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The following was posted by BenV94 at the following link. It is information from the recent GW AGM.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/704rud/games_workshop_agm_according_to_person_who/?st=j7vyoozo&sh=d9f730a3

Performance: sales are up across the board - in every sector, every range, and every month
all the charts are pointing in the right direction
surplus cash will be returned to shareholders as dividends

Strategy: they've recruited so that they now have separate design teams for 40k, AoS and specialist games
this is to allow them to release something for each of those lines on a regular basis, monthly at least if not faster they want there to constantly be something new for players to buy rather than them waiting for months on end keeping a constant monthly cashflow and sales improvement is important to them, it's not about a few big releases a year
efforts are being made to reduce the price point and make joining the game easier, thus the range of price points for 8th (from £5 magazine with single figure up to £95 boxed set)
target areas for new stores are North America and Asia
trade (FLGSs) is more profitable than retail (GW stores), but the latter is more important for recruitment. They intend to do more to support both
they want to bring more women into the hobby, but don't want to alienate the existing playerbase while doing so, it is something they're aware of (but no details as yet)
prices aren't dropping any time soon
production is pushing up against maximum capacity, they're going to be investing a fair bit in new injection moulding machinery

Marketing: they hired a marketing team about 18 months ago
they have no intention of mass-marketing
the digital strategy is an attempt to get control of the narrative, they identified the fact that all the web traffic was going to blogs and forums where new (and old) players would meet a lot of negativity and grumbling
it's working, their web traffic is high and growing (2 million unique users on warhammer community, for example), the traffic on 3rd party sites is falling
they are measuring clickthroughs and doing more market research about customers, no granular info yet, but a big change in direction from the Kirby years
they intend to carry on being much more proactive in supporting tournament organisers and the like

40k: none of them are allowed to say, but from what I wheedled out it sounds like 8th is doing very well indeed, they consider it a success
the gathering storm stuf and SW:A was a strategy to prevent the normal big sales drop-off they get before a new edition (like they did with WHFB's end times)

AoS: they won't provide figures for individual ranges, but sales are up
overlords did well

Specialist games: the reason they abandoned these in the past was because they had a small design team which was hard to expand, so they put the focus into the most profitable lines (40k and fantasy), that's not an issue any more
the success of BB caught them by surprise, which is why there was a fairly big gap between gobbos and elves. The latter are the first team designed entirely since release, they intend to continue releasing about one team per quarter
necromunda will have better support from the get go, they want to get more of the gangs out at release or shortly thereafter and have future plastics more planned out
aiming to make them very customisable, extra weapons and upgrades will probably be available in resin cawdor got a mention, might mean that they're coming at release or might just mean that that's one they're working on now
HH has been derailed a bit by Bligh's death and producing a new rulebook. Now that's in the printers they're getting back on with it, there are plenty of models in the pipeline
there are no more HH plastics planned at the moment. Never say never, but production time is at least a year, so don't expect anything anytime soon.

Thanks for posting, very interesting!

Wait, seriously? Blood Bowl's success was a surprise?

Interesting stuff.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Wait, seriously? Blood Bowl's success was a surprise?

No market research and proud of it under Kirby, remember? All they had to go on was that they stopped selling it, which presumably would have been a good idea or else they wouldn't have done it.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Wait, seriously? Blood Bowl's success was a surprise?

There's success and success. My guess is they expected it to sell well, but not to THAT level of well. Hell, Bloodbowl accounts for like half of the matches that usually happen in my Local Game Stores.

animal310 wrote:

the digital strategy is an attempt to get control of the narrative, they identified the fact that all the web traffic was going to blogs and forums where new (and old) players would meet a lot of negativity and grumbling
it's working, their web traffic is high and growing (2 million unique users on warhammer community, for example), the traffic on 3rd party sites is falling

I wonder if Lego will comment on that one in regards to dakka specifically. He used to do state of the forum style addresses every once in a while with numbers and charts but I haven't seen one in a while (but admittedly I haven't specifcially looked for them either). In any case, the conversation was largely negative with grumbling because the state of the game was complete gak for the prior two editions (even if it took a while for some folks to realize it and finally admit it).

Strategy: they've recruited so that they now have separate design teams for 40k, AoS and specialist games
this is to allow them to release something for each of those lines on a regular basis, monthly at least if not faster they want there to constantly be something new for players to buy rather than them waiting for months on end keeping a constant monthly cashflow and sales improvement is important to them, it's not about a few big releases a year

Interesting. Been noticing that myself of late with dual releases for AoS/40k coming out fairly regularly.
Whereas before it was a week on week off or even month on month off.

