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 techsoldaten wrote:


Businesses like this don't happen by accident. If there was money to be made with additional Xenos releases, I'm pretty sure they would have been prioritized.

Help me understand - where does the idea come from that a public company with a PE Ratio of $36+ and a Board of Directors headed by an ex-PWC guy does no research? A few statements from game designers?

Plus, I think they are also doing the smart safe thing. It is better to produce a set number of something and sell 100% of it, specially when you are more or less a monopolist, then produce a lot more, then sell maybe a bit more , but end up with 20 or 30% unsold merch with old the costs related to making and then storing them.

 techsoldaten wrote:

Kirby GW and Roundtree GW are 2 different companies.

No, it's the same company and doing almost everything that made people hate it in the Kirby era.

The only difference is that it puts out an FAQ once in a while and has a much better PR department.

 vipoid wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

Kirby GW and Roundtree GW are 2 different companies.

No, it's the same company and doing almost everything that made people hate it in the Kirby era.

The only difference is that it puts out an FAQ once in a while and has a much better PR department.

Having a pr Department is allready more then old gw.
It's not even a particulary good one.

In my many ways the current GW is worse than Kirby's - at least on box prices.
But a friendly face for the community goes a hell of a long way to engender support, more than any actual actions.

 techsoldaten wrote:

Do you really think the attitude to the community is what caused the company to grow 1600% since 2017?

I've not reviewed any internal sales figures, but it does seem like some other factors may have played a big role. GW grew other lines of business successfully outside straight 40k, grown their publishing arm to include more books and young adult novels, expanded their retail footprint (and contracted it), set up operations in North America to make their supply chain more efficient, capitalized on their IP for video games through a pretty robust release of titles, etc.

I recognize that there's a big difference in how players are treated by the company, but I'd be curious to learn how much of a role 40k sales played in growth compared to all these other revenue generators. I suspect it's important, but not the most important factor in growth.

Yes, getting that the 2 IP's (Old World and 40k) are their best selling product and Community interaction are the 2 reasons why the made such a big step

do you really think 40k would still be played that much if the only answer you get (if you get an answer at all) if you ask a rule question would be "we don't make mistakes"?

No FAQ/Earrata, no GHB/CA, no Rumour Engine, no point adjustments, no response to anything but problems with your shop-orders, no social media, no made to order, and so on

the change in community interaction from litrally nothing to all those things was the major part of why they are in the current position.

40k was in a decline at the end of 7th, and even with he reset of the game with 8th, if they would have continued and not giving out FAQ/Errata or start changing points early on, it might have stopped the decrease but without the change in community interaction it want have seen the big growth either

 kodos wrote:


do you really think 40k would still be played that much if the only answer you get (if you get an answer at all) if you ask a rule question would be "we don't make mistakes"?

Necromunda is fairly popular and that's basically the tagline though
What FAQs we do get only address the absolute worst issues, and it's not uncommon for them to have to go back and adjust the FAQ later because it failed solve the problem (or even created a new problem).

What was killing 7th was the huge power disparity between meta lists and regular lists.
I joined a 'friendly' tournament at the end of 7th, just bringing my normal fluffy list as I was promised was the point of the tournament. I proceeded to get absolutely bent the feth over by Eldar Scatbikes, Knights, and all the rest. Many games I didn't inflict a single casualty such was the speed at which I was tabled.
It's easy to see why 7th wasn't popular with most players.

and now imagine 7th would have seen point adjustments and rules updates/changes at least once a year

I haven't seen lot of Necromunda recently
lot of people who played in the past (or still played the old version from time to time) jumped on the initial release that created some hype

but it was dropped soon after by a lot and at least here, it is not more popular than it was before just that people use the new plastic models instead of the metal ones but keep going with the community rules (as it was before)

GW were able to do the absolute bare minimum to bring people running back with open arms. Having point adjustments/updates to 7th would absolutely have had the same effect as 8th edition did, because it would've given people something to point at and go "Look! Look! GW is listening now! They've completely changed, I always loved you, please take me back!"

Necromunda's always been that game clubs bring out on a whim and run a campaign for a few weeks/months. The initial rerelease was undoubtedly shaky with it's horrid release methods (Gang War books) but we know GW have few issues cutting limbs off if they're not sustainable, so that it's continuing to receive pretty active support means it must be profitable enough.

