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a very simple problem:

GW is acting stupid and still doing very well and selling their stuff


this is the main reason why we have this controverse discussion as by usual buisness logic or market situation GW should be already out of buisness and any other company acting that way is

hence why "evil" GW is a thing, as there must be some evil background plan that keeps them running because being successful despite being stupid is something many people cannot get behind

there is no evil plan, to big coorporate fooling us, GW just don't know what they are doing or why they sell their stuff (starting from not knowing how to write rules to ot knowing how many copies of box need to be made to fullfil the demand)

it happens from time to time that they do something which gives them a hint what might not work, but they often draw the wrong conclusions from it (Cursed City for example)

Or, as a counter point, GW know what they are doing and the random people on a forum complaining from the outside don't.

Vorian wrote:
Or, as a counter point, GW know what they are doing and the random people on a forum complaining from the outside don't.

Well, GW sure is large enough to not really know what they are doing sometimes. The „problem“ here is mostly that acting clumsy does not get punished because their stuff still sells really well. And when you have a perceived success story, there is no internal pressure to learn lessons.

I really wish their rules writing was better. And payment for (some of) their staff - and both are likely related.

TheGoodGerman wrote:

Vorian wrote:
Or, as a counter point, GW know what they are doing and the random people on a forum complaining from the outside don't.

Well, GW sure is large enough to not really know what they are doing sometimes. The „problem“ here is mostly that acting clumsy does not get punished because their stuff still sells really well. And when you have a perceived success story, there is no internal pressure to learn lessons.

I really wish their rules writing was better. And payment for (some of) their staff - and both are likely related.

Tbh, if i got paid as much as GW's rules writers do, i probably couldn't be bothered either.

They are obviously not perfect, as no company will ever be. But their performance has been incredible so they are clearly getting the majority of things right.

Some of the previous posters have said it already, but a lot of the criticism that comes out is pretty ridiculous and will have almost no effect on their sales at all.

Considering what you get in the box (fairly good deal to me in terms of terrain, gaming board/tile as well as the miniatures, as well as getting the box set for around £100 with 3rd party sellers...) there are already plastic octarius DKoK squads on eBay with bids of £50+..... And the Ork Kommandos £40+ as well as the terrain (just the plastic) also being £40+, all with around £5 of shipping on top.

I guess this hasn't helped deter scalpers all that too much, maybe their profit margins aren't as high but they look like they are going to be making some money still... What a shame.

I also understand that some people won't have the money to buy the full box set, but seriously, £50+ just to get one squad, just wait people, you'll pick the box up for around £35, or £28 from 3rd parties with just a little bit of patience, it's better for your pocket in the long run, in fact, with waiting you'll be able to buy 2 boxes from a 3rd party for that money.

EDIT: Even less than that if the cadians with the new sprue are anything to go by, I didn't realise they were only £29 RRP.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
I guess this hasn't helped deter scalpers all that too much, maybe their profit margins aren't as high but they look like they are going to be making some money still... What a shame.

Which is odd given it hasn't even sold out yet in the US, UK or EU. The only one that I can see that's listed as unavailable is the French language one (maybe DKOK are big in France?) and in Oz because of the COVID situation many 3rd party stores are sold out (they haven't released stock through official channels yet, which has pushed everyone to the 3rd parties).

Vorian wrote:
They are obviously not perfect, as no company will ever be. But their performance has been incredible so they are clearly getting the majority of things right.

Some of the previous posters have said it already, but a lot of the criticism that comes out is pretty ridiculous and will have almost no effect on their sales at all.

which is the point, things they do wrong don't affect their sales but for different reasons

New Kill Team having garbage rules but each new Box comes with new models people are waiting for a long time that are not available outside the box, and it will sell
the conclusion is that no mistakes were made because otherwise it would not sell

than people not playing Eldar because you need ~100€ for a single Kill Team and the conclusion is that no one likes Eldar in KT hence they are never part of a Box

while at the same time, no one likes classic fantasy hence a small run of Cursed City is enough and the single print run will last for years

by "GW knows what they are doing" we have also the secret plan that new models get better rules to sell more, until we get garbage rules for new units (so GW for sure knows and just decided that they don't want to sell this model)

Looking forward to the shitshow of The Old World were GW will for know what to do and underestimate the demand for the things that people want while at the same time overproducing stuff no one is going to buy

That's a great example of the type of posts we get that presume you are correct.

Kill team doesn't have objectively bad rules, we don't know how many people will play Eldar and we don't know what actually went on with cursed City.

Then throw in some classics like they are intentionally making good rules for new releases and if they aren't good it proves their incompetence.

These are just things you personally think.

it just proofs that there is no secret plan behind anything GW does

they just throw enough gak on the wall and some if it sticks

this is were the argument comes from that GW is missing on sales by doing what they are doing and that they could have made much more money otherwise

but therefore they need to know what and why they sell in advance

and this is what they don't know because no company would intentional miss on profit

PS: and we know more or less what was going on with CC
GW decided on a number of boxes, ordered the cardboard stuff from China to fill that amount, but underestimated the demand of the game and is not going to take the risk to order more from China for another run
while the models are done in house and there is no problem in making more
and instead of saying that mistakes were made they thought it is better to act like it never happened (not necessarily for the community but company intern for the guy deciding on the number to order from China)

Kirby was absolutely correct when he said most peoples favourite part of the hobby is buying new things. I don't know why he caught so much flak for it.

