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 Albertorius wrote:
The range might be "huge" at this point, but the actual tooling resources devoted to it, not so much: In the... year and a half?... that it's been released we've got sprues for eight gangs, a character pack and a brute, if I'm not mistaken, plus some assorted resin stuff.

Which is quite impressive considering it isn't a "main line" game, and outstrips the number of releases you might reasonably expect from another company for a game that is one of their core products.

Context is important here: I'm wondering what you're comparing it to in order to come to the conclusion that the number of releases has been underwhelming.

 Albertorius wrote:
In terms of sprues, though, each gang has been saddled with having a single sprue per gang, which... well, certainly imposes limits on what you can get away with, although I'm sure it's cheaper, particularly when compared with the double or triple-sprue regular 40k boxes.

Oh, yes, how awful that the gangs of Necromunda be "saddled" with a plastic release at all, eh?

Sarcasm aside, you are actually using a comparator here. And it's completely bonkers because you're comparing apples to oranges. Necromunda is not 40k. A box of Intercessors is going to potentially outsell the entire Necromunda range. That isn't to say Necromunda is therefore unpopular, but comparing the three-sprue Intercessor box to the Necromunda gangs is a false equivalence as a result.

For the fact that the Necromunda boxes have only a single repeated sprue to play with, the designers have managed to pack a great deal of character and options into them. Again, though, some of this is subjective. I get that. But the very fact that Necromunda has plastic boxed sets at all is still somewhat mindblowing to a player like me who genuinely did, painstakingly, convert Van Saars and Orlocks to hold more exotic weaponry than their original metal models back in the 1990s.

 Albertorius wrote:
I would say that, in terms of actual resources devoted to it, I feel like they've spent as many for the whole line as maybe for a single 40k/AoS army? Less, I expect, if you don't count the scenery sprues (as those can and will be certainly at least as useful for their other games).

Which is to be expected. This cannot be a complaint. It's a B-line skirmish game. I love it. Lots of people love it. But our individual love for the game, for the game type, for the background, etc, isn't enough to simply make it as popular, and therefore as profitable, as Warhammer 40,000. It is what it is. Again, that we have plastics at all is pretty amazing.

 Albertorius wrote:
It is certainly better than nothing at all, of course. I'm not sure anyone has said otherwise, no matter how much people try to misrepresent statements to ridicule the "other side".

But it hasn't stopped you comparing apples to oranges in this very post.

 Albertorius wrote:
By way of an actual example, let me take a look at the new SoB release, which by the way is still ongoing and people is pretty peeved off that they still don't have all they need to properly field them: They first got a limited run of monopose minis, which even though it's not really available anymore they had to make, and IIRC that was... three big sprues? I'm not sure. Then you have: Exorcist (two vehicle sprues), Junith Eruita (three character sprues), Hospitaller (two character sprues), Arco-Flagellants (one infantry sprue), Penitent Engines (three infantry sprues), Battle Sisters Squad (three infantry sprues), Retributor Squad (two infantry sprues) and The Triumph of Saint Katherine (three infantry sprues), so that's 2 big sprues, 12 regular sprues and 5 small sprues, for a single army that's not even finished releasing their first wave of stuff (IIRC there's still celestians, characters and Rhinos/Immolators to go). I am, btw, very happy that we have plastic sisters now and collecting them, even though as per current GW policy, their minis are more monopose/multipart than actual multipose minis, which is also the case with Necromunda and everything else, of course.

Necromunda, OTOH, if we count everything released or in preorder so far, has sprues for eight gangs (the six houses, not arbitrers and charnel guys), most with a single sprue but two of those with two, one Kal Jericho and the Ambot, so that's a total of 11 regular sprues and one small sprue, released over the best part of two years, with, apparently, another four sprues slated for 2020 (Ogryns and a "stimmer and forgeborn" equivalent sprue for Escher, Orlock and Van Saar).

Apples. Oranges. Apples. Oranges.

"I'm going to compare a much more profitable core game with a less profitable specialist game in order to demonstrate a false equivalence."

