wing is competition to 40K


As for the other point. If GW is happy to disregard the customer-base with limited funds (younger people generally) then they're losing the competition for another key resource: The high-spending demographic of the future . It's far more likely someone will care about 40K in their older days if they got into it at a younger age.

The people buying Warlord Titans and Thunderhawks from FW today generally got into GW games through easy-to-start games like hero-quest, talisman etc. Games that's easy and relatively cheap to start, similar to X-wing.

 Manchu wrote:
X-Wing may technically be a miniatures game (depending on who you ask) but lumping it in with 40k is silly. X-Wing is competition for 40k in the same way that X-Wing is competition for Settlers of Catan - namely, in the high-level race to capture finite table top gaming dollars. It's true that $100 spent on X-Wing is $100 not spent on 40k (and is $100 not spent on Mayland board games). It's not necessarily true that every $100 spent on X-Wing translates into GW losing $100 of sales. It's pretty debatable whether RuneWars is really even competing with GW.

No, no it's not and you are wrong. Or maybe as Obi Wan said "from a certain point of view".

From my point of view X-wing is in direct completion. Money going to FFG is money not going to GW.

Just like how Magic is in competition just like how a movie is competition. My spare money from what I have can only go to a few things. Maybe in your case you have movie money and hobby money for this and hobby money for that and GW money and FFG money, but in my case, I only have spare hobby money. So that could be going out with the family to the cinema to see a movie or it can be used to buy GW or it can be used to buy FFG. So yes I either buy FFG or GW when I have the money to spare.

So in my case when I have spare money it either goes to my son if he wants something Magic, or if he doesn't want anything the int goes to me in what I would like. If GW has crazy high prices for something with crappy rules or I feel it's not worth the price of the mini, then I look at FFG for Star Wars or Wiz Kids for Star Trek Attack Wing or even Privateer Press when I was interested with them at the time.

So X-wing is in competition just like anything else when companies are after your spare money.

Zywus - you make a good point about time as a resource, another crucial distinction between X-Wing and GW's product lines - people looking to not spend a ton of time on miniatures will be interested in X-Wing ... and GW offers no product competing along those lines

Davor - I actually agree with you ... X-Wing is competition for 40k in about the same sense as, to use Sqorgar's example, beer is competition for 40k

 Manchu wrote:


Davor - I actually agree with you ... X-Wing is competition for 40k in about the same sense as, to use Sqorgar's example, beer is competition for 40k

That is true. While I don't drink, I always tell my wife, "why do I want to go out and eat? We can eat at home. If we go out and eat I will be spending over $75 for a meal of 2 and we will just crap it out in the end, that money can go to my plastic crack habit."

I could see partly why the two companies parted ways.
I left 40k for my own reasons.
FFG, WOTC, and Wizkids became my fall back to stay in the tabletop hobby.

It really wouldn't shock me if GW assumed FFG board games competed with their products in some way.

But it's just a shot in the dark on what's actually going on. I don't know a thing

 Manchu wrote:
(a) re-painting a pre-paint is an entirely optional step

As is painting (or even completely assembling!) your GW models, a fact that is nicely demonstrated by the vast number of people with gray plastic armies and zero interest in painting them. And then many of the people who do paint their GW models do bare-minimum levels of painting just to meet "painted miniatures only" rules in tournaments, seeing the painting process as a necessary chore to slog through rather than an appealing part of the product. Much of GW's current market would be perfectly happy with pre-painted models.

 Manchu wrote:
In other words, GW's target demographic is customers with high levels of disposable income. X-Wing does not lean anywhere near as much on that demographic.

This argument makes no sense at all. What do you think FFG is doing, saying "you make too much money and have too much disposable income, you aren't our target market"? Of course they aren't. FFG and X-Wing are targeting GW's entire target demographic, they're just also targeting people with a more limited budget. The fact that FFG is also targeting other demographics doesn't change the fact that they are trying to convince all of GW's customers to spend their money on FFG's products instead. It just means that GW is run by incompetent people and is targeting a ridiculously narrow market (specifically "people who buy GW products", if their financial reports are to be believed).

The simple fact here is that X-Wing is competition for GW's games. Most of the people who play GW's games are in the target market for X-Wing, and people have finite amounts of money to spend. And, anecdotally, I know several people (myself included) who replaced GW games with X-Wing because it was a better miniatures game.

 Manchu wrote:
T But honestly there's nothing I can say that will matter to someone who sees no difference between re-painting a handful of X-Wing ships and building a 40k army.

Fundamentally their isn't, both end up with personalised miniatures 'created' by the user. Its not as if many, perhaps even most, GW miniatures even get painted.

 Manchu wrote:
Likewise, there is nothing I can say to someone who disputes that GW's target customer has significantly more hobby dollars than are required to buy a couple of X-Wing starters from an online discount retailer.

