Referencing "the fun of 7th edition" or "the End Times" as things that say GW's going to do better is, well, silly. 7th edition didn't do much to help their sales in the last report, nor did things like Imperial Knights, which people were excited about as well. With the End Times stuff, I see a lot of people playing WFB, but not noticeably more stuff actually being sold, people are just pulling out their armies and playing again. They say they can't afford the new models coming out for it - if you skip the Spirit Hosts (kit for an existing unit) and the character on foot, the cheapest kit is $55 (and you need multiples for a realistic unit, IMO, just like with the Morghasts). It doesn't matter if the kits are nice, if people can't afford them then they can't afford them, and that's sales that aren't happening. Further, the insanely stupid limited print runs have limited sales, and by the time they get softcovers out there that are priced horribly (seriously, when they charge almost as much as they do for the hardcovers, it makes it clear that the books aren't being priced based on printing cost), a lot of people already have copied the rules they want from someone else or just downloaded a set off the Internet. And I'm having a hard time finding someone who wants to try the new spells and magic rules introduced in Khaine, so some of the shine is wearing off as people are concerned about how some of the rules affect the game (a lot of people refused to play with 50% Lords until it was errata'd into the rulebook.

So yeah, trying to fight anecdotal evidence with anecdotal evidence is silly.

The key point is that last year GW released a lot of stuff that people were "excited" about and yet sales were down. Revenues were down even as prices went up, and that means a notable drop in sales volume.

It's not as easy as price reductions. I do think some price adjustments would help a lot. I think it'd be valid to look at the line and reduce some that are priced in silly prices (Witch Elves, Space Marine characters, etc.), and just phase out some stuff (Blood Knights either need new affordable models or just dropped... but they should also get a rules tweak as well to make them seem like a better choice, sort of like mounted Blight Kings). But it'd take a lot more than that. Real customer outreach needs to exist. Reach out to the customers, engage them, get them involved more, give them "buy in." It helps you keep an eye on the pulse of the market, and also gets people more interested in buying from the company. If the hardcover books really cost so much (they don't), then drop them altogether except for limited editions. Drop the idea of being a "premium" company. Occasional collector kits or books or whatever are a good idea, but the rules especially should be an affordable way to suck people into the games and help them on their way to becoming repeat customers. If every release is a "collector" release, then the value of all of those "collector items" goes down anyway. And there's maybe 1% of their customers who even see the products that way. Even the small minority of people who just buy models and don't play games don't normally treat GW models as if they're some kind of hot commodity that's going to increase dramatically in value over time.

Basically, most of the top leadership of the company needs replaced with people who are willing to lead it in the right direction. The lower guys, like local store managers, typically have a much better clue of what the customers actually want.