 Albertorius wrote:
Personally I'm happier with what we got (meaning the regular gang sprues) than with these new ones, as they feel more limited and show an unfortunate lack of cross compatibility with the old ones, which I feel is disappointing.

Subjective and dependent on your modelling ability. The new models are simply a diversification of the standard Goliath gang. You either think this is a good thing or a bad thing. Personally, I like things that differentiate the factions further, and add visual character in line with the background, whatever that may be (and that's something that is determined by GW: I'm never against a retcon if it means I get shiny new models that meet the criteria I've laid out here).

 Albertorius wrote:
I will be happy with anything they release...

... okay, cool.

 Albertorius wrote:
... because it means it's new stuff to have, use and remix...

Then we're in agreement.

 Albertorius wrote:
... but me being happy with it doesn't mean I can't also state that Newcromunda is a line with limited resources allocated and that a fair amount of the time those resources are not being used as well as they could/should.

Except that's an odd argument because you're mixing the economics up with other things that, again, are entirely subjective. I don't understand why these two subjects have been mixed up. It's up to GW's specialist games department where they direct their limited resources, and that determines the shape of Necromunda. And what they decided to do is release a plastic boxed gang for each of the core gangs from the original game in a way that was economically feasible at the time. Context is, again, king here; Necromunda would not exist at all were it not for the fact that the designers and GW bosses came up with a way of delivering the game to us in a way that works for them.

What we "got" over the last year and a half is, quite likely, the absolute limit of what we could have reasonably expected in the first place. These margins are thiiiiiin, dude. Thiiiiiiiiiiin. Have I emphasised how thin these margins are? In the cold light of Winter 2020, it's starting to look like the game has done well enough to justify further expansion and diversification of the currently released line. That's great news, and apparently has led directly into the production of additional sprues of plastics for each of the core gangs, AS WELL AS an entirely new gang in the shape of the Ogryn servitors.

beast_gts wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:

 ekwatts wrote:
The new Necromunda boxes are not disappointing.

They have options, they're plastic/easily converted, they're decent value for money (when compared to similar companies' skirmish games, for example), they're stylish, theyre readily available.

These things are all subjective. But I just feel like rejecting the majority of these aspects means that you don't... really... like Necromunda very much?

Yeah, when I see people saying stuff like "old Necromunda models had more options" I can't help but immediately slip into accusatory/dismissive mode. Those are LIES. It makes it sound like those people never played old Necromunda, don't play new Necromunda, and are just bad sport trolls looking to transpose their (sometimes legitimate) problems with other elements of the GW brand onto this system, at any cost (including sheer dishonesty).

Yeah, so I'm confused now. I haven't seen anyone saying such thing? OTOH, it is true that the older metals had more poses than the current plastics, and there were some pretty decent weapon sprues (metal, of course) very readily available...

It's true that the second generation / Fanatic gangs had more options than the original single-piece models, being (IIRC) mail-order only massively reduced their visibility (and some people still don't know they actually existed!) -

Spoiler:

I painted those Van Saars!

 ekwatts wrote:
Which is quite impressive considering it isn't a "main line" game, and outstrips the number of releases you might reasonably expect from another company for a game that is one of their core products.

Context is important here: I'm wondering what you're comparing it to in order to come to the conclusion that the number of releases has been underwhelming.

Er, no, it's not. What it is is "we're going to use as many resources in a two-year plan as we would in a single army release for one of our two main games". No more, no less than that.

 Albertorius wrote:
In terms of sprues, though, each gang has been saddled with having a single sprue per gang, which... well, certainly imposes limits on what you can get away with, although I'm sure it's cheaper, particularly when compared with the double or triple-sprue regular 40k boxes.

Oh, yes, how awful that the gangs of Necromunda be "saddled" with a plastic release at all, eh?

Oh, yes, that's totally not what I said, though.

What I said is that using a single sprue for each gang, instead of the more frequently used two or even three sprues per box, imposes limits on what you can include. And would you disagree in that those are limiting and it would be less limiting were they two for the same ten guys? And yes, you're "saddled" with them because now that is what you will have. And apparently, new sprues going forward won't be compatible, if the new Goliath sprue is anything to go by.