I would argue that GW's target customer is someone who is already heavily invested in their products, relative income has little to do with it as in the grand scheme of things a 40K army and a X-wing fleet both fall within 'hobby money' for the majority of people when spread out over a reasonable period of time, for instance the length of time it would take to paint said army. Of course GW's stuff are massively over priced but you don't need a 6 figure salary to be able to afford them (yet).

My original argument is that FFG has become a significant rival to GW in the miniature wargaming arena, which is quite frankly undeniable, and as such GW has sought to limit their grow by pulling/not renewing its licensing agreements. Its possible that FFG simply didn't want to renew or didn't feel that the costs were acceptable but given FFG's heavy use of the license in the past this seems unlikely.

Sure, lots of people never get around to doing anything with their expensive GW kits. GW is looking for customers who can afford to do that again and again. I'm sure many on Dakka Dakka can relate.

LOL of course I am not arguing that FFG doesn't want customers who have over $X to spend. I'm saying GW wants customers with $Y to spend, where Y>X. I also never said that hobby dollars are infinite. But if you can afford $Y, you are likely able to throw money at both X-Wing and GW.

If you can only afford to stick with one game, keep your head down working on that, be really disciplined about not spending outside of that - I don't think FFG or GW are very interested in you ... but I think GW is even less interested in you than FFG.

 Manchu wrote:
S GW is looking for customers who can afford to do that again and again. I'm sure many on Dakka Dakka can relate.

I thought GW wanted you to spend your X $$$ and never been seen again. So far I haven't seen that change yet.

 Manchu wrote:
LOL of course I am not arguing that FFG doesn't want customers who have over $X to spend. I'm saying GW wants customers with $Y to spend, where Y>X. I also never said that hobby dollars are infinite. But if you can afford $Y, you are likely able to throw money at both X-Wing and GW.

If you can only afford to stick with one game, keep your head down working on that, be really disciplined about not spending outside of that - I don't think FFG or GW are very interested in you ... but I think GW is even less interested in you than FFG.

Again. Money is generally not stopping (adult) people from playing/collecting both games. It's rather the hobby time that's limited.

Why the hell would a company not be interested in someone who "can only afford to stick with one game, keep your head down working on that, be really disciplined about not spending outside of that"? I could see GW thinking something like that, but most companies aren't run by the kind of delusional fools that has captained old HMS Games Workshop

I think GW has benefited more from the relationship than FFG, on balance, and mostly because of the last few years.

FFG pays GW to make GW-themed games. This works out to GW getting paid for a competent company significantly developing GW's brand visibility and brand value (like Dawn of War, on a more modest scale of course).

No longer having the GW license is not going to slow FFG down. If withholding their license is GW's plan to compete with FFG, they are doomed. The actual result is that GW will lose licensing revenue AND a successful distribution network/high quality brand partner.

Seems reasonable to me that FFG would chuck GW rather than the reverse. Let's say the license did include a "no miniatures wargame" clause (under which X-Wing obviously did not qualify) - this would be onerous to a growing company like FFG. Plus - no GW-licensed product has ever been anything like the consistent hit that X-Wing is. Continuing to invest in the licensing fee plus all the design and development costs for putting out GW-licensed products plus the costs of supporting those products against the returns, especially when you are making Star Wars dollars by contrast, seems like a dead end.

The slant on this board seems to be toward assuming GW is more important than it actually is, no surprise (it's a 40k board after all!).

 Manchu wrote:
Sure, lots of people never get around to doing anything with their expensive GW kits. GW is looking for customers who can afford to do that again and again. I'm sure many on Dakka Dakka can relate.

Exactly. GW loves selling models to people who will never paint them and don't give a about the modeling and painting parts of the hobby. Therefore pre-painted models are competition for GW.

But if you can afford $Y, you are likely able to throw money at both X-Wing and GW.

This is wrong for two reasons:

1) Being able to afford a GW game does not imply being able to afford a GW game and some other game at the same time. Obviously at some point you have so much money that you can buy whatever you want, but there are plenty of people who have limited budgets and have to save up money for their GW purchases. Spending $20/week on new X-Wing stuff instead of saving $20/week to buy a GW kit once a month means not buying GW games anymore if your "fun stuff" budget is $20/week. Even if you have $30/week (and can afford GW's prices) taking 2/3 of your hobby budget away from GW and giving it to FFG means a significant drop in GW spending, and quite possibly an end to GW spending because the leftovers go into beer money or whatever.

2) Even if you treat money as infinite time is not. If I have $100/week for a hobby budget I can obviously afford to buy both 40k and X-Wing, but do I have time to play both games? If I only have enough time to keep up with one game I can spend $100/week on 40k with no money left over, or I can spend $15/week on X-Wing and spend the other $85 on flying airplanes. By successfully competing with GW for my gaming money FFG takes away more than just the $15/week I spend on FFG's game. And it doesn't matter how rich I am GW is not getting that money back until they convince me that they have the better product.

Now, obviously there are people who have the time and money to play both X-Wing and 40k, but just like any other situation where two companies are competing for the same customers having some people buying from both doesn't mean the competition doesn't exist.