Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So the last few years have seen a few trends from GW with increasing costs. Solo models for the price of box sets, increasingly expensive starter kits and additional box sets which are also priced high.

More recently, we see the new Patrol sets are on track to replace the start collecting sets which already saw price rises, as well as the trend toward increasing books and supplements to sell more books.

A hobby succeeds by replacing lost hobbyists with more new ones, with the younger generation being the key target. GW try to mitigate this with kill team ideas but realistically we all joined for the main game and if they make it prohibitive to that generation, the longer term prospects will look poor.

The patrol boxes are by far the biggest worry for me however. Sure you get a little more in them, but it starts to hit a threshold where either it’s not realistically affordable, or parents will simply go against the idea of the hobby.

Is the sky falling? Chicken Little says 'Yes!'

Now to Joan with the weather.

GW focusing on short-term gains?

Must be a day ending in 'y'.

I can only hope this would cost them, but highly unlikely. People would buy GW even if a standard infantry box cost $100. Heck, it's near that now!

GW focusing on short-term gains?

Must be a day ending in 'y'.

Right!?

Also reset the clock. "It has officially been 0 days since someone asked if this "new" phenomenon of rising prices, weird box sets, and unusual marketing methods will hurt GW long term"

And no. There was a time, like maybe 15 years ago, when I said they needed to stop focusing on short term goals and get the long-game figured out. I um ... appear to have been wrong in that statement. People keep talking about this like it's a new thing. Fact is, since about mid 2nd ed on - this has been their MO so ... yeah, it's been a while. It's not a new thing, and they always seem to be able to pivot. For example, the short-term goals strategy nearly killed them in 7th. But they caught it, changed it, and ushered in what was essentially a 40k renaissance.

I personally feel that the over-focus on Marines that has been happening for the last 18 months or so (and no - for the next five people that respond to this and say "it's always been that way w/marines" it hasn't) could hurt them long term, but that's WAY long term and like I said - they always manage to pivot out of it. The IP is strong enough to withstand repeated batterings.

But that said, I await the eager posters jumping in to talk about 3D printing, alternative models etc etc ...

They're not hurting on anything because, if the people here are anything to go by, y'all will still buy it all, including the hilariously lopsided 5 Flayed Ones vs 5 Heavy Intercessors set.

Tycho wrote:

But that said, I await the eager posters jumping in to talk about 3D printing, alternative models etc etc ...

You rang?

I do think 3d printing is very much a major way forward here, but how quickly it would eat GW's overinflated bottom line was unquestionably overestimated.

Tycho wrote:

I personally feel that the over-focus on Marines that has been happening for the last 18 months or so (and no - for the next five people that respond to this and say "it's always been that way w/marines" it hasn't) could hurt them long term, but that's WAY long term and like I said - they always manage to pivot out of it. The IP is strong enough to withstand repeated batterings.

I'd been meaning to ask about that - I used to play what used to be called Vanilla Marines back in 3rd/4th and at the time I definitely didn't feel like GW was just endlessly tongue-bathing my posterior with rules and releases. I'd wondered if that was blindness born of Marine Privilege or if right now genuinely is the worst the Marine oversaturation has ever been.

There's still half a dozen Primarch's to eventually return and the associated campaign books over the next 25 years. They know what they're doing

GW has a long and storied history of succeeding in spite of themselves.

Seen this question asked for　20 years. Sure is　long short term

As GW becomes more mainstream it will replace every lost hobbyist with hundreds of half interested bandwagoners who gravitate from one new thing to the next. They don't care about you, they want to sell marines to somebody who saw their tv show or played the video game.

I doubt it. They are flexible. And I've known a few people to start playing 40k these last few years. Parents tend to bring their kids in on it. I know I'm working on my son. Also, I find mid thirties nerds tend to pick it up who are still nerdy enough but now have the resources to play.


Also... judging by their stock, they are doing okay

People have been predicting the downfall of GW based on their business practices as long as I have been in the hobby. And yet somehow 45 year old GW is doing great in the middle of a pandemic by being GW.

As long as GW makes great minis, I will still buy them....

As long as GW makes terrible rules, I won't buy them....

Simple as that.

People put wayyyyyy to much value on mutable aspects of GW stuff.
Rules come and go, minis are forever.

 CEO Kasen wrote:

Tycho wrote:

I personally feel that the over-focus on Marines that has been happening for the last 18 months or so (and no - for the next five people that respond to this and say "it's always been that way w/marines" it hasn't) could hurt them long term, but that's WAY long term and like I said - they always manage to pivot out of it. The IP is strong enough to withstand repeated batterings.

