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I don't play the tabletop anymore, so I can't say which faction is popular and which is not, but the current line-up of Warhammer 40k games feels like pandering. To the wrong demographic: the super hardcore 40k fans instead of the normal sci-fi lovers. Without a wide audience, these games aren't going to sell very well, even if they are good.

3 common points:

+ Not including a clear-cut narrative, protagonists, and antagonists.

+ Including a single-player campaign for every featured faction.

+ Not featuring "evil" factions like Chaos, Drukhari, and Tyranids.

I am talking about Total War: Warhammer 40k, Dawn of War 4, and Mechanicus 2.

I love Orks, Chaos, and Nids. But I love them as antagonists to be fought against rather than as playable factions. Having good villains is a good selling point. Here is a quote: It's not hate that is important, it's the desire to annihilate. These 40k factions make good villains. I love to fight the Covenant in Halo. And I love to fight against Nazis in WW2 games.

But now we are getting narratives where every faction is treated the same. And it feels very stale. The stake is low because I don't care about who is winning or what will happen if somebody wins. None of the factions endear me. Like, I love Gabriel Angelos and Cyrus from Dawn of War 2. Angelos in Dawn of War 3 is a joke, and I fear Cyrus in Dawn of War 4 will be super forgettable due to how the campaign works and the fact that Lion El Johnson is going to be in the game.

Warhammer 40k developers need to look at normie games like Boltgun, Battlesector, Chaos Gate, and Space Marines 2. These games are uncomplicated fun, and they sold very well. Their campaigns aren't deep and only give an excuse for players to live in their power fantasy of defending humanity from aliens and heretics.

bibotot wrote:
+ Not including a clear-cut narrative, protagonists, and antagonists.

+ Not featuring "evil" factions like Chaos, Drukhari, and Tyranids.

Stopped reading here
You clearly missed the point of 40k. There are no antagonists or protagonists, everyone is committing atrocious acts for their own reasons, no one is "good".
40k is being extremely successful in a time where sci-fi classics like Star Trek and Star Wars a struggling to stay relevant, precisely because 40k is what it is. There is no need to cater to a "wide audience" when you are already one of the most successful IPs.

But on a more serious note, these games are made by separate studios and separate publishers. They pay a ton of money to GW to be allowed to use a clearly defined fraction of their IP and they need to run any story they tell by GW. Obviously they are not taking financial chances by catering to a niche audience like Drukhari. No offense to the passionate players here on dakka, but on other platforms the drukhari communities tend to be somewhere in size between imperial knights and league of votan.
I personally would absolutely love a game where you play as drukhari archon with a mix of raids, assassinations and intrigue games.

In addition, there are over 40 Warhammer 40k games available on steam right now plus a bunch of mobile games and you merely played three of them. Almost every army in the game has a game dedicated to them. Tyranids naturally make bad protagonists because they are more or less a single entity, the individual organisms have no stories to tell. It's more or less the same for demons, both factions are more or less a natural disaster.
There are quite a few games where you play characters falling to chaos. However, once someone has fallen to chaos, it's super difficult make them relatable anymore, plus there is a lot of horror involved which limits audience.

Traditional antagonist factions like orks, necrons or the inquisition have successful games dedicated to them, so it's not the general problem you make it out to be.

There is no need to cater to a "wide audience" when you are already one of the most successful IPs.

This is true for GW. But the game studios that lease the IP to make the video games also need to use marketing to generate revenue from people buying the game. GW isn't going to cover their asses. Having a clear-cut narrative simply appeals more to casual players who don't need to understand the lore too deeply to have fun.

Wait….pandering to whom exactly?

Faction can matter a bit, but tbh I think its more about "the game".

Dawn of War 4 is perhaps the question mark for me. Partly because of how badly Dawn of War 3 did. But factionwise that was SM/Orks/Eldar - which is about as "standard" as you get. The game though just wasn't very fun - especially compared to previous Dawn of Wars. Space Marines, Orks, Necrons and Ad Mech.... This might be (tech) heresy - but to my mind Necrons and Ad Mech are kind of similar. This juxtaposition arguably works narratively - and for say Mechanicus - but I'm not sure about it in Dawn of War.

I didn't play Mechanicus - but I think that's because its just not the game for me. If you somehow reskinned it so it was DE fighting GSC or something, that wouldn't change. Ditto for Marines vs CSM. Of the three this is by far the most niche, but I think "if you like this" Mechanicus was a very well received game. So I hope it does well.

I think 40k Total War will be a massive success unless its a buggy mess. I mean I can criticise Empire Total War and a system with a lot more shooting tends to break their traditional game engine. But there's huge enthusiasm, and I'm going to buy it unless its completely dead on arrival. I suspect millions of other people will do the same.

I guess the only game I've not got due to "faction" would be the newer Chaos Gate. Screw Grey Knights. But arguably this is petty. Really its that I'm not a huge X Com style game fan. So not sure why I'd like this one - even with the 40k aesthetic.