Help me understand - where does the idea come from that a public company with a PE Ratio of $36+ and a Board of Directors headed by an ex-PWC guy does no research? A few statements from game designers?

Other have answered a lot of this already, but let me add some things. So, GW is an always has been, at the forefront of certain things in the industry. Like others have pointed out, and like you said in your post, they have large investments in tech. Model making, injection molding, 3d printing. When it comes to anything to do with the process of making models, GW wins.

But, when it comes to anything else? Not so much. Because again, they are STILL running portions of it like it's a hobby side gig. Let's look at some examples. Surely, a company with a PE Ratio of $36+ would know that squatting their oldest IP in favor of a game with silly rules and no way to make balanced armies would be a disaster right? Surely they wouldn't release something as insane as the first version of AoS right? Surely, if Coca-Cola is going to release "New Coke", it will be a smash hit right?

Let's look at a more recent example. The AoS app - Haven't used it myself but when it's brought up, it seems to have some pretty good feelings around it from the community. So, surely, a company with a Board of Directors headed by an ex-PwC guy would simply duplicate was successful about that app to make a 40k app right? Surely, they would know (because it's Rountree now and they have big-boy forecasting models and market research) that releasing an app at $5.00 a month with almost no functionality, and zero army building capability would be a massively bad idea right?

I worked for one of PWC's biggest competitors for a very long time (I ran the in-house agency and was pasrt of many a consulting pod), so I'm not just talking out my arse here. Even the biggest and baddest companies out there make mistakes and get caught with their pants down. I could list examples for days. And that's companies that have been doing things like proper market research for a long time. They STILL get taken by surprise. So it should come as NO surprise that a company like GW, who's position in the industry comes about more due to how long they've been in business in an industry where it's exceedingly hard to compete, (and where they are often "#1" simply because if people don't play a GW game, they won't get a game at all), a company that has only recently started looking outward instead of inward (and still hasn't adopted that fully) makes bad calls and gets things wrong sometimes.

I think at least part of the "Marine problem" is a combination of what was already planned along with covid hampering production capability. If they only have "X" amount of production at their disposal, it makes total sense to just say "f-it. Let's just crank out marines because we know they'll sell, and we can slip in the 'Cron release after." This makes total sense and for all we know they have a bunch of things designed up and ready to go once they can have fully staffed production facilities again, but the Xenos don't sell mantra still doesn't work. All we hear is "they don't sell". Then GW makes a good revamp and suddenly they can't keep that army on the shelves. Kind of flys in the face of "they don't sell" .....

 Jidmah wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

Jidmah wrote:Multiple of John Kirby's preambles explicitly said so. The great survey which lead to plastic sisters was pretty much the first time they had done anything that remotely looked like market research in a decade.

Kirby GW and Roundtree GW are 2 different companies.

The first big community survey was 2017, only slightly more than 3 years ago. People claim that the development of mode releases takes roughly 2-3 years (which matches with the time it took them to make sisters).
Only based on those two facts alone, it's fairly safe to assume that many of the decisions that led to the primaris revamp of space marines was NOT based on market research.
An that is before even considering the myriad of sources uniformly telling us that the primaries project definitely started in the kirby era, up to claims that they started all the way back during 5th. The sources disagree why what happened exactly, but not one puts the primaris project in Rountree's responsibility.

Kirby GW and Roundtree GW also are *not* two different companies. Rountree has to live with Kirby's legacy and all projects he started.
You also don't change a whole company by changing the CEO, especially not within a few years.

Thus, the flood of marines during the last years neither originated from market research nor Rountree's genius.

The Market Cap and PE Ratio beg to differ.

The question of who decided to make Marines bigger means nothing. Primaris Marines have very little to do with how GW experienced 1600% growth over 3.5 years.

Making them bigger has everything to do with whether or not GW will be around 10 years from now. They would not be getting bigger unless GW knew size of power armored figures attracted more people to the game. If this was about retail sales, GW would have banned Old Marines and forced everyone to upgrade because they write the rules and always hike the price.

Saying Roundtree lives with Kirby's legacy - maybe in terms of design decisions related to 40k. But that's not a company, that's something a company sells. I can point at 50 things GW does to generate revenue now that they didn't in 2015.