I'd been meaning to ask about that - I used to play what used to be called Vanilla Marines back in 3rd/4th and at the time I definitely didn't feel like GW was just endlessly tongue-bathing my posterior with rules and releases. I'd wondered if that was blindness born of Marine Privilege or if right now genuinely is the worst the Marine oversaturation has ever been.

When did you start 3rd ed though?
If it was sometime after fall '98 - early '99? Then you simply missed seeing most of the generic SM releases for 3rd edition hit the shelves. All you might've seen were chapter specific kits - DA/BA/SW/something UM. But as you were playing generic marines & all your stuff was on the shelf, you likely didn't pay them much attention.
Same with 4th ed. The generic marine stuff from 3rd carried over. Oh sure, somewhere in there they re-made the tac squad (or was it the Devs?), re-made the termies, probably some new sculpts for some support character types (chaplains/apothicaries/etc)... but again, if you had them, you probably didn't care. Likewise for anything chapter specific. And then every now & then you'd get something generic like the drop pod in 4e.

So what's different now vs then? Why are you noticing it NOW? Well, easy. I've said this before, and I'm going to repeat it. With the Primaris stuff you're witnessing a slow & steady roll out of an entire product line.
Think about it. If the Primaris were their own brand new/stand-alone force (like the Sisters for ex)? GW would've dropped most of these kits on you in one massive go, spanning about 2-3 months. With misc stuff straggling in after that. Why? Because they wouldn't be a very functional army otherwise.
But while the Primaris are a new product line, they aren't a standalone force. So GW can stretch out their release without the units being unplayable. They don't need to drop it all on us at once. But at the same time they aren't going to spend 20 years building out the line ala where the classic marines have ended up.

*You can also choose to believe popular theory that the Primaris line was intended to replace the classic SM line but that that plan got altered if you like.
And this might come to pass. At the moment the Primaris pretty much do everything our classic marines do except drop pods, flyers, & whirlwinds. Give them another year or so/edition for those stragglers....

Racerguy180 wrote:
As long as GW makes great minis, I will still buy them....

As long as GW makes terrible rules, I won't buy them....

Simple as that.

People put wayyyyyy to much value on mutable aspects of GW stuff.
Rules come and go, minis are forever.

Perhaps but while I like looking at a select few of my models, the vast majority of them are there to facilitate playing the game. Without the game, I have zero interest in buying models nor do I have any real motivation to paint them. Bad rules (in my case the entire edition being downright boring to play) ruins the ability to enjoy the game and with the current ruleset being something I despise playing, it becomes harder and harder to find people to play with. 8th/9th has essentially killed the hobby for me because of the core rules being so dreadfully unfulfilling.

There are probably a point where they could not go, like with price it can only be raised so much before it becomes impossible for players to get in.
Rules are fairly secondary I think and even if they influaince people, it’s the price and minis that are main point that could break it.

With a lot of big companies they can be fairly successful until they fail and need to fix everything or die.

But I actually think GW has seen this, if you look at the company as a whole, they have been neglecting 40k in favour of bring out more wide range of IP.
Even if 40 is still big, I think they are seeing lots of success for the fact they are keeping and bringing in lots of players from other backgrounds and hobby wants.
I have spent a lot more money on GW even if my 40k spending has dropped to almost nothing with my demon army being the only thing expanding for 40k in anyway.

 Vankraken wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
As long as GW makes great minis, I will still buy them....

As long as GW makes terrible rules, I won't buy them....

Simple as that.

People put wayyyyyy to much value on mutable aspects of GW stuff.
Rules come and go, minis are forever.

Perhaps but while I like looking at a select few of my models, the vast majority of them are there to facilitate playing the game. Without the game, I have zero interest in buying models nor do I have any real motivation to paint them. Bad rules (in my case the entire edition being downright boring to play) ruins the ability to enjoy the game and with the current ruleset being something I despise playing, it becomes harder and harder to find people to play with. 8th/9th has essentially killed the hobby for me because of the core rules being so dreadfully unfulfilling.

That sucks, I'm not playing 40k for the the game itself. It's just something cool to do with my fully painted minis other than sitting there looking pretty.

But I do understand the frustration with the game. All I can say is that if you can find like minded folks to play with, it's a godsend. If not it's a death knell.
You'd be surprised what you can do if both players are equally invested in having a good time telling a story with cool miniatures.

