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as hard as it is around here to find AoS players or even products to buy ( I hate online buying) I wouldnt believe here that it is outselling anything at all, let alone 40k which is picking up steam due to kill team.

A few comments were made about the popularity of AoS and how well it's selling. Without proper numbers and just throwing percentages around doesn't mean anything.

While I would love for the NUMBERS to be true, GW hasn't given any numbers at all but percentage numbers. So AoS doing 30% better means what? 30% better of 10 units sold means they sold an extra 3 units.

I am surprised numbers like hundred's of thousands are not being thrown around. Since only percentages are being thrown around and 30% better sounds awesome, but without context what they actually mean and actual numbers I am really worried AoS and 40K for that matter are not really doing as well as GW is hoping.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
My original observation of AoS was that it felt like Fantasy for the crowd that already liked 40k.

So it's possible AoS sales have just cannibalised 40k sales, in which case it's more believable it's outselling 40k. They're just selling different models to the same people that were previously spending more on 40k.

More believable for sure but still terrible for GW they need to grow their customer base not rely on the dwindling pool of existing ones.

Maybe their board games can do that? I dunno. I think their board games are overpriced for someone who doesn't already love GW.

Right from the beginning I didn't see AoS as expanding their potential customer base, rather shrinking it because I think it removed some of the diversity between WHFB and 40k.

That's the thing.

AoS targets new players, those new players have the ability to buy a lot more than old players, who might need one character. or maybe a new box of basing material.

As a 40K player, I would never touch AoS and I don't think there's much cannibalising going on at all.

The one thing that could drive AoS sales is the percentage of new visitors vs recurring, which was the downfall of WHFB: everyone just had everything already, everyone was less and less people by the day and the second hand market was therefore damaging store sales hard.
That and the cheap alternatives from other companies that let you get to where the old players were (2000+ points) for a relatively cheap price.

As a miniature game grows older, so do its users, this brings up the "standard army size" and perceived "minimum investment" to levels which just can't be matched by new players.

And as the users get older, they often reach "sufficient army size" and for most, the only way they keep on buying anything is if they start collecting other armies - this also dries up after a while.


In that game, AoS might very well be driving excellent sales with 5 times less users who spend a lot more (like that new guy who just bought 500 bucks of space wolves, except there aren't many such new guys).

hobojebus wrote:

Lots of people don't even use social media I play kow and 9th age and I've never used reddit, stopped using Facebook years ago etc.

Social media numbers mean squat because we have zero clue how representative they are.

Sales figures will show a games popularity in comparison to other games on the market, if AoS is in the top five it's recovered after a dismal first year, if not it's still a failure.

It's a very binary situation.

It's not unreasonable to suppose a similar proportion of people playing different games use it, and so can be used to gauge relative popularity. I think it means more than the rumors and heresay thrown around here. So much for your "dismal first year" - as you can see from the link I posted above, the community grew to being bigger than the WHFB community it had replaced.

As for the icv2 charts they don't reflect sales in GW stores and are restricted to Northern America, so its usefulness in indicating the success of AoS is very limited. Is KoW a failed game because it doesn't make it to icv2? is ninth age?

morgoth wrote:
AoS targets new players, those new players have the ability to buy a lot more than old players, who might need one character. or maybe a new box of basing material.

As a 40K player, I would never touch AoS and I don't think there's much cannibalising going on at all.

Agree to disagree I guess. I don't see new players excited for AoS, I just see existing 40k players buying it. Obviously not ALL existing 40k players are making the switch, but I think they greatly outnumber actual new customers.

It's obviously not a bad thing to get existing customers spending more, money is money, but wargamers often have finite money so flooding the market with things the same players like is going to be less effective than aiming for a larger base of players. It also makes you more susceptible to a loss in your customer base hurting your revenue.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Davor wrote:
A few comments were made about the popularity of AoS and how well it's selling. Without proper numbers and just throwing percentages around doesn't mean anything.