Tycho wrote:
I worked for one of PWC's biggest competitors for a very long time (I ran the in-house agency and was pasrt of many a consulting pod), so I'm not just talking out my arse here. Even the biggest and baddest companies out there make mistakes and get caught with their pants down. I could list examples for days. And that's companies that have been doing things like proper market research for a long time. They STILL get taken by surprise. So it should come as NO surprise that a company like GW, who's position in the industry comes about more due to how long they've been in business in an industry where it's exceedingly hard to compete, (and where they are often "#1" simply because if people don't play a GW game, they won't get a game at all), a company that has only recently started looking outward instead of inward (and still hasn't adopted that fully) makes bad calls and gets things wrong sometimes.

I have no clue what mistake you are referring to. Please be as specific as possible and explain what having their pants down means in the context of GW.

I see no evidence of mistakes in the Roundtree era.

Companies do not reach $1B valuations by accident. Companies with a retail presence do not double their market cap during a global pandemic in the absence of a plan that's well articulated and ready to be executed. These things are evidence of great success and a corporate ethos solely focused on fully commercializing it's IP. These kinds of successes are rare and do not happen in the absence of a plan.

Are you suggesting the Board gets together to simple write resolutions demanding more Space Marines? What are you really trying to say here?

KurtAngle2 wrote:
slow as heck release schedule

This perspective absolutely boggles my mind.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:
slow as heck release schedule

This perspective absolutely boggles my mind.

I missed that before .... it's odd on several levels ....

Making them bigger has everything to do with whether or not GW will be around 10 years from now. They would not be getting bigger unless GW knew size of power armored figures attracted more people to the game. If this was about retail sales, GW would have banned Old Marines and forced everyone to upgrade because they write the rules and always hike the price.

It was absolutely about retail sales. Not banning the old marines straight away means you don't alienate a MASSIVE portion of your customer base, while also not invalidating a MASSIVE portion of your back catalogue ...

Plus it's a pretty good solution to the problem of how to sell people more Space Marines. The HH only sells masses of MkIII and MkIV armour to whales, whereas new 40k Space Marines (in 3-4 new varieties even) sell to a much larger market.

Keeping existing Oldmarines was a big part of the appeal of Primaris.
You didn't have to start an entirely new faction all at once, that's a big upfront investment that's scary for people. Especially if they already have a faction they enjoy.
But with Primaris, you could add just one squad to your existing collection and still be good. Then another, and another.

This is largely why Allies were created at the beginning of 6th. It allowed people to branch out into more armies by using their existing collections to soften the start up cost.

I have no clue what mistake you are referring to. Please be as specific as possible and explain what having their pants down means in the context of GW.

I see no evidence of mistakes in the Roundtree era.

Read the whole post .... I listed several such examples, to include mistakes made in the Roundtree era ....

And again no. If you read the whole post, you'd pretty clearly see I'm not saying the "get here by accident" ...

Also not suggesting they're all morons or whatever you seem to be getting from what I said ... I mean hell, I even gave them credit for good decision making too. lol

Tycho wrote:

Making them bigger has everything to do with whether or not GW will be around 10 years from now. They would not be getting bigger unless GW knew size of power armored figures attracted more people to the game. If this was about retail sales, GW would have banned Old Marines and forced everyone to upgrade because they write the rules and always hike the price.

It was absolutely about retail sales. Not banning the old marines straight away means you don't alienate a MASSIVE portion of your customer base, while also not invalidating a MASSIVE portion of your back catalogue ...

Heh, that's cute. You said you worked for which one of PWC's competitors again?

Break that down for me, explain how retails sales of Primaris marines are expanding GW's bottom line. Are we talking about $1 B in new sales annually?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tycho wrote:

I have no clue what mistake you are referring to. Please be as specific as possible and explain what having their pants down means in the context of GW.

I see no evidence of mistakes in the Roundtree era.

Read the whole post .... I listed several such examples, to include mistakes made in the Roundtree era ....

And again no. If you read the whole post, you'd pretty clearly see I'm not saying the "get here by accident" ...

Also not suggesting they're all morons or whatever you seem to be getting from what I said ... I mean hell, I even gave them credit for good decision making too. lol

And you failed to point at a mistake.

You have to point out a mistake to say that people have their pants down. Otherwise you are just spouting words.

 techsoldaten wrote:


Break that down for me, explain how retails sales of Primaris marines are expanding GW's bottom line. Are we talking about $1 B in new sales annually?