GW has changed business model, making it both cheaper and more expensive.

It used to be a business model like the other wargames, where you offer a certain amount of factions to the customer, and hope that one clicks with him and he baits.

They are now instead focusing on a model where most of the players are raked in with marine factions (reason why we now have 11 of them). Marines are dirty cheap right now. Putting together a marine list is easy both on wallet and on brushes.

As long as GW keeps low the cost of the marine factions, the cost to access the game stays low.

At the same time, they provide stunningly beatiful models for non-marine factions and interesting lore. Non-marine factions are there to offer a second faction to marine players, and for that reason they can be much more expensive. They hope that some marine players get hooked into those.

TLDR: GWs ideal customer comes for the marines and stays for the non-marines.

Tycho wrote:
There was a time, like maybe 15 years ago, when I said they needed to stop focusing on short term goals and get the long-game figured out. I um ... appear to have been wrong in that statement.

Pardon? You were dead on--GW underwent massive reform in business strategy and how they interacted with the community in 2016. There was a sizable move towards long-term thinking. It's just the last couple years things that progress has been eroded.

GW has the advantage that they have several games/product lines to carry them

they can afford to screw one over for short therm gains while keeping the other one for the long term benefit
and than change them around

already in the past there was a cycle between Fantasy and 40k with one always being cheaper with the better rules than that game goes into modus of "short term profit" while the other one gets a new Edition and they changed place

just did not worked out well with AoS 1st Edition as it was too expensive and rules were not better than 40k either (but this was corrected very fast)


that GW added back other games to the main line is for the reason to keep the players with GW even if they are upset with the main line

"40k is too expensive while the rules are bad and you still are pissed about Fantasy so don't even look at AoS?
play BloodBowl, Warcry or Warhammer Underworlds, good rules, great community, and less expensive!
no need to even look what other companies might offer, don't quit the hobby (not the miniatures games hobby but the hobby of giving money to GW)"

The part that passes me off is that you have games like Titanicus that are some of the best they've ever done contrasted with current 40k.

 CEO Kasen wrote:
I'd been meaning to ask about that - I used to play what used to be called Vanilla Marines back in 3rd/4th and at the time I definitely didn't feel like GW was just endlessly tongue-bathing my posterior with rules and releases. I'd wondered if that was blindness born of Marine Privilege or if right now genuinely is the worst the Marine oversaturation has ever been.

Marines have always been the poster boys and always had priority with releases during a new edition, which makes all the complaining about the Marine books coming out first in 9th extra weird since that's almost always how things go.

HOWEVER, this situation of 60+ releases and 3 Codexes in 3 years for the army, not to mention the endless supplements, is truly unprecedented. There is nothing to compare it to in previous editions and release cycles. Hell, in 3 years the Marine range has practically doubled in size and it was already one of the larger ones, but now the disparity between it and everything else is just absurd.

Questions about the long term viability of such a model are incredibly valid because previously it took GW around 30 years to reach peak bloat with oldmarines, whereas the Primaris range has basically reached the same point after 3. And even then you can still see the holes in the range which just points to it all being poorly planned out. But if they're already reaching the end of what they can logically do with Primaris, where do they go next? What fills the next 3-5 years? We can joke but there really are only so many different kinds of Intercessors and bolt weapons with silly names that can be made.

Also anecdotal, but at my LGS apparently sales of the Necron and Marine Codexes were pretty equal, whereas the Necrons have actually been beating Marines in model sales. And I live in an area with a ton of Marine players too. A lot of them have also expressed the rate of releases for the army is too much to keep up with and outside of specific things (like BGV) many of them are distinctly underwhelmed by many of the new kits and not too enthusiastic about adding them to their armies.

There are still mini marine equivalents to be done plus at least one more Legion style weapon unit (Hellfury?)

Then the 2nd edition era Chapters will get their Chapter specific units.

Spoletta wrote:
GW has changed business model, making it both cheaper and more expensive.

Spoiler:

It used to be a business model like the other wargames, where you offer a certain amount of factions to the customer, and hope that one clicks with him and he baits.

They are now instead focusing on a model where most of the players are raked in with marine factions (reason why we now have 11 of them). Marines are dirty cheap right now. Putting together a marine list is easy both on wallet and on brushes.

As long as GW keeps low the cost of the marine factions, the cost to access the game stays low.

