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Goose LeChance wrote:
Fantasy has never had the popularity of WH40k

in the US/America, Europe was a very different field were 40k only got the monumentum with being the better cheaper game later on (starting with the cheap 5th Edi 40k Box and before that if you wanted to play Events/Tournaments, Fantasy was the only option in many regions)

it really depends on what market GW is looking at the moment and were they want to expand

TOW, if using old WHFB rules, won't have much overlap with the playerbase in Europe, and casting a new Elve range in classic 28mm on 20mm Bases will sell no matter the price while just going to pack 25 or 30mm square bases to put the 32mm AoS models on them for TOW won't do it for a lot of people

of course, having things compatible so that players who start one game might also play the other and buy into it, is a thing, but you don't see that in 30k/40k here either and there are not many people play both

while it is no problem to get all the AoS factions into TOW, there are enough empty spots on the map for all those factions to "have been there since ever but was just not discovered", you won't attract many of the old players while at the same time splitting new players between TOW and AoS
For the same reason, having all the Necromunda models getting Kill Team rules was never done, although you can use the models in KT if you want

Yeah, at least in Spain fantasy was the bigger Game of the two for décades until the end times.

30k and 40K did originally share a rule set though and that, for some people, was part of 30k’s appeal. Even if you didn’t have a local 30k scene, you could collect a 30k army and play it in 40K games.

in terms of cross copatability Wierdly we still don't have the Vampire Coast in AOS - given that its such a good fit....so its difficult to understand what GW are thinking

 Mr Morden wrote:
in terms of cross copatability Wierdly we still don't have the Vampire Coast in AOS - given that its such a good fit....so its difficult to understand what GW are thinking

Perhaps they have to consider all the other stuff people want, arange it in a timeline and use resources to develope various ranges, and on their tea-breaks update and merge(purge?) all the "old" pre-2020 stuff they dont really care for anymore.
And the hour they announce Vampire Coast, we would find some new semi nostalgic theme we really want.

 Galas wrote:
Yeah, at least in Spain fantasy was the bigger Game of the two for décades until the end times.

Can confirm. WFB outsold 40k until the bitter end. Let's just say that the End Times and AoS were not very well received by the stores, on account of many, particularly FLGS, losing a significant part of their revenues due to it.

28mm High Elves ain't gonna happen.

The Lumineth release signalled the end of any High Elf return. Same for the Vampire Counts, all the models are huge and there's no way they're gonna release new Elves or VC in a slightly different scale, with similar themes and units.

 Albertorius wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Yeah, at least in Spain fantasy was the bigger Game of the two for décades until the end times.

Can confirm. WFB outsold 40k until the bitter end. Let's just say that the End Times and AoS were not very well received by the stores, on account of many, particularly FLGS, losing a significant part of their revenues due to it.

Considering we know paints outsold the entire WHFB range, we can safely say Europe is a tiny market compared to the US and UK then.

Beauty of Warhammer settings is that they can be interpreted and adopted in different ways. Miniatures, background and rules are just a starting point, what we decide to do with them is the endgame.

I don't care if my Skeleton warriors are called Deathrattlers or that my Elves have extra vowels in their names. It doesn't make one tiny bit of difference while they collect dust in the glass cabinet. Same with Kislev. If I think game designers have put too much emphasis on ice, ice, baby (or bears) that doesn't mean that I have to.

I grew up with Old World but I have started to enjoy Mortal Realms too. Realms of Magic open so many options for theming your army and if there are any bits in the background I don't like, I can simply ignore them.

I am genuinely excited to go back to Old World one day and I can't wait to see what GW and FW come up with. I just don't know what to expect. What I would love to see, what I think would be realistic and what we have seen so far have very little in common

Cronch wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Yeah, at least in Spain fantasy was the bigger Game of the two for décades until the end times.

Can confirm. WFB outsold 40k until the bitter end. Let's just say that the End Times and AoS were not very well received by the stores, on account of many, particularly FLGS, losing a significant part of their revenues due to it.

Considering we know paints outsold the entire WHFB range, we can safely say Europe is a tiny market compared to the US and UK then.

Not really, no.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/994065/games-workshop-sales-worldwide-region/

Comparable to the UK alone (although before the end of WFB it was bigger than the UK market). Back in the day the US market was on par with UK, now it is bigger than any of them.

By way of example, take a look at 2010's and 2011's results:

https://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/2011-12-Press-statement.pdf

As you can see there (page 3), Continental Europe's revenue was higher than either UK's or USA's by themselves.

Goose LeChance wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

Goose LeChance wrote:

Ohman wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
Meanwhile I'm just wondering if we'll be able to use redone Fantasy units like the Blood Knights or Direwolves.

