Quote Originally Posted by Erik Setzer View Post
I won't say GW is dying, or that Hasbro will take over... but they are currently failing at what a company's supposed to do: Make money. Their sales keep dropping despite the release of more and more expensive products that seems to be in high demand. That's a really, really bad sign. I wish I could see serious numbers breaking down what's being sold, but if I had to guess, I'd bet that most of their sales are going to entrenched customers who are too bought-in to leave the hobby cold turkey, and there's dwindling numbers of new entrants, which is not a good sign.

You're mocking people on the price point, but it's true that a lot of stuff isn't selling just based on price. I know people who would love to run Witch Elves in their Elf armies (whether pure Dark Elf or mixed), but are turned off by the insane price point. No one will buy Blood Knights because they're $100 for five models (and the rules certainly don't justify that). A flat cut wouldn't help, they need to actually take a solid look at their ranges and adjust prices across the board. In most cases, that's a cut, yes. Find the sweet spot where you hit a price that people will start picking up more items.

They've done the work for us in dismantling most of the arguments in favor of their pricing scheme. Claims of the cost of material or the work involved don't work when comparable boxes are half the price. Similarly, defense of the price of hardback sets vanishes when you see a softcover set with no slip cover released for minor savings ($66 as opposed to $74, for example). And given that other companies - let's be kind and skip something like D&D where the volume can be much higher, and rather just look at other miniatures game companies - can sell books that are bigger, equal or better quality, and yet noticeably cheaper... Yeah, that's a problem. It also is stupid from a marketing point, because the rules are the reason people buy the models, not vice-versa, so you want the rules to be pretty cheap and accessible in order to get more people to buy them, which will lead them to then buy more models. The books should be a gateway, with minimal profit (but still some profit), being used to push people to the higher-profit miniatures lines.

There's other areas that they're not doing so well. Product quality went into the toilet in recent years with Finecast. I was already annoyed at my poor Liche Priest's staff warping, but a guy recently pulled out his Bretonnians to play some games to get back into WFB, and several of them had warped lances and other pieces that are seriously out of shape. It's not like this stuff is being left in brutal heat or anything. No one leaves their models in their car for long periods. But just the regular Florida heat is enough to ruin Finecast models. You shouldn't have to keep straightening models, especially after they're painted and doing so could damage the paint job.

But hey, they're doing fine, right? Profits continue to drop, revenue continues to drop even as they push out another edition of their flagship game and several high-dollar products and expenses are down... Yeah, those are signs of things going just fine, and anyone who disagrees is clearly an idiot.
Are you aware of the concept of brevity?