Does 3rd party sites include FB?

Interesting g, but is the guy who posted this credible?

they want to bring more women into the hobby, but don't want to alienate the existing playerbase while doing so, it is something they're aware of (but no details as yet)

IOW: "No female space marines" But ey, if that means more female models for others ranges like Eldars, Imperial Guard, Stormcast, or... plastic Sisters of Battle, I'll be 3000 times more happy than with femmarines.

Re: more women: I think we might actually be seeing some of that already... specifically, the female stormcast models. I wouldnt be surprised if we get some new characters in the next couple of months/years, with a decent female representation. Possibly something like the Veridyan SoB release, with the rules included in the box?

The background for AoS is well ahead of the model line.

I'd really like to see a set with various female sculpts to add to Stormcasts.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The background for AoS is well ahead of the model line.

I'd really like to see a set with various female sculpts to add to Stormcasts.

Plus new freeguild and some love for death (though I know the later is already scheduled)

 Tyr13 wrote:
Re: more women: I think we might actually be seeing some of that already... specifically, the female stormcast models. I wouldnt be surprised if we get some new characters in the next couple of months/years, with a decent female representation. Possibly something like the Veridyan SoB release, with the rules included in the box?

They have female Stormcast models already?

I wonder why they haven't expanded the Sisters of Silence yet if they wanted more female representation. Eldar have always had a good mix, but not when it came to HQ.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Tyr13 wrote:
Re: more women: I think we might actually be seeing some of that already... specifically, the female stormcast models. I wouldnt be surprised if we get some new characters in the next couple of months/years, with a decent female representation. Possibly something like the Veridyan SoB release, with the rules included in the box?

They have female Stormcast models already?

I wonder why they haven't expanded the Sisters of Silence yet if they wanted more female representation. Eldar have always had a good mix, but not when it came to HQ.

just a liberator from shadespire and Neave for now.

Lord Kragan wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Tyr13 wrote:
Re: more women: I think we might actually be seeing some of that already... specifically, the female stormcast models. I wouldnt be surprised if we get some new characters in the next couple of months/years, with a decent female representation. Possibly something like the Veridyan SoB release, with the rules included in the box?

They have female Stormcast models already?

I wonder why they haven't expanded the Sisters of Silence yet if they wanted more female representation. Eldar have always had a good mix, but not when it came to HQ.

just a liberator from shadespire and Neave for now.

Both of those are the same model...

 Ghaz wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Tyr13 wrote:
Re: more women: I think we might actually be seeing some of that already... specifically, the female stormcast models. I wouldnt be surprised if we get some new characters in the next couple of months/years, with a decent female representation. Possibly something like the Veridyan SoB release, with the rules included in the box?

They have female Stormcast models already?

I wonder why they haven't expanded the Sisters of Silence yet if they wanted more female representation. Eldar have always had a good mix, but not when it came to HQ.

just a liberator from shadespire and Neave for now.

Both of those are the same model...

Uh.... no? The liberator's name is angharad. Neave Blacktalon is a knight zephyros, a hero character focused in meelee.

No they're not?

Yeah, everything on those two models is different down to the breast-plate.

I vote for more female models too, btw. Likely Aelves and Slaanesh will solve that.

Plus new freeguild and some love for death (though I know the later is already scheduled)

I'd love it if they killed two birds with one stone and release a dual pack of Death realm humans. Lots of Gothic armor with Nagash motifs that can use either human or undead limbs to represent a religious civil war between Nagash followers and Sigmarites.

AoS: they won't provide figures for individual ranges, but sales are up 
overlords did well 

No surprise there.

 warboss wrote:

animal310 wrote:

the digital strategy is an attempt to get control of the narrative, they identified the fact that all the web traffic was going to blogs and forums where new (and old) players would meet a lot of negativity and grumbling
it's working, their web traffic is high and growing (2 million unique users on warhammer community, for example), the traffic on 3rd party sites is falling

I wonder if Lego will comment on that one in regards to dakka specifically. He used to do state of the forum style addresses every once in a while with numbers and charts but I haven't seen one in a while (but admittedly I haven't specifcially looked for them either). In any case, the conversation was largely negative with grumbling because the state of the game was complete gak for the prior two editions (even if it took a while for some folks to realize it and finally admit it).

There's a couple of things at work there.