GW hasn't made a penny on 2/3s of it's model releases, right

 techsoldaten wrote:

And you failed to point at a mistake.

You have to point out a mistake to say that people have their pants down. Otherwise you are just spouting words.

How are you defining a mistake?
Do you not think their map was a horrific launch? Have you seen it's appstore ratings?

For the record - Deloitte.

And the Roundtree mistake was here:

Let's look at a more recent example. The AoS app - Haven't used it myself but when it's brought up, it seems to have some pretty good feelings around it from the community. So, surely, a company with a Board of Directors headed by an ex-PwC guy would simply duplicate was successful about that app to make a 40k app right? Surely, they would know (because it's Rountree now and they have big-boy forecasting models and market research) that releasing an app at $5.00 a month with almost no functionality, and zero army building capability would be a massively bad idea right?

And before you try to say "That was no mistake" .... Let's also consider the fact that it's the first time (or at least the first time I can recall) of GW EVER actually discounting anything ....

Tycho wrote:
For the record - Deloitte.

And the Roundtree mistake was here:

Let's look at a more recent example. The AoS app - Haven't used it myself but when it's brought up, it seems to have some pretty good feelings around it from the community. So, surely, a company with a Board of Directors headed by an ex-PwC guy would simply duplicate was successful about that app to make a 40k app right? Surely, they would know (because it's Rountree now and they have big-boy forecasting models and market research) that releasing an app at $5.00 a month with almost no functionality, and zero army building capability would be a massively bad idea right?

And before you try to say "That was no mistake" .... Let's also consider the fact that it's the first time (or at least the first time I can recall) of GW EVER actually discounted anything ....

That's not a failure. That's an experiment.

Nothing about that app is pivotal to GW's business strategy. They're seeing if anyone will bite.

That's obvious to anyone who's involved in finance or accounting.

Now show me a mistake that's had capital consequences. Or where all this growth in retail miniature sales has happened.

https://investor.games-workshop.com/

Clearly we're just working to different definitions of mistake.
I personally wouldn't think that tanking your stock would be a necessary prerequisite of a mistake.

 techsoldaten wrote:

You have to point out a mistake to say that people have their pants down. Otherwise you are just spouting words.

If you cannot remember any mistakes GW have made you either are pretty new to those things and only started 2 months ago, or just trolling


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tycho wrote:
All we hear is "they don't sell". Then GW makes a good revamp and suddenly they can't keep that army on the shelves. Kind of flys in the face of "they don't sell" .....

this is just some people want to keep up the image of "GW can do nothing wrong" no matter if it flys or not

Clearly we're just working to different definitions of mistake.
I personally wouldn't think that tanking your stock would be a necessary prerequisite of a mistake.

Exactly. Making a mistake so catastrophic that it damages your stock is WAY MORE than just "a mistake". Techslodaten seems to want to put "mistakes" only in the category of actually severely damaging the company, and that's certainly a strategy some people take, and it can certainly pay off. IMO it's a little disingenuous to hand wave the app as an "experiment" when they already had a proven model in the AoS app, and I would also argue that it was an irresponsible allocation of resources if it was indeed ACTUALLY an experiment (given there was no need to experiment since they already knew what would work). It's also a little silly to not consider other market factors in GW's bottom line, and I have also, at no point in this discussion claimed they are wholly incompetent and bungling, but it is what it is.

 kodos wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

You have to point out a mistake to say that people have their pants down. Otherwise you are just spouting words.

If you cannot remember any mistakes GW have made you either are pretty new to those things and only started 2 months ago, or just trolling

Not trolling, please don't ignore the context.

Someone is saying GW has no strategic plan and is ignoring revenue opportunities. It was compared with Apple and the release of iPhones. When asked for evidence, someone brought up a $5 a month cell phone app.

I am saying the GW app is insignificant. The leadership team just doubled the value of the company during a period of lockdowns. Using the app as evidence of incompetence is nitpicking, it's just another piece of surveillance capitalism and having it fail is a net positive to those of us who are opposed to such things.

What actually matters is the thread topic, people are sick of seeing Space Marine releases and would like to see more Xenos releases. The financial successes are important because they suggest people in leadership actually know how to grow a company. Starting from this point may help us demonstrate why Space Marine releases are so frequent relative to other factions.

So, if you want to talk about mistakes, show me something that cost money. I am not aware of any.