Remember that even during the 'dark age' of his reign, GW was still making a profit into the millions.

 kodos wrote:
it just proofs that there is no secret plan behind anything GW does

they just throw enough gak on the wall and some if it sticks

this is were the argument comes from that GW is missing on sales by doing what they are doing and that they could have made much more money otherwise

but therefore they need to know what and why they sell in advance

and this is what they don't know because no company would intentional miss on profit

PS: and we know more or less what was going on with CC
GW decided on a number of boxes, ordered the cardboard stuff from China to fill that amount, but underestimated the demand of the game and is not going to take the risk to order more from China for another run
while the models are done in house and there is no problem in making more
and instead of saying that mistakes were made they thought it is better to act like it never happened (not necessarily for the community but company intern for the guy deciding on the number to order from China)

No, that's what people have guessed. Maybe that is the case, maybe it isn't. That doesn't explain it properly for me, but the actual reason is also immaterial.

Its also not necessarily a problem for GW (other than ill will which is impossible to quantify). If they have continued to sell out their entire production capability at the same profit margin then it won't have mattered to them at all.

Given that their producing capabilites seem to be their problem rather than demand, I'd guess that's the case.

We've also had 30+ years of experts telling us how bad GW rules are. I'd suggest GW have a proven track record of releasing rules that are good enough for their purposes.

GW has also proven that if the rules are too bad, sales collapse over night

proven the theory that people buy only their models and not "models for their games" wrong

rules need to be good enough to get people playing and leaving a promise for improvement to keep the with the game (wait for the new Codex/Edition hype)

 kodos wrote:
GW has also proven that if the rules are too bad, sales collapse over night

Did that ever actually happen?

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

 kodos wrote:
GW has also proven that if the rules are too bad, sales collapse over night

Did that ever actually happen?

ever heard of the first Version of AoS?
this was not selling until they added something that at least looked like rules to the game

Again, you have no idea of

a) The sales of AoS
b) What the pick up of sales was
c) What factors any pick up was due to

You're just posting out your guesses as fact.

We have no idea what the split between people buying for the miniatures vs people buying for the rules.

I doubt GW have much of an idea, even if you ignore the huge grey area that probably exists between the two.

 kodos wrote:
GW has also proven that if the rules are too bad, sales collapse over night

proven the theory that people buy only their models and not "models for their games" wrong

rules need to be good enough to get people playing and leaving a promise for improvement to keep the with the game (wait for the new Codex/Edition hype)

What's your definition of "proven", "too bad", "collapse" and "overnight", in this context?

I can't think of a single GW product that was ever 'Dead on Arrival', or killed an existing line instantly. Unless you mean the powershift in armies as new codices are released, but that's just tournament meta, you couldn't call it a collapse.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
EDIT: Even less than that if the cadians with the new sprue are anything to go by, I didn't realise they were only £29 RRP.

Only £29, hey? They used to nearly be half that for twice as many models.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
EDIT: Even less than that if the cadians with the new sprue are anything to go by, I didn't realise they were only £29 RRP.

Only £29, hey? They used to nearly be half that for twice as many models.

I'm still salty about when the rhino went from three-in-a-box to one, and then a short while later doubled in price!

Price is another one. They can't currently produce enough to meet demand at current prices.

Seems hard to make an argument that their prices are too high.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
EDIT: Even less than that if the cadians with the new sprue are anything to go by, I didn't realise they were only £29 RRP.

Only £29, hey? They used to nearly be half that for twice as many models.

B-but my inflatiorinoes

MarkNorfolk wrote:
I'm still salty about when the rhino went from three-in-a-box to one, and then a short while later doubled in price!

The (rather stark) difference being that that Rhino isn't on sale anymore. These are the same Cadians.

It is 'only' £29 RRP when compared to GW's other sets.... Point taken though, I remember £12 (may have been £10 to start) Tactical squads in 3rd edition...

But again, the Tactical Squad has gone through two more revisions since 3rd Ed. In fact, a lot of the Marine plastic line has been replaced twice in that time.

The Cadians are still the same Cadians.

Vorian wrote:

You're just posting out your guesses as fact.

well, than AoS sales must have been so high on release that GW decided to take a 180° turn on the rules and replace the CEO because they were not able to fulfill the demand and rather changed the game to something that sold less than to produce more

MarkNorfolk wrote:

I can't think of a single GW product that was ever 'Dead on Arrival', or killed an existing line instantly. Unless you mean the powershift in armies as new codices are released, but that's just tournament meta, you couldn't call it a collapse.

I cannot help if no one remember AoS before the first GHB was released

Warmaster is always mentioned as the big fail that was DoA and only 10 people ever played, when people ask why GW is not re-releasing it like the other old specialist games
yet it is forgotten as soon as the discussion comes to "did GW ever made a mistake"

What happened to Kerrunch?

