The Biggest Loser in 7th ed.

[Caitsidhe]

Simple observation. Across multiple gaming groups and communities on the west coast at least, a significant number of players are quitting and starting other games. Some are still playing, but dividing their attention between gw and others. Wildey said nothing that excludes this as a possibility. We don't know how much of the revenue loss is from their changing release strategy or from players quitting, but you don't seem willing to think that players quitting might be a possible reason.

Yep. That is the anecdotal evidence in my area too. Some have quit 40K but most are splitting their time and finances between it and other games. Since these are not people of leisure who can afford to buy everything and every new game that comes along, it logically follows that every dollar spent on one of the other games is not spent on 40K. The doggedly stubborn attitude some demonstrate in regards to admitting that the competition is up and running is a very odd way of looking at things. I found the argument that since their transactions are not public, they could be in any horrible state very entertaining. The exact opposite is true. Private companies do not have the deep pockets to call upon that Corporations do, and thus when you see steady growth in such a company you can rest assured they took that money from increasing profits or their lenders took their increasing profits into consideration in loaning them expansion funds. *Remember that this is a niche industry and lenders in general aren't going to fork out cash to a company whose liquidation of assets isn't likely to recoup their losses. You can, thus, assume that private companies making a strong, growing showing are doing well enough.

The issue, for some here at least, is admitting that Games Workshop can make mistakes, or has ever made a mistake. When I hear people going to the ends of the Earth to try and find justifications or explanations for things I have to question their objectivity. It makes me think there is more at work than they merely being died in the wool fan-boys. I just take their posts with a grain of salt and a heavy helping of humor. There is very little I can say that will make them look more foolish than they do themselves. They tend to switch back and forth between a fawning Smeagol and a hissing Gollum providing a rather interesting show.

"Smeagol loves the Precious yes, Games Workshop was my birthday present... yessss... with the Precious all things are possible...."

"You DARESSSS insult the precious! We will makes it squeal!"

All humor aside, the days when Games Workshop could count on a monopoly are over. This is, in part, due to technology. The means to create and manufacture quality models is out there and spreading fast. That genie is already out of the bottle as far as industry is concerned, and it won't be too much longer before we get it as private citizens too. New companies don't have to play catch up and pay the dues Games Workshop did to get where they are today. Technology is saving them them those steps. Games Workshop has also proven there is a market for the product. This means more people will get into it, particularly as the costs for starting up and competing have gone down. The writing is on the wall and Games Workshop must (and will) eventually adapt to the new paradigm. It is odd that they clearly wish to be dragged into it kicking and screaming, but that has often been the case of such businesses over the last twenty years.

[DarkLink]

A business friend pointed out that gw's new release schedule is probably designed to flood the market in an attempt to smother out its competitors. Too little, too late, though.

[Sainhann]

True, and the biggest up and comer is Manatic Games.

Ran by quite a few individuals who were at GW before and have now left.

They have slowly been pushing out new product and games and have been using Kickstarter to fund a few of them.

Deadzone a game played on a very small area 24" x 24".

Plus they are putting out new stuff faster than GW at times, like their new Battlezone terrain pieces.

Oh and for less money as well.

So yes GW is feeling the crunch and they really do need to rethink what they have been doing.

Sure they got money from the ChapterHouse lawsuit ($25,000) but they took a big hit when they lost whole sections of that lawsuit.

Which is why they are calling the Imperial Guards by that new name and the same goes for Space Marines.

So they are revamping 40K because they have took notice that there sales are down and that many gamers just did not buy into them pushing large over priced models.

[DarkLink]

How do you know Mantic is the biggest? Especially since the numbers point to Warmahordes as being the top seller behind 40k, and X-Wing is right there .

Regardless, there's now a dozen solid competitors that are too entrenched to go away anytime soon. Instead of pricing other games out of the market, GW's new strategy might hurt itself more than it helps because of that. But we'll see.

[daboarder]

A business friend pointed out that gw's new release schedule is probably designed to flood the market in an attempt to smother out its competitors. Too little, too late, though.

also seems to not understand what the community feels the core issues are.

ie: rules (communication) and cost.

[Sainhann]

How do you know Mantic is the biggest? Especially since the numbers point to Warmahordes as being the top seller behind 40k, and X-Wing is right there .

Regardless, there's now a dozen solid competitors that are too entrenched to go away anytime soon. Instead of pricing other games out of the market, GW's new strategy might hurt itself more than it helps because of that. But we'll see.