While I would love for the NUMBERS to be true, GW hasn't given any numbers at all but percentage numbers. So AoS doing 30% better means what? 30% better of 10 units sold means they sold an extra 3 units.

I am surprised numbers like hundred's of thousands are not being thrown around. Since only percentages are being thrown around and 30% better sounds awesome, but without context what they actually mean and actual numbers I am really worried AoS and 40K for that matter are not really doing as well as GW is hoping.

Wait, where did 30% come from?

I haven't heard any numbers at all, percentages or otherwise.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

motski wrote:
It's not unreasonable to suppose a similar proportion of people playing different games use it, and so can be used to gauge relative popularity.

It's not unreasonable to suppose that the proportions are wildly off. Really, the AoS reddit and WHFB reddit are on the order of a few thousand people, that's a tiny drop in the ocean of wargamers and thus massively susceptible to error.

So no, it's not a useful gauge at all, unless you assume WHFB and AoS players both have equal propensity to subscribe to a subreddit, which I think is a pretty far stretch.

motski wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

Lots of people don't even use social media I play kow and 9th age and I've never used reddit, stopped using Facebook years ago etc.

Social media numbers mean squat because we have zero clue how representative they are.

Sales figures will show a games popularity in comparison to other games on the market, if AoS is in the top five it's recovered after a dismal first year, if not it's still a failure.

It's a very binary situation.

It's not unreasonable to suppose a similar proportion of people playing different games use it, and so can be used to gauge relative popularity. I think it means more than the rumors and heresay thrown around here. So much for your "dismal first year" - as you can see from the link I posted above, the community grew to being bigger than the WHFB community it had replaced.

As for the icv2 charts they don't reflect sales in GW stores and are restricted to Northern America, so its usefulness in indicating the success of AoS is very limited. Is KoW a failed game because it doesn't make it to icv2? is ninth age?

As GW don't show how their sales are split icv2 is our best none partisan source for sales figures.

And again I'm willing to bet the vast majority of players don't even use reddit so it's meaningless, if every wargamer had an account then you could draw a conclusion but a few thousand out of millions is not good representation.

This would really be astonishing.
Nobody here in our gaming group pays attention to AOS anymore.
Our AoS league started quite nicely.
But then a Sigmarite dragon emerged at the battlefield. Very powerful and with his special abilities he was able to decimate the enemy quickly. The other armies lost confidence and fled. It appears that these armies will not come back anytime soon.
This seems to be the end of AoS here ATM.

 wuestenfux wrote:
This would really be astonishing.
Nobody here in our gaming group pays attention to AOS anymore.
Our AoS league started quite nicely.
But then a Sigmarite dragon emerged at the battlefield. Very powerful and with his special abilities he was able to decimate the enemy quickly. The other armies lost confidence and fled. It appears that these armies will not come back anytime soon.
This seems to be the end of AoS here ATM.

First time I played a Stardrake I managed to kill it first turn

I'm sad to hear your whole gaming group gave up after the first challenging build, but if you're having fun with whatever you play now it's all good.

There are so many tournaments in the UK the scene has become really vibrant. As stated at the start of this thread, I don't think AoS is selling more since the GSC came out, but I can definitely see it having happened over the summer.

 Bottle wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
This would really be astonishing.
Nobody here in our gaming group pays attention to AOS anymore.
Our AoS league started quite nicely.
But then a Sigmarite dragon emerged at the battlefield. Very powerful and with his special abilities he was able to decimate the enemy quickly. The other armies lost confidence and fled. It appears that these armies will not come back anytime soon.
This seems to be the end of AoS here ATM.

First time I played a Stardrake I managed to kill it first turn

I'm sad to hear your whole gaming group gave up after the first challenging build, but if you're having fun with whatever you play now it's all good.

There are so many tournaments in the UK the scene has become really vibrant. As stated at the start of this thread, I don't think AoS is selling more since the GSC came out, but I can definitely see it having happened over the summer.