At the same time, they provide stunningly beatiful models for non-marine factions and interesting lore. Non-marine factions are there to offer a second faction to marine players, and for that reason they can be much more expensive. They hope that some marine players get hooked into those.

TLDR: GWs ideal customer comes for the marines and stays for the non-marines.

So this change would've occurred sometime during RT?
Because everything you're describing save SM chapters with separate rules( and I think THAT started with my SW in the pages of White Dwarf), has been going on longer than I've been playing (closing days of RT & on).

yes and no, it happend around 3rd/4th Edition

this was also the time were GW decided to just update 3rd instead of the full re-work that was initially planned, as well as make changes to Fantasy to increase the models needed instead of fixing rules

 alextroy wrote:
People have been predicting the downfall of GW based on their business practices as long as I have been in the hobby. And yet somehow 45 year old GW is doing great in the middle of a pandemic by being GW.

People don't realize just how much whales spend. For every Johnny that quits cause the SC! box went up 10 bucks there's someone that just spent 5000 on a brand new Marine army they won't even touch cause they're genuinely addicted.

 Bosskelot wrote:
We can joke but there really are only so many different kinds of Intercessors and bolt weapons with silly names that can be made.

Naaah they can go full on crazy. This variant rerolls 1's to hit, this one 2's to hit, this one rolls 1's and 3's etc. This one rerolls 1's to wound vs orks, another 1's vs eldars

GW ain't stopping marines any time soon. Names are not issue since they can simply add couple letters more to names.

Bloat for bloat god.

Now, here’s a radical thought.

Is it just possible that GW do in fact know what they’re doing, and are doing so with far more actual data points available to them than us mere mood are privy to?

Such as....

Their average transaction value. The level of uptake on their tie-in activities with Scouts and Duke of Edinburgh. The number of active school clubs. The number of beginners coming in through each store (this was tracked when I last worked for them).

They certainly know, but do not publish, range specific sales figures.

From the outside in, we might look at say, Witch Elves and scratch our heads at the their price tag. From the inside, GW will know for certain how many they sell in a given period, because they have total control over their own production.

So you can point to it and claim “short term gains” all you want. Just remember nobody on Dakka is playing with the full deck of cards to be able to reasonably judge that.

All we’ve got are local observations and anecdotes. With that there are the dangers of confirmation bias (only seeing what you expected to see). This extends to people online. How much weight can we put on those comments? If someone is claiming their army is underpowered, can we reasonably say it’s purely down to the rules, and not poor in-game decisions they made?

We might look at Tournament Placing and point to that as proof. But is it? It’s certainly interesting data, but without an unbiased rundown of the games being played and the lists being used, we again have incomplete information, so any conclusions drawn are incomplete.

Then we have the Wobbliest of conclusions - the prices are too high.

Well, says you. But what about the next person? What about that lovely middle class couple prepared to throw money at anything to keep their kid engaged. What of the kid with the paper round who spends their earnings on their hobby instead of booze and tabs or whatever it is those hip young things spend their dosh on these days.

Who are we to dictate the depth of anyone’s pockets but our own?

Do you have market study type things which explain how people approach prices for their chosen hobby/luxuries compared to essentials such as food? I don’t, but I’ll give you an example.

Income wise, I’m alright Jack. All bills paid on time, every time. Even when Gas, Electric and Water unite into a single month, it’s not wiping out my disposable income.

When it comes to GW, I’m really not fussed. If I can get it from Element, I will (not the deepest of discount, but their Crystal programme lets me support friends), if not I’ll get it from GW directly. And once the stores are re-opened, I’ll be dropping at least £60.00 to get those lovely coins.

When it comes to my essentials? I’ll go for deals if I can. Mumsie Grotsnik taught me from a young age to look at the shelf label, not the price, because it’s the price per 100g/litre etc that show the best value. I even try to shop by Meals, rather than just put random stuff in my trolley. I’ll still typically got for Brand Names for my Coca-Cola, ketchup etc. But beyond that, the cheapest goes in the trolley. Crisps and Cereals are typically whatever is on offer.

That’s my spending habits. But what of the next man or woman? Can I speak for them? Am I doing it more righter than them? No, on both counts. Their money, their approach to value and satisfaction.

In summary? We don’t know anywhere near enough to claim GW are playing only the short term. Take care to separate your (entirely valid) opinion on their prices, from what GW will know about their market place.

I don't think the investors like to hear stuff in the line of this year profits are down, but just wait 10 years in the future, there will be big money coming in/