Up and comer - I.E. new and busy putting out stuff.

Better rule designers as well.

GW has crap for rules designers now.

[Kaptain Badrukk]

How do you know Mantic is the biggest? Especially since the numbers point to Warmahordes as being the top seller behind 40k, and X-Wing is right there .

Regardless, there's now a dozen solid competitors that are too entrenched to go away anytime soon. Instead of pricing other games out of the market, GW's new strategy might hurt itself more than it helps because of that. But we'll see.

In a selected sample of indie traders, in America. Just saying.
Here in Aus the big competition is MTG (and other card games), they're the biggest thing in the nerd market by far.
Warmachine has a small dedicated following, about the same size as the spartan and "other" games.
Not seen any mantic at all!
GW is the big dog still, but the third parties stock less of their stuff these days (i'm told, i've only been here 6 months).
Chap I talked to who runs one of the rogue traders near me decided to be surprisingly honest (we bonded over shared experience of programming mainframes for financial institutions) and basically said that their profit margins and rate of purchases are so much higher on card games compared to anything else that they could stock he decided that he'd pour all his efforts into supporting that in store. Which is fair enough, dude has a business to run.

[Wolfshade]

I've still yet to see infinity, warhammahordes, etc played...

I think one of the big problems is a matter of time and space. 40k requires a big board 6x4 and a lot of time to play, so if you start at say 20:00 it is 22:00 before you are finishing, plus time to decamp. Yet it was a response from the community wanting to play bigger games that 2nd skirmish became 3rd larger scale.

I completely agree with what people say about the card games, they take very little shelf space, require a small amount of table top room to play.

As a company view point, they have already designed the card format, so all they need to do is come up with the rules and art work, and that is always going to be cheaper than even making a new SM box.

The thing is I don't see MTG as competition though as it isn't a table top wargame, not at least how I reckon.

With new compaines there is an enthusiam and (hopefully) rapid expansion, in a way that a mainstay can't achieve.

It would be nice to see this competion act as proper competion athat will hopefully drive the market in the right way, better plastic toys, better rules and better value for money. Now all of these are very subjective, after all, I might consider £15 for a box of unposable 5 plastic people fine, others might thing, for £15 they want multi-part plastic kits, others wouldn't care if they were posable or not, just that there should be more than 5 miniatures in the box.

I would hazard a guess that the reason why the margins are tight on GW stuff is that they themselves want to be the manufacturer and retailer. Which works fairly well when you have fairly high density populations, like in northern europe, but not so great in vast places like Canada and Australia whereby the amount of stores needed to get the same coverage is uneconomical.

[BeardMonk]

On an aside, but linking into Wolfshades post, I also wonder if the change in GW marketing strategy and the increasing popularity of other games is also down to another factor. Peoples shortening attention spans.

I got into the hobby via WHF and still love that particular game. But it’s can be a long game. But as a person who runs and plays Pathfinder rpg, I have no issue starting up a game at mid day and still being at it at 8 in the evening. However, I think it’s rare to find that kind of patients and attention span in the newer generation of wargames and tabletop players (14-19). However the younger age groups and new players are more likely to be evangelical about whichever game system they get into.

The newer and/or younger players want big bangs, bright lights, big impressive models and all in under two hours, thank you very much. WamaHordes, for example, delivers a faster pace of play with cool models, mega bold feats/magic from your warcasters and I don’t think iv ever played a game longer than 90 minutes. It also has easy to pick up rules, stat cards included and it has full online player support. But I wouldn’t like to say it a “better game” than 40K/WHF, its just different. But its shorter, bolder outlook could explain why lots of people, including myself are playing it more and more, often at the expense of GW games. You can build a toy car quicker with Duplo than you can with Mechano

I think its notable the GW withdrew all support for the specialist games like BFG, Inq etc despite there still being a dedicated following for a number of those games. Games that required a little more thinking on behalf of the players. I would imagine that a large percentage of revenue comes from newer players who are establishing their armies than from older players who already have a lot of models.

The new ruleset and strategy from GW could be GW trying to market to this new generation of less attentive players. Big models, take what you want, looser rules so games are played faster.

Or maybe im completely wrong :-)

[Wolfshade]

You might be on to something. I know with my gaming group we will quite happioly sit down and play different board games for 6/7 hours an evening, though the times when we play big long games, are quite rare now-a-days.

I think Kill Team is a great game and makes a smaller, more skirmish game. It has the huge advantage in time and space and cost to get into.