The majority of the AOS range is more or less a perfect fit with the Old World.

Oof too true.

It's not like they were gonna sculpt a whole new High Elf range right? You might see Lumineth and some other AoS armies crossover but more likely this Old World will be temporary and the 3 factions will be put into AoS once they're done milking it.

Just why would you think that? A project they know people really, really want, that returns to the old setting again with them having revamped and expanded classic armies, that even sets things in an earlier unseen time period, all the while being said to be akin to the Horus Heresy series...and you think i'll be something the don't bother to put any actual effort in so will just re-use AoS armies and treat it like a temporary project? I don't get it at all.

They're making a whole new Kislev range. Why would they not do the same to other armies?

Because if it goes in the direction it appears to be there will be a lot of crossover with AoS, it's going be redundant. Fantasy has never had the popularity of WH40k so the pool of players to pull from is smaller too, now they split that smaller player base between two games that are nearly identical. What's the hook? Can square bases(or movement trays) alone attract enough of a player base long term? I expect the bare minimum of support for this game from GW. The final purpose of a new Kislev army would be to put them in AoS when they are done with this side project.

Horus Heresy has the advantage of catering to the most popular army in the most popular game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It would be incredibly ironic however, if the Old World suddenly entered a new boom period, as the AoS and 40K players flocked to it, so they can play on square bases. The very thing they hated.

The appeal is the return to the setting itself and what that will bring, that's what they've been hyping the whole project itself on up until now - they haven't been using the miniatures or game itself to get interest, but so far just the idea of seeing that classic WHF once more. The same could be said about the Horus Heresy - sure, it's Space Marines and they're the most popular army, but there's still redundancy and a focus on a specific subset of the playerbase, and it's been mostly handled by Forgeworld. If that's done well-enough to last for years and is still getting miniatures, with the novel series also going on for well over a decade, then I don't see why a return to the WHF setting and doing so in a way that explores new aspects of it would just be some temporary effortless side-project that they're really doing to merge those new units with AoS later.

People want more of WHF as shown by the popularity TW:W and similar games, and they evidently know that. Doing what you suggest would not be a good look at all, especially considering what happened with the setting in the first place.

Cronch wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Yeah, at least in Spain fantasy was the bigger Game of the two for décades until the end times.

Can confirm. WFB outsold 40k until the bitter end. Let's just say that the End Times and AoS were not very well received by the stores, on account of many, particularly FLGS, losing a significant part of their revenues due to it.

Considering we know paints outsold the entire WHFB range, we can safely say Europe is a tiny market compared to the US and UK then.

A relatively cheap product that pretty much everyone needs, appealing to those into in WHF and 40K and their other products rather than a specific game, as well as potentially those outside the hobby...I don't see why it's meant to be surprising that paints sold better?

 Albertorius wrote:

Cronch wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Yeah, at least in Spain fantasy was the bigger Game of the two for décades until the end times.

Can confirm. WFB outsold 40k until the bitter end. Let's just say that the End Times and AoS were not very well received by the stores, on account of many, particularly FLGS, losing a significant part of their revenues due to it.

Considering we know paints outsold the entire WHFB range, we can safely say Europe is a tiny market compared to the US and UK then.

Not really, no.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/994065/games-workshop-sales-worldwide-region/

Comparable to the UK alone (although before the end of WFB it was bigger than the UK market). Back in the day the US market was on par with UK, now it is bigger than any of them.

By way of example, take a look at 2010's and 2011's results:

https://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/2011-12-Press-statement.pdf

As you can see there (page 3), Continental Europe's revenue was higher than either UK's or USA's by themselves.

So with Fantasy being bigger than 40k in 2nd largest market it still was unprofitable to keep going with the line? Something doesn't add up here and I doubt it's GW's penny-counting ability.

Cronch wrote:
So with Fantasy being bigger than 40k in 2nd largest market it still was unprofitable to keep going with the line? Something doesn't add up here and I doubt it's GW's penny-counting ability.

"Bigger" and "profitable enough for their wants/needs" are not the same thing. 40k was still bigger in the other two big markets, after all, and "bigger" doesn't mean "40k didn't sell at all" either.

WFB was underperforming according to what GW wanted out of it. That doesn't mean it wasn't profitable. Same as when they closed Black Industries wholesale the day after Dark Heresy got released and sold the whole of the first print before even going to stores, only to license it out. Simply put, they thought that the same amount of effort/investments would earn them more benefits using them otherwise.

I don't think it was unprofitable. I just think it wasn't AS profitable as other things, so they torpedoed it to focus on those other things.

Anyway, AoS is here to stay, and while the background it building up the miniature line still has some blanks. Like normal humans, who are in the Cities of Sigmar. Normal Aelves, who are still a thing. Wanderers or something? Normal Duardin, who are Dispossessed?