Sarcasm aside, you are actually using a comparator here. And it's completely bonkers because you're comparing apples to oranges. Necromunda is not 40k. A box of Intercessors is going to potentially outsell the entire Necromunda range. That isn't to say Necromunda is therefore unpopular, but comparing the three-sprue Intercessor box to the Necromunda gangs is a false equivalence as a result.

 Albertorius wrote:

Oh, yes, that's totally not what I said, though.

What I said is that using a single sprue for each gang, instead of the more frequently used two or even three sprues per box, imposes limits on what you can include. And would you disagree in that those are limiting and it would be less limiting were they two for the same ten guys? And yes, you're "saddled" with them because now that is what you will have. And apparently, new sprues going forward won't be compatible, if the new Goliath sprue is anything to go by.

The new sprue will be plastic, at the same scale, and in the same style. It's compatible af.

 Altruizine wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

Oh, yes, that's totally not what I said, though.

What I said is that using a single sprue for each gang, instead of the more frequently used two or even three sprues per box, imposes limits on what you can include. And would you disagree in that those are limiting and it would be less limiting were they two for the same ten guys? And yes, you're "saddled" with them because now that is what you will have. And apparently, new sprues going forward won't be compatible, if the new Goliath sprue is anything to go by.

The new sprue will be plastic, at the same scale, and in the same style. It's compatible af.

Same way as skitarii sprues are compatible with SoB, perhaps? Because the stimmer is not even on the same scale as the rest of the golios.

...well, neither are the not juves, now that I think about it.

 Albertorius wrote:
...according to whom, exactly?

Also, what margins? Profit margins? GW's? Thin? Are you serious? Do you know what actual costs to profit margin does GW work with?

Maybe you mean that in comparison with using those same resources for anything else, like a 40k army, the full of the Necromunda line is less profitable? If so, I would say it's debatable, as how well an army sells is not fixed.

The 40k/Necromunda comparison is simply absurd, that's my point. Why are you making such an absurd comparison? No, Necromunda is not as profitable as a single 40k army. Necromunda is still profitable. But plastic production has a couple of bottlenecks that make it difficult to justify Necromunda over, as in my previous example, more and more boxes of Primaris Intercessors.

Again, an Intercessor box consists of what is, effectively, in an economic sense, two Necromunda gangs, (we aren't counting repeated sprues in this comparison since the cost of a repeat is neglible against the cost of developing that sprue from scratch; it isn't trivial, either, but it's a different economy of scale). Intercessors are a vital component in the most popular army in the most popular game system that GW produce. The profit factor is enormous. Even a box of Ork Boyz still multiplies better than any Necromunda gang. Because Necromunda is a niche within a niche. So let's say you're Designer A from the Specialist Games department and you want to convince GW to produce plastic gang boxes for a proposed Necromunda reboot. You have to justify it to GW. You have to explain to them what the benefit is of them pausing production of, say, a Tau Battlesuit might be in order to cast a production run of boxes that will likely sell far, far less than any single item in the Space Marine range.

That's a tough sell, and you don't make that argument based on profit alone. There are reputational benefits to rebooting Necromunda and supplying it with stylish, optionable figurines. There are potential inroads to GW core products. Paints might see a bump. Terrain boxes that work across game systems can be designed. Etc. But even in terms of sheer manpower, regardless of the plastic production tooling, you're looking at an outlay of thousands over a potential year+ lead-in time. Being ultra-conservative with estimates of salaries alone, you're looking at potentially anywhere between £150,000-£250,000 before you even get a box set on the shelves. GW can afford it. It can even afford for the endeavour to fail, if necessary. But why would it when it could just keep pumping out Intercessors?

That's why it's a false equivalence. I imagine that, from the very beginning, Necromunda had a tight budget, a tight production window and therefore either a super-conservative allowance on sprue production (based on the Blood Bowl production/release model) or at least a duty to try and keep the cost (in terms of both sprue design (ie: limiting to a single sprue-per-gang) and production (ie: a limited window with which to produce the required sprues in production runs possibly lower in volume than for 40k)) as low as possible while still providing a product that was of good quality, comparable to other recent boxed games.