The first is, as you say, that we went for an awful long time with games that were steadily descending into chaos and the company that made that steadfastly refusing to communicate with their customer base, while their CEO put out increasingly insane statements to shareholders. So, yeah, no surprise that the discussion got somewhat toxic in those places where it was happening.

The second is a slow shift away from traditional forums and towards social media platforms that has been going on for a while now. An increasing number of people just go to Facebook for all of their socialising and hobby catch-up. So Warhammer Community doing well isn't in itself responsible for forums dropping off... it's a trend that was already underway by the time they started up. But it certainly did work in their favour when they chose to focus on Facebook rather than going the traditional forum route again.

Good news in there and finally they've actually thought "Maybe we should actually ask the customer about their hobby and see if we can cater to it". Shocking that's it paying off

animal310 wrote:
HH has been derailed a bit by Bligh's death and producing a new rulebook. Now that's in the printers they're getting back on with it, there are plenty of models in the pipeline
there are no more HH plastics planned at the moment. Never say never, but production time is at least a year, so don't expect anything anytime soon.

Not really surprising. It was inferred during the open day that Alan was pretty much the primary driver and with his sad loss chaos ensued. That they are doing multiple hirings to take over what one man did is telling

I'm happy to see GW doing well (and that's coming from someone who only really plays BB and everyone once and a while buys a 40k kit for various skirmish games). I don't think I would have said that five years ago, but under the new CEO they have really transformed as a company. They are listening to customer feedback, keep on releasing excellent models, and have even started bundling products at a savings to the customer. I'm stoked to see Blood Bowl will get continued support, and even more excited that Necromunda will have more support than Blood Bowl did at the release.

Here's to hoping they continue to succeed and keep giving their customer base what they want.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Tyr13 wrote:
Re: more women: I think we might actually be seeing some of that already... specifically, the female stormcast models. I wouldnt be surprised if we get some new characters in the next couple of months/years, with a decent female representation. Possibly something like the Veridyan SoB release, with the rules included in the box?

They have female Stormcast models already?

I wonder why they haven't expanded the Sisters of Silence yet if they wanted more female representation. Eldar have always had a good mix, but not when it came to HQ.

It's entirely possible that SoS do not represent what women would want.

I don't think anyone should assume women would want a faction just because they are female models.

SoB also might not appeal as they seem got work more toward a masculine idea of female warriors; basque and boob armour, some units virtually naked, high heels etc.

I think it's a difficult area for a Male dominated design department to answer but its good they they are looking to develop this side of things, more female gamers can only be a good thing and so would a greater choice of GW models.

 notprop wrote:

I don't think anyone should assume women would want a faction just because they are female models.

Nor that women will automatically want female models anyway.

 insaniak wrote:

 notprop wrote:

I don't think anyone should assume women would want a faction just because they are female models.

Nor that women will automatically want female models anyway.

Right? My local area has several female gamers, and they all tend to play Tyranids, Chaos, Skaven and Sylvaneth. Only one is interested in Sisters of Battle. It was something I noticed early on, and has always amused me.

Neronoxx wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 notprop wrote:

I don't think anyone should assume women would want a faction just because they are female models.

Nor that women will automatically want female models anyway.

Right? My local area has several female gamers, and they all tend to play Tyranids, Chaos, Skaven and Sylvaneth. Only one is interested in Sisters of Battle. It was something I noticed early on, and has always amused me.

6 of the 10 female gamers I know have their primary army as Tyranids. I don't know why but it has been the most popular army in female gamers that I have seen
But it is not about wanting female armies because you are female. Is about having the freedom to chose what you want. Is one thing to not pick female units because you don't want, and other, because you can't..

Hmm, maybe try to move away from the sexist fantasy cliches of [MOD EDIT - PG13 please! - Alpharius] and nipple armour?

Nipple armor? The only army in the game with Nipple Armor I remember is the Blood Angels.

I don't think female models naturally equate to female hobbyists, and I hope that GW doesn't limit their strategy to that.
Certainly the target market would be different. You're going to be aiming for a slightly older introduction age. Having a female face to the company will help too. I've seen this coming through a little in their publications and on the Warhammer community site, but not so much in the stores. Other than that, they might need to be proactive in their recruitment. Other than the occasional WAG, or the even more rare sister, when are women going to be compelled to engage in the game?

they want to bring more women into the hobby, but don't want to alienate the existing playerbase while doing so, it is something they're aware of (but no details as yet)

My Little Pony cooperative mini game confirmed!