Anyway, such gaps in a model range would be very easily filled by... stuff from ToW. Since that's what they fundamentally are.

I think we're much more likely to get model use going the other way - from ToW into AoS - than from AoS back to ToW. Similar to how old plastic armour mark Marines can fold very neatly into a 40k army.

Yeah many people forgets that corporations dont work as people.


Stuff IS not Closed because they are taking a loss. But if you can spend 100 million and return 150 or 100 and return 300 the choice IS clear.
Other examples are Blizzard with Heroes of the Storm. It wasnt that It was making them no money but After Hearthstone they expected the dame explosión on the moba genre anddidnt get It.
But in their honor Ill say they tried a second push with 2.0 before putting It in Life support

Cronch wrote:

So with Fantasy being bigger than 40k in 2nd largest market it still was unprofitable to keep going with the line? Something doesn't add up here and I doubt it's GW's penny-counting ability.

Why do you doubt GW's penny counting ability? Corporations often set ridiculously ludicrous sales targets for their products.

For instance, EA wanted Dead Space 3 to sell 5 million copies or else they'd kill the franchise. Dead Space 2 shipped 2 million units, Dead Space shipped ~1 million. In what world was 5 million a realistic target for a third person survival horror game in 2013, especially when the previous two games in the series didn't approach anywhere near those sales figures? For reference, the Resident Evil 2 remake managed 5.8 million sales over its first year and that had much better reception amongst fans and critics than Dead Space 3 did, and came out in 2019 when the market for video games was much larger than it was in 2013.

"ego Driven chairman wants something removed and push for insane and unrealistic quotas to justify its removal" is more popular people give credit for and It applies to all kind of products

The only way I think you could say WHFB was a loss is that *maybe* the floor space it occupied in stores did not match its sales. Since GW has its own stores, if you say half the cost for those stores is being consumed by the space WHFB is taking up in the store, then it was maybe making a loss.

The WHFB range was huge, and keeping the whole game stocked must have been expensive. I think the GW strategy of releasing new stuff like mad men is only sustainable for a certain game for a certain amount of time as the range just gets too big to manage.

But even comparing WHFB to 40k, a huuuuuge chunk of 40k is just Space Marine sales, if you did WHFB vs 40k minus Space Marines maybe WHFB was on par, but it had no single dominating faction that damned near everyone collected. It was actually one of the things I heard people say positive about WHFB, their range of opponents was more varied than the Space Marine vs Space Marine battles that were so common in 40k.

It's also a positive thing about AoS

I think even wthin GW they realise that marine dominance is a double edged sword. It's great in sales, but at the same time can have issues in terms of resource allocation within the company. Plus you can't just chase the numbers, if you do there's a risk that you release so much marine stuff that he other lines suffer - increasing your dependence on a single product line and customer base.

Plus at some point there's a tip where the marine customers stop buying; when they feel like their armies are bloated and when the local clubs have nothing but other marine players and grumpy ignored xenos players and the other games are dead.



I feel like this was a bit of what was happening under Kirby. That they were following the money but not balancing it against consumer feedback. You can see how they started to try and make Stormcast into Marines in all but name; you can see the desire to double the marine line by releasing primaris as a separate army instead of what they'd normally do and simply replace the sculpts with updated models (as they've done many times before).


I think GW now has balanced itself a bit; they've taken on board a lot more consumer feedback and impressions and I think are keen to focus on diversification of their portfolio. To take on projects that might not give as much return on investment as "more marines" but which do return on investment in a healthy manner and which importantly, leave them more robust and diverse for the future.

 Graphite wrote:
I don't think it was unprofitable. I just think it wasn't AS profitable as other things, so they torpedoed it to focus on those other things.

Anyway, AoS is here to stay, and while the background it building up the miniature line still has some blanks. Like normal humans, who are in the Cities of Sigmar. Normal Aelves, who are still a thing. Wanderers or something? Normal Duardin, who are Dispossessed?

Anyway, such gaps in a model range would be very easily filled by... stuff from ToW. Since that's what they fundamentally are.

I think we're much more likely to get model use going the other way - from ToW into AoS - than from AoS back to ToW. Similar to how old plastic armour mark Marines can fold very neatly into a 40k army.

I sincerely hope this won't be the case. I'm no big aos fan, but i think it would cheapen the setting if they use armies that were developed for tow in it (and vice versa).

One of the big appeals of WHFB for me, too. And GW has done a remarkable job with having SCE as poster boys while also not having them take over the setting. Funny thing is I like marines, but there are just so many of them and it dims the appeal because I have enough desire to just see something different. WHFB never had that issue.