This is disregarding the fact that most "starter" sets are loss-leaders that don't make anywhere near the expected profit vs. production costs or the individual items.

Those restrictions have lead to the current situation.

Which is this:

1. The restrictions have limited the possibilities of figure production in specific ways (while still producing a product that is aesthetically and flexibly better than the previous 1990s iteration).

2. The game would not exist without those restrictions.

You either want Necromunda or you don't. You want your cake and you want to eat it. Hey, buddy; we all do. But the real world is... well, real.

I literally cannot see any other way Necromunda would ever have been made without those restrictions based on its "niche within a niche" status.

I would also love for every gang to have ultra-modularity, to have two fully-featured sprues with all weapon choices and gear loadouts, with clearly defined "champions" and "leaders". That would be amazing. (NB: those boxes would be in the £35 range, not the £25, so... something else for the usual complainants to complain about if it were ever to be the case).

It is also 1. Not going to happen and 2. Not going to happ- oh wait.

Problem is, of course, if you follow that line of though GW would never, ever, produce anything else but Space Marines, because the cost/return is the best there, seeing as back when I was working there the SM tac box was selling more than the whole of WFB.

Any word on when the Ogryns are scheduled to hit? The community article said "later this year," but does that mean like March later or Q3 later?

Also, any idea when the floor tiles will be back in stock?

witchdoctor wrote:
Any word on when the Ogryns are scheduled to hit? The community article said "later this year," but does that mean like March later or Q3 later?

Also, any idea when the floor tiles will be back in stock?

Regarding the floor tiles, I've asked three different staffers, and they all say it was one and done and they aren't coming back, they agreed this was stupid since those things are a license to print money, but its never stopped GW doing something stupid anyway.

Also man this has been a negative thread these past couple of pages, who knew plastic kits could create such an argument.

foenixphate wrote:

witchdoctor wrote:
Any word on when the Ogryns are scheduled to hit? The community article said "later this year," but does that mean like March later or Q3 later?

Also, any idea when the floor tiles will be back in stock?

Regarding the floor tiles, I've asked three different staffers, and they all say it was one and done and they aren't coming back, they agreed this was stupid since those things are a license to print money, but its never stopped GW doing something stupid anyway.

Also man this has been a negative thread these past couple of pages, who knew plastic kits could create such an argument.

This says they're coming back. IDK who the source is https://www.reddit.com/r/necromunda/comments/f4wcbx/fyi_on_the_tiles/

They’re still on the website with a “Temporarily Out of Stock” sticker, which they do not do for a once and done product (which would just say “No longer available online” and be greyed out)


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Given the size, shape and lack of sprue, I wonder if they’re outsourced, which means reordering would take awhile whilst they wait for a production slot.

Probably a China job.

But I don’t see them being one and done, at all. I mean, there’s clearly demand for them. And with the tooling costs already paid for, why not?

If they sell well, it would be kinda daft not to keep selling them.

 Albertorius wrote:
If they sell well, it would be kinda daft not to keep selling them.

The problem is they're committed to this "just in time" manufacturing thing where they order exactly what they(estimate) they need exactly when they need it and not a unit more, so we're at the mercy of their estimations on both ends - if they under-estimate initial demand it sells out too quickly, but even if that happens they might estimate that there isn't enough demand remaining to immediately sell through a whole second print run, so they just never bother doing another.

I think the utter horror at the thought of facing another Dreadfleet scenario combined with their storage and space issues in recent years has led them to radically over-compensate, but I doubt they're going to change so long as they're raking in cash even as they leave big chunks of it lying on the table, so don't expect that just because something sells out quickly they'll make more.

In this case I hope they do, because my initial plan of just casting up my own duplicates of my set in the event they sold out before I could find space in my hobby budget to buy more(Omniscient Narrator Voice: They did.) has run into the slight snag that they're too big to fit into my pressure chamber

I've found very good stl substitutes for them, but honestly, I prefer printed mats. I find them much easier to actually play on.

I just think the eggheads at GW really like to talk about how games are so popular they "sell out in hours", so they do low print runs. Otherwise, after years and years of this they'd have to be some of the biggest idiots in the business to keep 'underestimating' like they do.

