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Fluff wise

meaning literally destroying the whole universe and starting over?

I'd say I doubt it since 40K is largely successful. But then, it is GW.

Fantasy wasn't hemorrhaging money, but the profit margins weren't what the suits wanted. So the axed it to make something that they thought would sell more.

40K doesn't really need that treatment.

Another thing is that the 40k races are a lot more trademark-able than the fantasy races, which were more or less Tolkien's races with the serials filed off and some minor changes, which was one of the bigger changes that AoS did. In addition the Horus Heresy line is doing very well for GW, nuking 40k and resetting it AoS style would probably alienate that portion of the fanbase.

Besides which, the Fantasy universe wasn't totally destroyed.

Multiple characters, races, etc. carried over into the Mortal Realms (along with most of the models), and the background explicitly takes place in the same universe.

Yeah I really hope not. I'd find that fantastically alienating.

Besides, 40k is just the background for you to make your own stories. That's one of the beauties of it.

Change the background and suddenly you invalidate all the stories your fanbase has produced. D*ck move.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Besides which, the Fantasy universe wasn't totally destroyed.

Multiple characters, races, etc. carried over into the Mortal Realms (along with most of the models), and the background explicitly takes place in the same universe.

It's not the same thing though. Archaon being "back" seems pretty lame/hollow. "All these people died on the world that was! Oh wait, except they're alive again and stuff..."

I'm just a grumpy man...I want my old fluff.

Doubtful that they will destroy the 40k universe, they may gice it a major shake up and move forward a bit, i say this because the 'old world' was full all the areas were known all the (playable) factions were there, chaos was always just on the edge of winning, there was nothing left to do. Where as in 40k there are millions of planets, dozens of races known and unknown and more importantly space and reasons for each faction to fight each other. Moving forwards may kill off/return known characters and introduce new ones. Hell even the imperium may fracture but there still humans who would keep up parts off it. It may even lead to a new great crusade.
so i seriously doubt they would scrap the galaxy and start again.as to rules who knows. Thats the future and most eyes are not strong enough to see that far.

I suppose as a fan of many xenos armies i'm concerned about GW's likelihood of screwing everything over apart from the latest £30 boxed-set of their latest power-armoured Mary-Sues...

My bet is they advance the story line forward regarding the Emperor. With the Daemon Primarchs on the way (excellent way to sell Forge World-like models) the Imperium will need counter-parts as far as the model range goes. The Emperor revived/reincarnated in another man (like Vulken in Fantasy coming back as the reincarnation of Sigmar) or even the return of some of the loyalist primarchs.

They killed Fantasy so they'd have an excuse to add Space Marines to it.

40k already has them, obviously, so no need for that.

I do think (and hope) that they will shake things up quite a bit. The setting currently has become too static and definitely is in desperate need of a change-up. But given the whole 5-minutes to midnight thing, they wont be able to move forward without making great changes. We are almost certainly getting an End Times for 40k as well, even though I think the end is not going to be as drastic as that of Fantasy. Current factions are likely to remain in place.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
But given the whole 5-minutes to midnight thing, they wont be able to move forward without making great changes.

We already have background set post 999.M41 - up to several centuries so - and there doesn't appear to have been any massive change in the overall setting.