No more AoS here.
We enjoy other games, mostly WMH and still 40k.

Good for you. It'd be nice to hear from a few more German users to get a feel for the AoS scene there. It is growing from strength to strength in the UK however.

 Bottle wrote:
Good for you. It'd be nice to hear from a few more German users to get a feel for the AoS scene there. It is growing from strength to strength in the UK however.

Okay.

AoS seems to be dead here. We had actually a strong WHFB group. They've put their armies on hold.

 wuestenfux wrote:
We had actually a strong WHFB group. They've put their armies on hold.

For us, it was the ScheiBe of 8E that killed WFB in my local group. We've got our armies, but I'm not sure if people want to restart.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
We had actually a strong WHFB group. They've put their armies on hold.

For us, it was the ScheiBe of 8E that killed WFB in my local group. We've got our armies, but I'm not sure if people want to restart.

You should go for it! AoS is heaps of fun and your Dogs of War will be well represented within the Order grand alliance.

Yeah, I'm good to restart with AoS, but the others still have a sour taste from Warhammer Fantasy. I'm pretty salty on Ninth not even starting Mercs. And the splitters wanting KoW meant we didn't have cuonsensus. But yeah, I did a rename of things in Order for Dogs of War, and I'd have been fine with it.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Wait, where did 30% come from?

I haven't heard any numbers at all, percentages or otherwise.

My memory is not that good so I could be wrong again, but I thought I read a few months ago, or was it around June that someone said or GW said in their annual report or before the annual report that AoS numbers were up 30% over fantasy sales or something like that. I guess GW was trying to play the numbers to make it look great. It got alot of people hyped and then were saying therefore how much a success AoS is because of the 30%. Somewhere around here on Dakka. Just not sure where. Sorry for that.

Davor wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Wait, where did 30% come from?

I haven't heard any numbers at all, percentages or otherwise.

My memory is not that good so I could be wrong again, but I thought I read a few months ago, or was it around June that someone said or GW said in their annual report or before the annual report that AoS numbers were up 30% over fantasy sales or something like that. I guess GW was trying to play the numbers to make it look great. It got alot of people hyped and then were saying therefore how much a success AoS is because of the 30%. Somewhere around here on Dakka. Just not sure where. Sorry for that.

Yeah you're going to need to find a source because as far as I'm aware GW have never said 30%.

In their annual report they simply said that finished the year AoS at a higher rate than WHFB, it was a very vague statement that had no numbers attached and could have been calculated in several different ways.

You might be confused, GW did state new releases make up 30% of their total revenue, but that tells you nothing about how AoS specifically is doing. I remember making the argument that most of AoS's new releases came out in the latter part of the year which would naturally result in a higher rate of sales for AoS at the end of the year and may be why they made the statement about AoS finishing the year at a higher rate than WHFB.

You might also be thinking of Forge World, GW's core citadel sales dropped by 12% but it was offset by a 28% rise in Forge World's sales.

But I don't think anyone in the know has said AoS is doing 30% better than WHFB.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
But I don't think anyone in the know has said AoS is doing 30% better than WHFB.

I believe GW had said that AoS was outperforming WFB last year, even before the GHB was released. But I don't recall any specific % stated.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
But I don't think anyone in the know has said AoS is doing 30% better than WHFB.

I believe GW had said that AoS was outperforming WFB last year, even before the GHB was released. But I don't recall any specific % stated.

Well the 2016 report I believe was before the GHB, so as I said in the 2nd paragraph of my post...

In their annual report they simply said that finished the year AoS at a higher rate than WHFB, it was a very vague statement that had no numbers attached and could have been calculated in several different ways.

Here is the exact statement...

"as we released more of the range in the second half of the year, we finished the year with sales of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years."

But they offer no method for calculation, noting that "higher rate" typically doesn't mean "overall sales for the year" but rather it means at that point in time you are selling things faster.