I think underestimating might be warranted on the floor tiles. I mean, as far as terrain goes, the gaming surface usually isn't a must have and there's plenty of competing alternatives including the paper mat in the box. I wasn't interested until I got the Hive Warzone box and realized that the floor tiles might make the modular setup of the zone mortalis terrain more stable. (It does make a difference right, being able to click the columns into the vents and such?)

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Probably a China job.

But I don’t see them being one and done, at all. I mean, there’s clearly demand for them. And with the tooling costs already paid for, why not?

We know with a high level of certainty they were a china job, their initial leak was the shipping manifest from China.

witchdoctor wrote:I think underestimating might be warranted on the floor tiles. I mean, as far as terrain goes, the gaming surface usually isn't a must have and there's plenty of competing alternatives including the paper mat in the box. I wasn't interested until I got the Hive Warzone box and realized that the floor tiles might make the modular setup of the zone mortalis terrain more stable. (It does make a difference right, being able to click the columns into the vents and such?)

I think there are a number of factors in underestimating the number of floor tiles they sell.

I think they assumed the total number they'd sell was a fraction of the number of Dark Uprising sets. There was also a disconnect between the number in each package to the number you needed to be practical. They were packaged 4 tiles per unit, meaning if you play the way the designers had intended, 3x3 for the Dark Uprising terrain, you needed to buy 3 boxes of the tiles, or for a more typical 4x4 table you needed 4 boxes of tiles. They only imported 1500 sets to the US, meaning fewer than 400 people could actually get enough tiles... but realistically far fewer did.

That's before you consider the significant number of ways people are using the tiles that aren't what GW intended. You have people using them to supplement the FW sets they already owned. You have people building towers by using the tiles not just for the ground floor but to build intact upper floors for their boards. I've seen online one guy building to cover a 4x4 table with cubes of terrain each with 3 distinct levels. He bought 10 sets of tiles. So you had a handful of people buying as many as they could get their hands on.

I know at least around me a number of people just bought 1 set to see what the tiles were like and when they went to buy the rest of what they needed the tiles were already sold out.

witchdoctor wrote:It does make a difference right, being able to click the columns into the vents and such?

Yes, it’s pretty solid when everything’s clicked into place.

aka_mythos wrote:I know at least around me a number of people just bought 1 set to see what the tiles were like and when they went to buy the rest of what they needed the tiles were already sold out.

*Raises hand*. That’s exactly my situation. Although I think I only need one more set, as the Zone Mortalis missions all seem to only use 7 (or less) tiles.

basic ogryns with s y t 5 and 2 wounds are 70 points!!!

and they cant be pinned..

 ekwatts wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
...according to whom, exactly?

Also, what margins? Profit margins? GW's? Thin? Are you serious? Do you know what actual costs to profit margin does GW work with?

Maybe you mean that in comparison with using those same resources for anything else, like a 40k army, the full of the Necromunda line is less profitable? If so, I would say it's debatable, as how well an army sells is not fixed.

The 40k/Necromunda comparison is simply absurd, that's my point. Why are you making such an absurd comparison? No, Necromunda is not as profitable as a single 40k army. Necromunda is still profitable. But plastic production has a couple of bottlenecks that make it difficult to justify Necromunda over, as in my previous example, more and more boxes of Primaris Intercessors.

GW would never sell Necromunda if it didn't meet the threshold of profitability they want. Unless its a particularly large bundle their margins are pretty consistent, because they let margin dictate price and not the other way around. Saying what's more profitable can mean a number of things, it sounds like half the people hear mean in absolute dollars and half mean in marginal percentage, while saying things that confuse the two.

In absolute terms Necroumnda doesn't generate as much profit as a 40k army, but it doesn't need to to be as profitable. In a way its easier and it stands a better chance of exceeding expectations and bringing in a larger overall margin relative to what GW puts in. Relative to the typical 40k kit, a necromunda kit can more easily benefit from economy scale. Between duplicate sprues in Necromunda kit, and a greater number of unique sprues in a 40k kit, a typical necromunda kit of comparable retail price only has to sell about 1/5 as many kits to net the same percent margin.