Dreadfleet must have been big success too as well as Inquisitor

You're changing your argument.

Did having no points probably affect sales? Sure, it was unpopular.

Changing that was obvious because it basically only had up sides for GW.

What's at issue is that sales collapsed due to rules. That's just an unsupported statement on many levels.


Inquisitor lasted quite a while, don't think that or Warmaster could be described as failures (and Warmaster rules are generally thought of highly, so if it did fail it probably would not support the theory it was due to rules).

Dreadfleet probably could be described as a failure, but again, can you put that down to rules? Probably only in the sense that it wasn't Man o' war and even that is just more guesswork from us all.

 kodos wrote:

MarkNorfolk wrote:

I can't think of a single GW product that was ever 'Dead on Arrival', or killed an existing line instantly. Unless you mean the powershift in armies as new codices are released, but that's just tournament meta, you couldn't call it a collapse.

I cannot help if no one remember AoS before the first GHB was released

Warmaster is always mentioned as the big fail that was DoA and only 10 people ever played, when people ask why GW is not re-releasing it like the other old specialist games
yet it is forgotten as soon as the discussion comes to "did GW ever made a mistake"

What happened to Kerrunch?

Dreadfleet must have been big success too as well as Inquisitor

Dreadful fleet was a big sales mistake in that they changed the scale from Man O war, then made an absolutely dire set of rules, so no reason to buy it for the rules or the models. (Literally one mission at the end was roll a D6, 4+ to win.) Large amount of unsold stock exists to this day in some small shops... (the sea mat was good though).

Warmaster was profitable, and incidentally is objectively the best wargaming ruleset they have ever made, being very successful in Ancients, Medieval, WW2, Cold War and a not so successful Sci-fi conversion. It just wasn't as popular as Epic (which is what was expected - indeed when Epic A was released sales in the first quarter were 400% of Warmaster with a far more limited set of models) and worse had low profitability baked into it. The model design was great but murder on moulds, so quality control was a pain and new moulds were needed after a relatively few spins massively driving up costs. The issue there was its return wasn't high enough and it started the fears of SG stuff cannibalising their own sales. THis ultimately killed off SG stuff for a while following a soft relaunch of BFG in America where while overall sales were up, 40k sales dropped by almost as much leaving a situation of increased costs for similar sales and a worse return overall for the company.

Someone posted above about companies never turning down profit. They do, all the time, for a whole host of reasons. Damaging future sales or current % profitability is a couple of them. In short its often better to make a bigger profit on a lower turnover.

AoS was undeniably a flop when it launched.

You had the perfect storm of kicking their entire WHFB fanbase between the legs, the hugely negative press that brought even from people who weren't WHFB fans - if you're willing to take 1/3 of your core game's out back and blow it's brains out, who's to say they weren't going to do the same thing if AoS wasn't successful? - and most importantly the rules were practically non-existent. The entire relaunch hinged on Ground Marines being popular enough a concept to bring over 40k players and hope that WHFB players would be more loyal to the Games Workshop brand than rank and file fantasy.

AoS owes it's success to two factors. 1) GHB actually gave people what they'd been begging for since Day 1 (points). 2) The 8th edition of 40k revitalised a massive amount of 'good will' towards GW as a whole, which also meant people were willing to give AoS more of a shot by proxy, particularly from people who still had WHFB armies but still couldn't comprehend the idea of playing anything that wasn't a Games Workshop branded game.

Ask any LFGS owner and they'll more than likely tell you that AoS's launch box sets were gathering dust so high that it still puts Dominion (SELLING FAST!) to shame.

Cadians used to bloody cost £15 for 20.

Vorian wrote:
You're changing your argument.
Did having no points probably affect sales? Sure, it was unpopular.
Changing that was obvious because it basically only had up sides for GW.
What's at issue is that sales collapsed due to rules. That's just an unsupported statement on many levels.

points were not the only thing that changed, but what else was the reason that AoS did not sell until the rules were changed if it was not the rules?

or is you argument that AoS must have sold well and the change just increased the sales because we don't have numbers for low sales?
than what was the reason for the big change at GW HQ if not the low sales for AoS?

and no, my argument is still the same
AoS crashed on release because of the rules, and this crashed caused all sort of changes at GW

regular FAQ/Errata, interaction with the community, at least trying to make playable rules for their games happened because AoS did not sell with the initial rules released


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Warmaster was profitable, and incidentally is objectively the best wargaming ruleset they have ever made, being very successful in Ancients, Medieval, WW2, Cold War and a not so successful Sci-fi conversion. It just wasn't as popular as Epic (which is what was expected - indeed when Epic A was released sales in the first quarter were 400% of Warmaster with a far more limited set of models) and worse had low profitability baked into it. The model design was great but murder on moulds, so quality control was a pain and new moulds were needed after a relatively few spins massively driving up costs.

I know, it is just that in nearly all other topics if people talk about failed games that Warmaster is mentioned as the prime example, except this time were GW never had any failed game at all and even the (wrong) example of Warmaster was not a thing