They literally could have just taken the last month of AoS sales and compared it to WHFB over the previous "several" years (whatever that means) and the statement would still be true.

It's still a fairly positive sentence because the comparison will include all of the End Times which had books sell out on release day and multiple models which made it to GW's top 10 kits of 2015.

You're right that it is still quite vague. Hopefully for the next FY report they will be able to say something more concrete.

The thing that struck me about how GW worded it in the financial statement is that it was very non-committal. I often write technical documents for work and that's the sort of sentence I'd expect from someone who's trying to hide something.

If it wasn't written in a financial report I probably would have just assumed it was written by someone who wasn't good at writing concisely. Using the words "finished the year....at a higher rate than .... for several years" really allows you to twist the numbers in many ways.

The dodgiest thing they could have done was taken the rate of sales last month of AoS for that financial year and compared it to the average of WHFB over several years.... the statement would be true but also massively biased. I'm not saying that's what they DID do, but the statement they made allows for it.

That said I fully expect AoS to be outselling WHFB if you take WHFB's numbers for any time during 8th, except maybe the couple of months where end time came out. My understanding was WHFB was struggling back in 7th, but 8th just absolutely killed it. I know some people like the 8th ed rules, but the simple fact it...

a) pissed off a lot of veterans which made them stop buying.

b) raised the requirements for new gamers, which stopped new blood.

I don't have any trouble believing WHFB in 8th edition was barely selling anything.

But that doesn't mean the potential wasn't there.

Herzlos wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Maybe their board games can do that? I dunno. I think their board games are overpriced for someone who doesn't already love GW.

The contemporary board games are an awful way to reach out to new customers; they are generally poor, overpriced, niche games that are outclassed by so much of the competition. They have a value, but it's generally as an artificially cheap source of mini's to existing fans.

I can't think of any current board game GW is selling that doesn't already have a better, cheaper equivalent in some form.

The fact that you can only get them in GW or FLGS's really doesn't help, when you can get stuff like Star Wars: Imperial Assault, or X-Wing in Waterstones, and most geek friendly stores.

But then if you roll back 15-20 years, a huge amount of people got into GW gaming through the board games. In the UK at least, you could buy Hero Quest, Space Hulk, Blood Bowl in high street and catalog stores; they were mixed right in there with the board games. I'd played with HQ for maybe 5 years before discovering Games Workshop proper; I got it as a birthday present. 20 years later I'm still a gamer, with an overgrown collection (and I still haven't got them painted).

A good boardgame to get younger kids interested into GW products was Space crusade, easy to built board pieces simple rules and lots of fun, all the recent good board games set in the GW world were made by FFG

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Yeah, I'm good to restart with AoS, but the others still have a sour taste from Warhammer Fantasy. I'm pretty salty on Ninth not even starting Mercs. And the splitters wanting KoW meant we didn't have cuonsensus. But yeah, I did a rename of things in Order for Dogs of War, and I'd have been fine with it.

The same for our. Some refuse to play AoS. They think about KoW but that's it. There is no consensus either.

morgoth wrote:

The one thing that could drive AoS sales is the percentage of new visitors vs recurring, which was the downfall of WHFB: everyone just had everything already, everyone was less and less people by the day and the second hand market was therefore damaging store sales hard.

I think that's more a price/rules/bloat thing than a gamers nature thing. When I started, back in the 90's, everyone had at least 2 armies for each system and was always adding stuff. It was rare for someone to only build a single army and stop. Then the rules started to age and the prices started going up, and the armies started getting much bigger, so people seemed to cut down. WHFB didn't really get much new so people stopped expanding.

Now, obviously it's easier to get someone to try something new by squatting everything and starting again, but they could have done all sorts of things in WHFB to get people interested again, like the End Times before people realised what was about to happen.

Bear in mind people aren't just buying AoS minis to play AoS.

