GW digital products

[flekkzo]

I agree a more generic pdf would have made more sense. If its for piracy concerns, its not like there arent pdfs of all the codexes out there already anyway.

Maybe its for some interactiveness we havent seen yet. How hard would it be to have an app that built army lists and linked to a version of the dex on the pad? click units to add them, select wargear, have an army list that you can click on and it fast jumps to the stats and rules?

It's more than a carbon copy of the dex. It's made using Apple's authoring software (free) to get all the fancy interactivity features. The output of this app is exclusively sold in Apple's book store. There is nothing stopping GW from taking their original copyrighted material and transform it in some other way and sell it.

This digital dex is nothing short of sci fi. For those of you that are young let me remind you that this would have been impossible ten years ago (and I was working with the top of the line prototype smartphones of that era). This is mindblowing type of stuff. This is what Star Trek almost had in their shows.

I personally is happy that GW went with a high quality product (I downloaded the sample and it looks great. Now I just need an iPad of my own) rather than a cheap PDF (which would have taken then two minutes to make).

Also, I hope they incorporated the errata and included the FAQ. And that this way they can release an expanded SoB dex. Wouldn't that be nice?

[scadugenga]

GW fails spectacularly again.

They had such an awesome new market to explore, and they went and tossed it away with their crappy pricing strategy.

$41.99 for an ebook? The actual hard copy is cheaper, and actually uses resources...

People are buying fewer ebooks due to the "same price as paper" marketing strategy, and you want them to pay more? Publishers are already getting sued for stupid price gouging tactics.

My iPad will get along just fine without an ebook version of a codex, thanks much.

And while I enjoy and play multiple games...PP's ibodger is still free.

GW will never learn as long as sheep continue to allow themselves to be fleeced.

[miksaa]

I personally is happy that GW went with a high quality product (I downloaded the sample and it looks great. Now I just need an iPad of my own) rather than a cheap PDF (which would have taken then two minutes to make).

Well the same thing can be done in an PDF, cheap or not. Actually Adobe have programs to produce the same kind of interactive documents and they can be exported for both iBook, PDF, Flash or HTML the biggest difference is the cost for the program. But I guess they are using the Creative Suite from Adobe today so it would save a lot of time and money to use the same program for both printed and digital content (even if the tool from Apple is free) and also have the added benefit of reaching the Android community as well as any PDF able device there is.

Still this is a beginning and I hope they realize that there are other platforms than Apple that could be a market for this.

[gendoikari87]

You mean besides:

Mobile web browsing
Mobile movie watching
PDF storage and viewing
Video Conferencing
Mobile presentations
Mobile Boardgaming

I could go on.

We use ours all the time. My boss uses his almost exclusively for his business interactions.

Also:
[url]http://www.pcworld.com/article/256625/apples_ipad_will_be_more_popular_than_pcs_in_2020. html[/url]

I'd wager this is also a primary reason to go with iOS first as it is already has a deeper market penetration for tablets.

yeah but I have my laptop for that stuff. and it's more powerful.

P.S. an iPad won't work for the sorts of presentations I do.

[Thiselton]

yeah but I have my laptop for that stuff. and it's more powerful.

P.S. an iPad won't work for the sorts of presentations I do.

Who Cares about your Epic Computer Skillz, or that your computing needs are more awesome than an iPad can handle.

This is probably just a beginning into going digital with their stuff, iPad just has a huge accessible marketshare, kind of like most big smartphone apps come out on iPhone first. Quit yer *****in and roll dice.



You guys are getting so caught up on the Apple Hate that you are missing the actual problem with this release, you know the $42 price point!

$9 more for a digital copy? Yes valuable time was spent making this and the eBook stores all take their fees and charge bandwidth fees but $42 is pretty outrageous.

[Defenestratus]

As I write this post using my android powered xoom, I get angry that yet again GW has shot itself in the foot by only having this be available on the ipad. Get with the times GW. Android commands twice the marketshare of iOS globally. Twice! Apple is losing its death grip on the mobile world and you're still clinging onto that outdated model.

[olberon]

ok so to have the latest goodies from GW i need to buy an Ipad *grumble* lets see if there is another way to view that "digitally enhanced" codex

[gendoikari87]

here's a question, why not go the obvious rout and just release it for something like the kindle?

[Wildeybeast]

To those complaining/wondering why it is only available on Apple, not Android, the answer is pretty simple. I asked my games designer mate this very question when he made his first app, only on Apple (I have an Android phone). Firstly, you need an entirely seperate development process for Android to Apple. In effect, you have to make your product twice (with associated time & costs). Secondly, and more importantly is people buying it. Whilst the number of devices carrying Android is significantly larger, most people do not buy stuff on there. The majority of apps have free trial versions or fulll versions which carry advertising, whereas people buy stuff on Apple. So, for a start up app (which this is) it makes perfect sense to release it on Apple first. If it proves successful there, you can justify the costs of developing for another platform safe in the knowledge that plenty of people will buy it. I don't know how much this has cost to develop, but to give you some context a top end app such as Angry Birds can easily set you back 100k. Even for a company as big as GW, that is signifcant investment in what is entirely new field for them and one in which they have no idea how successful they will be. In summary, if you want to see it on Android, encourage people to buy it on Apple!

[Sckeetch]

Meanwhile, In Australia...

We save ~$14 by buying the digital Space Marine codex. Not too mention the extra content! I don't play Marines, but this may very well be how I buy all my army books from now on!