I do wonder if there were any sort of stats available estimating army popularity for WHFB. Obviously Beastmen were on top, but who was second?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

I do wonder if there were any sort of stats available estimating army popularity for WHFB. Obviously Beastmen were on top, but who was second?

Bretonnia, with the Tomb Kings closely following in third place. Fourth place was Dogs of War.

 Fayric wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
in terms of cross copatability Wierdly we still don't have the Vampire Coast in AOS - given that its such a good fit....so its difficult to understand what GW are thinking

Perhaps they have to consider all the other stuff people want, arange it in a timeline and use resources to develope various ranges, and on their tea-breaks update and merge(purge?) all the "old" pre-2020 stuff they dont really care for anymore.
And the hour they announce Vampire Coast, we would find some new semi nostalgic theme we really want.

Not sure - we know they are working closely with Total War on the new game and Vampire Coast was a huge additional to the lore of the world that would also fit beautifully in to the AOS world.

But we have got slightly differrent Orcs instead

I've heard a few times that high elves was the most popular army. I would guess empire, orcs, chaos warriors and skaven would also rank near the top, but that's only based on my personal experience

I doubt Bretonnians or Khemri were that populary as some People suggest. Look who few Support they got in the last Years of WHFB, inspecial the Bretonnians. Also there were few Armies of them Online.


Chaos, Empire, Orks & Goblins, High Elves - those were realy poular Faction.

RazorEdge wrote:
I doubt Bretonnians or Khemri were that populary as some People suggest.

It was a grognard joke.

 Overread wrote:
I feel like this was a bit of what was happening under Kirby. That they were following the money but not balancing it against consumer feedback. You can see how they started to try and make Stormcast into Marines in all but name; you can see the desire to double the marine line by releasing primaris as a separate army instead of what they'd normally do and simply replace the sculpts with updated models (as they've done many times before).

Sigh. You let idiotic 'squatted' FUD get to you. If Primaris were supposed to be replacement, we wouldn't see Aggressors. We would see Primaris Terminators. We would see Intercessors with special guns. Reivers with jump packs and actual melee weapons. Primaris veterans. The two lines are so different FUDders might as well postulate ork nobs or custodes were ""replacement"".

I think GW now has balanced itself a bit; they've taken on board a lot more consumer feedback and impressions

By deleting beloved SC boxes and army vs army ones?

I am not sure where GW would find such customers but now that I had seen idiots calling even worst Combat Patrol junk a bArGaIn and GeNiUs IdEa I guess they would find some if they tried hard enough

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
For instance, EA wanted Dead Space 3 to sell 5 million copies or else they'd kill the franchise. Dead Space 2 shipped 2 million units, Dead Space shipped ~1 million. In what world was 5 million a realistic target for a third person survival horror game in 2013, especially when the previous two games in the series didn't approach anywhere near those sales figures? For reference, the Resident Evil 2 remake managed 5.8 million sales over its first year and that had much better reception amongst fans and critics than Dead Space 3 did, and came out in 2019 when the market for video games was much larger than it was in 2013.

You didn't get the memo? Capitalism = infinite exponential growth. No, it doesn't matter resources or customer base are finite. You need to double sales year by year, or by definition you are a failure (and in some countries, legally, too, because not maximizing returns for your shareholders by any means possible not matter how shortsighted can be a crime). If sanity or common sense ever figured into it we wouldn't see runaway environmental destruction, worker exploitation and oppression increasing year by year to squeeze profit money if not from sales, then from your staff, accelerating global warming, growing wealth imbalance, and other such slight problems cropping up constantly

Be in mind armies like Brets were kind of screwed of over rules and content, with Tomb Kings being really okay.

Furthermore it isn't about sales to an extent, it's about studio interest.

Cronch wrote:
So with Fantasy being bigger than 40k in 2nd largest market it still was unprofitable to keep going with the line? Something doesn't add up here and I doubt it's GW's penny-counting ability.

we don't know why GW killed it in the first place, being unprofitable as something we heard, but we never got any proof of it or any real answer what exactly was unprofitable

looking at Lord of the Rings, if Warhammer Fantasy made a loss, with much more players around and the more expensive models, how could they afford to keep that game were they had to pay licence fees for the IP

yet Warhammer was facing the problems that it was more niche, as Skirmish game that can be started small, is very different than a game were models need to be cheap to achieve the same
for an AoS unit of 5 models than can be maximum 15 models, selling a box of 5 for 40€ is doable, but having a unit with minimum size of 20 and selling boxes with models of 10 for 40€ is a problem

as some said before, what AoS got could have been done with Warhammer as well, it was just that GW did not wanted to do it, for whatever reason, and thought they are better off with something new

I wonder if AoS Start Collecting sets are next on the chopping block.