The Great GW Pricing Poll

[Wildeybeast]

I've always said they are expensive for what they actually are, but it's a luxury hobby and if you don't like the price don't play. I've always stumped up the cash for shiny stuff without complaint. Then they released Witch Elves at £35 for a box of ten. Not only was that too much for even me to stomach, but at the very same time they released the new DE warriors box at £20 for a box of ten. That is just a nerd tax, plain and simple.

[Kane Leal]

What I would be interested in seeing is a more structured decrease than a flat percentage across the board. I think they would do well to:
1) Drop prices on a basic unit per army by a good chunk, maybe as deep as 30%
2) Drop prices on numerous boxed sets per army by a smaller percentage, in the 15-20% range.
3) Choose one vehicle per army to decrease in cost by 15-20%. Older models like the Land Raider could also see a good decrease.
4) Keep higher prices on the more detailed and expensive models.
5) Sell a "rules only" rule book at a good price.

My hope with changes like this is to encourage people to buy into the most common models at a more reasonable cost, and still make good profit on the higher end models.

[Steven Palmer]

Hell if gw could drop the prices down even a little would be amazing.

[Joey Williams]

im gona hafta be honest (forgive my poor grammar for those demand me be literate but were not here for proper english)

i had been a loyal vetran player (and buyer!) to GW i love there products i love there quality in there products, for the last 3 years i find myself going to online stores more often where i can pick up models £10 cheaper than GW's average price of a big model (eg the all love-able new tyranid models) when it comes to "limited Ed" items like codexs/ cases whatever, i can say fare enough to a price thats pretty high but back in the day of my young years of 40k a Land Raider was £25/£30! now it sits around £50 a GW manager once said to me "be loyal to us help save GW" (this was around 4 months ago) my reply simply was "you cant save a ship when its captain has doomed it to sink" (the manager aparently quit his job 2 weeks later)

GW you've had a great run thus far but if you wish to continue embrace Tzeencth for Change is upon you or fall and never rise again

[Mr Mystery]

The Tyranid release features bulk deals of a sort.

The 20 Gaunt boxes offer a saving on a price per model basis.

The Swarm box offers a significant discount, and doesn't contain units you would otherwise not buy.

Toe in the water, or sign of things to come, it's encouraging.

[mustardsword]

I'd say the prices do not need to be dropped a lot across the board. It would probably be more sensible to make the pricing more transparent and drop the prices on the most ridiculously priced items. Make it something like three tiers of characters, 5-model infantry boxes, 10-model infantry boxes, 5-man cavalry boxes, monsters each.

Stop producing heaps of stuff that no one ever has the time to collect. Go for quality instead.

For every percentage of cost dropped, you need the same increase in sales to make the same level of profit.
10%? Possible.
20% plus? Unlikely.

This is wrong. To make up for a 10% decrease in price, you need to increase sales by more than 11%, to make up for a 20% decrease you need to sell 25% more and so on. Your point is still valid, though, and I agree. Dropping prices like crazy won't benefit them much.

[crandall87]

Of course people want lower prices. I want everything in the world to be cheaper but it's not going to happen, especially at GW

There are quite a few independent stockists of GW products. They all sell GW stuff at a discount usually at 20% off. I honestly believe that GW don't like this and set their prices higher as they know people will use these stores so GW might as well get as much as they can.

[Mr Mystery]

Yet retailer discounts don't affect GW's take.

From what I understand, all retailers buy at the same wholesale price.

[Ezaviel]

Similarly i'd like to see heroes returned to a sane price and avaliability. Metal blisters (£6-12) used to be the core of my 40k experiance. I loved them, i could easily drop £30 a week on blisters because they were so exciting and fresh (2006-2010. Not long ago), but when GW started finecast they dropped availability to 0 (i went into GW last september, a good sized one. 15 40k finecast blisters, 4 of which where the apoc special marines).

Geez. It's times like this when I realise just how expensive the hobby has become. When I started collecting GW, one of my first purchases was a metal blister. It cost £2.50...

As for the thread topic, well, technically they don't need to reduce their prices to make me "regularly start new armies", I kinda already do that.

But I certainly think their current prices are bound to do serious damage to their prospects going forwards. One of my mates and I were recently discussing how he does not think he could really afford to "start" the hobby right now from scratch. I mean, how much does a 1500-1750pts army cost? My recent 1750 Space Wolf army would be about AUD$900, probably slightly less if bought in battalion boxes etc. I could never have afforded that when I was at school.

Then again, I buy from a local stockist who has a flat 22.25% off GW retail.

[crandall87]

Yet retailer discounts don't affect GW's take.

From what I understand, all retailers buy at the same wholesale price.

Well I don't know exactly how they work but I assume they get a discount % off the retail price so higher retail price means the higher price they pay for the discount so GW kinda make up the money lost to stockists this way. Of course I'm not saying this is the case at all but GW prices seemed to have increased faster since online discounted retailers became the norm.