When we then look at Necromunda as a whole, you end up with the 6 key gang kits collectively only having to sell as well as 2 typical 40k kits. This is before we consider the profitability at a game system level profits and how Necromunda can impact GW's overall profitability and reporting to investors. Yeah there are fewer people buying kits overall but GW typically has to produce 6-7 40k kits, with about 20 unique sprues between them to induce the sale of books and peripheral items. With Necromunda its probably close to 1 in 6 kit sales results in the added sale of one of the Necromunda rule book of some kind. 40k because of the size of armies while people have to buy more kits there is a greater gap in duration between spending surges. GW estimates how much revenue and profit it can potentially generate by looking at the average expenditure. But these surge purchases behaviorally exceed that average month to month rate, so not only is it profitable, its profit that goes towards exceeding goals. Further it targets hobbyists and hobby dollars that aren't necessarily otherwise going to 40k or AoS; so its an area of potential growth. This is what's driving GW to reinvest and put out even more Necromunda kits and books this year over last.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
If they sell well, it would be kinda daft not to keep selling them.

The problem is they're committed to this "just in time" manufacturing thing where they order exactly what they(estimate) they need exactly when they need it and not a unit more, so we're at the mercy of their estimations on both ends - if they under-estimate initial demand it sells out too quickly, but even if that happens they might estimate that there isn't enough demand remaining to immediately sell through a whole second print run, so they just never bother doing another.

I think the utter horror at the thought of facing another Dreadfleet scenario combined with their storage and space issues in recent years has led them to radically over-compensate, but I doubt they're going to change so long as they're raking in cash even as they leave big chunks of it lying on the table, so don't expect that just because something sells out quickly they'll make more.

In this case I hope they do, because my initial plan of just casting up my own duplicates of my set in the event they sold out before I could find space in my hobby budget to buy more(Omniscient Narrator Voice: They did.) has run into the slight snag that they're too big to fit into my pressure chamber

This is why GW needs to shift to doing pre-orders as actual pre-orders and not just a pre-sale. Most companies run pre-orders because it allows them to gauge demand and ensure they produce enough. With GW's apprehensiveness they should put up pre-orders in the last week of normal production and depending on that data extend the production run or not. "Just in time" to work relies on the managed predictability of sales, while GW's keep release dates and product details hush until the last minute before things go on sale and sell on codex release cycle that cause spikes of unpredictable demand.

GW typically sees 1/2 the total sales of a kit in the first 90 days, and don't match that for 3 years. This is why they're paranoid about holding significant amounts of stock. For "just in time" to work a company has to understand its lead; how long from when they say "we need more" to when those kits can be shipped to the customer. When you look at their history of getting things back in stock, 3 months is pretty close to the average wait time. This means if GW's stock on hand doesn't exceed what they might need for the first 5-6 months there is a very high likelihood they'll experience a shortage at some point in those crucial months, so even if we assume GW's estimates are based weak data they should minimally be producing that many kits. Those 2-3 months of extra stock though only amount to an extra 25% over the amount of kits, meaning if demand is more than 25% greater than they anticpated they will experiance shortages.

That's the problem with pre-orders on a just in time managed product... you're saying we need 500*X and X is an estimate instead of saying we need 20 times our first day preorders, or 10 times our first 30 days of pre-orders, whichever is higher... where 10 and 20 are more easily based on historicals.

 aka_mythos wrote:
With GW's apprehensiveness they should put up pre-orders in the last week of normal production and depending on that data extend the production run or not.

That only works if they do pre-orders six months before the release date, since they need to allow time to ship around the world once the production run is done.

And that would entail putting out detailed previews of minis months off.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And that would entail putting out detailed previews of minis months off.

Not to mention they would have to be refundable and at significant portion of pre-orders would be cancelled when they release the next weeks pre-order goodness. The overstock potential would probably be even worse!

 insaniak wrote:

 aka_mythos wrote:
With GW's apprehensiveness they should put up pre-orders in the last week of normal production and depending on that data extend the production run or not.

That only works if they do pre-orders six months before the release date, since they need to allow time to ship around the world once the production run is done.