I have definitely lost interest in modern 40k (i.e. non APOC, Kill Team, or earlier edition rules), and the amount and frequency of GW's rules releases are a significant factor. Space Marines, being at the forefront of releases the past two years, obviously get everyone's attention, but the sheer volume of additional rules, changes to those rules, faq and errata, and then the resetting to a new edition starting the process over again, has really turned me off.

I came back to 40k during the beginning of 8th edition after many years , and admittedly liked what I saw. But after the 8th Ed. Space Marine codex 2.0 and the various supplements, I got turned off from standard 40k and focused more on Apocalypse and earlier editions of the game. I have recently gotten into AOS, and am really liking how that game is evolving in comparison to the bloated mess of 40k at the moment.

Someone is saying GW has no strategic plan and is ignoring revenue opportunities. It was compared with Apple and the release of iPhones. When asked for evidence, someone brought up a $5 a month cell phone app.

No one. Literally no one, said they had "no strategic plan." You implied they could not be caught be surprise, and I disagreed and showed several examples where they literally got it wrong. At no point did anyone say "they're fools just launching garbage at the wall to see what sticks" or anything like that. lol

I simply made the point that even large, successful companies can, in fact, get things wrong. I never even implied they were making massive mistakes. Just that can get things wrong occasionally.

So, if you want to talk about mistakes, show me something that cost money. I am not aware of any.

The problem is, you only want to set the parameters at a point in time between a few months after Roundtree started, and now. GW was still a large company with a large market cap under Kirby. Almost all the conditions (NOT ALL, but many) you list were still "things" under Kirby. They made many very bad bottom line mistakes during that era. It could even be said they .... got it wrong on occasion ...

And again - I never actually said "They are incompetent". Just that they are still figuring out certain things, and that this can lead to bad predictions and odd statements like "Xenos don't sell". I never implied the sky was falling and they were going to go out of business because of it.

Tycho wrote:

Someone is saying GW has no strategic plan and is ignoring revenue opportunities. It was compared with Apple and the release of iPhones. When asked for evidence, someone brought up a $5 a month cell phone app.

No one. Literally no one, said they had "no strategic plan." You implied they could not be caught be surprise, and I disagreed and showed several examples where they literally got it wrong. At no point did anyone say "they're fools just launching garbage at the wall to see what sticks" or anything like that. lol

I simply made the point that even large, successful companies can, in fact, get things wrong. I never even implied they were making massive mistakes. Just that can get things wrong occasionally.

Strategic plan means research. Growth is always informed by research.

Again, something someone with a background in accounting or finance would know.

they made every BA/DA/DW/SW player buy 2 books instead of 1, on top of that they made it shortly after all those players bought their PA books, which were being invalidated by the not-codex books. The only way to maximize it even further would have been, if they also released the CA book at the same time with updated points costs and rules for all armies. Including the ones with 9th ed books.

Books like codices and supplements are a major part of GW's sales strategy.

For the player base, this is more an issue.
E.g. BA players now have to spend more than 50 € for codex and supplement, while vanilla Marine players have it better.

 techsoldaten wrote:

So, if you want to talk about mistakes, show me something that cost money. I am not aware of any.

than lets stay with the App
some people who know more about App making pointed out how expensive that one is and that the costs per month GW pays for that thing cannot be made back with the low amount of people paying the fee

and I don't know why you bring in the Lockdown/Pandemic as a negative factor
any game company that was not able to increase their profit during the "get a hobby to stay at home" time has a very bad managment

if anything, the lockdown made it easier for GW and might have covered loses from mistakes that would have made a bigger impact without

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Clearly we're just working to different definitions of mistake.
I personally wouldn't think that tanking your stock would be a necessary prerequisite of a mistake.

IT Director here.

The App was put on an unworkable deadline. Look at what happened to Cyberpunk 2077.

The App had a window they wanted it to hit to make an impact and it didn't pan out. The initial price is likely a poor calculation on their part based solely around recovering the likely large costs incurred by the project. The thing people should be noticing is that someone has enough sway to both put it into a beta and not charge customers and then reduce the price.

I don't think they intended a price switch-a-roo.

 techsoldaten wrote:

Strategic plan means research. Growth is always informed by research.

no and no
you can have a plan without research, question is just how well it will work
and "always" is a very strong word here and growth can be achieved in many ways not necessarily related to reseach