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Everyone knows the actual kits probably should cost 1/3rd or even 1/4th of what they do now (seriously, the clampacks are the worst) but it's the mindset that GW is in right now.

Plus, from a business standpoint, such a risk is HUGE to take (say, they do take a fiscal loss for a year to lower their price. But due to all the bad press no one buys it even at the heavily discounted price. GW would not only think that it was a bad business decision, but also may not recover from the financial loss). It's why I made an oath to purchase a new army if they ever lower the prices of said army's models to be 1/2 of the current price (which I did with the Imperial Knight release), We need to back it up with our dollar to show that it's not just the whinings of some basement dwellers.

Another thing is the business plan of "making our customers addicts to our products" isn't something unique to Games Workshop (or indeed unique to the gaming industry as a whole). Addicts are repeat customers so every single one of those companies have this mentality. However I'm in the mindset that such repeat customers not only foster toxic communities for whatever the commodity is, but it's also damaging to the company in the longrun, as while you're being kept afloat by repeat customers, you'd lose out on new customers due to everyone looking at the returners and think "my god how can someone be addicted to THAT?" and be driven off. And no matter the industry, if you have no newbloods supporting it, it will die.

The whole situation is sort of a negative feedback cycle GW dug themselves into. However the new direction they've been taking have been a good one. Only time will tell if this is enough to steer GW away from the oncoming iceberg, or if we'll all find out we're way too late to pull away and should probably grab a life jacket before the escape boats fill up.

We can pretty clearly see GW has been having problems. They remain profitable, but this has largely been through non-repetable cost reduction measures (e.g. ditching metals, reducing store staff to 1, etc) and occasional big product drops (such as forcing all stockists to replace their entire paint inventory a couple years ago), while *revenue* has been on a consistent and determined decline for over a decade, particularly once adjusted for inflation.

This, coupled with drastically increased prices gives us the conclusion that GW is not moving anywhere near as much product as it used to.

So something isnt working for the long haul here, and thats why we have seen GW radically changing release patterns, IP, systems, etc in the last couple of years, though usually in a manner almost intentionally contrary to what the market ia looking for, and we've seen an explosion in competition for GW of late, where once there was effectively none.

They want to attract kids but fail to realise kids have no money and parents are not all stupid enough to buy little timmy overpriced toy soldiers,when i started in 94 (yeah i'm old okay) £5 got you 5 marines not the best but they let you bulk your army little by little.

Now prices go up but not the way GW's have they no longer have anything you can buy for pocket money, they've priced kids out, they've out right rejected veterans so now they are left with an ever decreasing pool of customers.

Their games are low quality don't kid yourself thinking otherwise they are not designed to have fun but to make you buy bigger models than the other guy.

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It could be a lot worse... you could have blind boxes where you get a random unit from a faction with certain units being more rare than others >.>

Matt from miniwargaming (on youtube) made some really good points about how businesses operate that give me some sympthy for GW. They're not making money hand over fist - in fact they appear to be struggling, so you can bet that their products are priced to maximise the profit so they don't go out of business!


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 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
And no matter the industry, if you have no newbloods supporting it, it will die.

This is a really important point. I think this is what AoS was all about. I'd like to know if it worked or not.

 corpuschain wrote:
Matt from miniwargaming (on youtube) made some really good points about how businesses operate that give me some sympthy for GW. They're not making money hand over fist - in fact they appear to be struggling, so you can bet that their products are priced to maximise the profit so they don't go out of business!

They mostly seem to be struggling because they are still working as if it is the 1990's, the internet doesn't exist, and they have spent the last 10-15 years alienating most of their customer base.

Maximizing profit isnt just a function of price, its also a function of quantity, and theyre almost certainly priced higher than that optimal point where marginal revenue equal marginal cost that results in maximized profit. GW has spent a decade on increasing the prices of their products, all the while suffering a consistent decline in revenue. They've made structural changes to the business to remain profitable, but they cant repeat thise forever and their revenue continues to decline year over year.


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 SilverMK2 wrote:

 corpuschain wrote:
Matt from miniwargaming (on youtube) made some really good points about how businesses operate that give me some sympthy for GW. They're not making money hand over fist - in fact they appear to be struggling, so you can bet that their products are priced to maximise the profit so they don't go out of business!

They mostly seem to be struggling because they are still working as if it is the 1990's, the internet doesn't exist, and they have spent the last 10-15 years alienating most of their customer base.

indeed...one can only be successful for so long when you actively avoid (and boast about to investors) interacting with your customer base.