I'm speaking in typical time frames, because when GW goes out of stock it typically takes 3 months before its back in stock, at least in my experience. So I believe with proper manufacturing management the window of starting preorders would ideally occur before the initial production line for the first run shuts down, but in the very least starting preorders any time before the 3 month mark would guarantee they could produce enough stock before the initial product release to meet demand and have it on hand. Even if there is some lapse in availability that lapse ends up being significantly shorter than waiting until the current pre-order time frame. Yes this runs counter to GW's policies and rationales but that's precisely why its worth criticism.

From an investor stand point... if a product sells out in the first week, when we know GW projects their stock size to meet the initial 3+ months demand they can very easily extrapolate how much money GW is failing to capture in sales. IF GW sells out in the first week it means they've sold less than 40% of what they could have sold over the next 3 years... we know that even if GW gets its products back in stock sales do not necessarily recover from that period but typically continue from sales volume consistent with the time frame they return to stock. So if it takes 3 months to get a product back in stock after selling out in the first week GW can estimate it will lose ~30% of the projected sales. This necessitates any future sales be done in a higher margin form, such as when we see box sets split to smaller kits. These practices are text book cases of things you want to avoid because they promote bootlegging; so even if GW eventually captures that lost revenue recasters are able to significantly benefit in that interim. GW says to investors counterfeit products are a major concern from them yet they continue a practice they entirely control that significantly promote recasts.


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stato wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And that would entail putting out detailed previews of minis months off.

Not to mention they would have to be refundable and at significant portion of pre-orders would be cancelled when they release the next weeks pre-order goodness. The overstock potential would probably be even worse!

Well I don't think we should celebrate an anti-consumer policy and we should instead consider the money they lose out on by having their policy this way. They have had major product releases that sell out and sell out relatively quickly and by GW's own investor shared data you can reasonably extrapolate that they're leaving 30% or more of what they could make on the table, they can instead attempt to satisfy all their interested customers and without the text book promoting of counterfeiting products. In the long run sales of illegitimate products erode sales more than just that initial lost sale. Because GW didn't sell us whatever kit some guy who found a recaster to get that product now regularly invites his friends to order from china.

The overstock potential isn't high. With the production management GW ascribes too they're starting off with something like 40% of what they expect to sell over the first 3 years. Even if every preorder canceled then they just don't perform the subsequent production runs that would when they go to produce the other half of what they anticipated selling. And IF you're thinking "but who's to say they will sell them at that point, they could be stuck with them"... but its the same amount of risk as when they put something up for pre-order, no different. IF some how it is worse, then it means they made a crappy product and they shouldn't be making any money off of it or forcing it on ill informed customers by avoiding refunds. IF such a product existed that it garnered so much ill will and everyone canceled preorders, you probably wouldn't want it out in the wild because it would hurt the brand image. Its just like those bad vacuform craters they recalled and refunded after selling them with images of resin castings, many many years ago, Those are the kind of products that would get that drastic a reaction. Everything in between those cases isn't just mitigatable risk, but easily mitigated risk. GW manufactures the majority of its products it isn't just a retailer, it already makes a regular habit of having stores return stock that it then destroys or stocks as direct sales only. Its able to do that because almost everything about their products can be recycled directly or indirectly into their manufacturing process or simply put into mail-order stock. They don't panic in this case because they've planned for it, and just like that they can plan for the minimal risk of preorders.

The thing is, showing your new releases several months before you are releasing them also promotes bootlegging. Garage companies take the previewed design, turn out something compatible in a week or two, and then have a good couple of months to sell it before the GW version is actually released. This is precisely the situation that GW aimed to avoid back when they stopped doing extended pre-orders a decade or so ago.

How much of a real problem was that, though?

Clearly enough of one for them to want to stop it. Although ultimately the codex entries with no models for years on end would have been a bigger problem... I suspect that very few of the various, largely awful, resin Thunderwolves out there would have sold if GW had released theirs 9 months earlier.

For those of an interest, I’ve started a thread in SG to discuss House of Chains.

Link - https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/785699.page#10722916

Feel free to swing by and ask/answer questions as your possession of the book allows Figured it’s a more appropriate, aha, forum, than this thread

Previews????