Plenty are buying the minis to play 9th age and Kings of War.

Also look at how ridiculously successful Total War: Warhammer has been, that's also getting more people into the fantasy side of the hobby.

Herzlos wrote:

morgoth wrote:

The one thing that could drive AoS sales is the percentage of new visitors vs recurring, which was the downfall of WHFB: everyone just had everything already, everyone was less and less people by the day and the second hand market was therefore damaging store sales hard.

I think that's more a price/rules/bloat thing than a gamers nature thing. When I started, back in the 90's, everyone had at least 2 armies for each system and was always adding stuff. It was rare for someone to only build a single army and stop. Then the rules started to age and the prices started going up, and the armies started getting much bigger, so people seemed to cut down. WHFB didn't really get much new so people stopped expanding.

Now, obviously it's easier to get someone to try something new by squatting everything and starting again, but they could have done all sorts of things in WHFB to get people interested again, like the End Times before people realised what was about to happen.

This. I had 8 WFB armies at one point. When 8th edition dropped and the £22.50 army book arrived alongside bigger armies, I anticipated what was coming and how much the army books alone would cost to update, so I sold the choice pieces of each army and threw the rest away. Only kept the two I'd got a strong attachment to, which got repurposed into other games. The funds from that paid for all the historical armies I'd always wanted. BIG armies too.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
Oddly, I think having Kings of War to fall back on has made people a bit less bitter about GW - rules matter, and the Kings of War rules don't care where the minis come from.

Oddly, Kings of War is a block game and doesn't really need any minis at all.

If one goes to that line you don't really need minis for AOS either. Yet people keep buying minis both for AOS and KOW...

tneva82 wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
Oddly, I think having Kings of War to fall back on has made people a bit less bitter about GW - rules matter, and the Kings of War rules don't care where the minis come from.

Oddly, Kings of War is a block game and doesn't really need any minis at all.

If one goes to that line you don't really need minis for AOS either. Yet people keep buying minis both for AOS and KOW...

Very true. Just because its a block game, its requirement for minis is no different from any GW game.

The original wargame, Kriegsspiel, is played with wooden blocks to represent regiments. It's also played on maps rather than a 3D tabletop.

I would not be surprised if this was true, especially if GW refer to 30k separate from 40k.

I dont see AoS played much at all, apart from in Warhammer world, but I do know that the stockists that I frequent are selling boatloads of the new AoS stuff and have been since the new stuff was released.

There could well be plenty of people buying the minis but not playing the games.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
But I don't think anyone in the know has said AoS is doing 30% better than WHFB.

I believe GW had said that AoS was outperforming WFB last year, even before the GHB was released. But I don't recall any specific % stated.

Well the 2016 report I believe was before the GHB, so as I said in the 2nd paragraph of my post...

In their annual report they simply said that finished the year AoS at a higher rate than WHFB, it was a very vague statement that had no numbers attached and could have been calculated in several different ways.

Here is the exact statement...

"as we released more of the range in the second half of the year, we finished the year with sales of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years."

But they offer no method for calculation, noting that "higher rate" typically doesn't mean "overall sales for the year" but rather it means at that point in time you are selling things faster.

They literally could have just taken the last month of AoS sales and compared it to WHFB over the previous "several" years (whatever that means) and the statement would still be true.

Bottle wrote:It's still a fairly positive sentence because the comparison will include all of the End Times which had books sell out on release day and multiple models which made it to GW's top 10 kits of 2015.

You're right that it is still quite vague. Hopefully for the next FY report they will be able to say something more concrete.

And there is no way to tell how many of those sales were people panic purchasing to fill out those WFB armies they had on the back burner, or rounding off collections, or even starting another army specifically for use in another system or retrogaming. Had my finances been up to it, I'd have bought a ton of stuff for 6th Ed. WFB as that's what I'm playing now, and those numbers would have been a boon for AOS sales, as that is what it is listed under.