"Sales woe for Games Workshop" Topic

You mean after all this they're still going ahead with more stores in the US. And in doing so creating a bigger drain on their overhead?

They really should stick with the established independant stores. They'll ahve to go through a middleman, but it will soak up the costs as the middleman can make money selling other things.

There is no GW store in my area thankfully, but the 2 possibly 3 local game stores stock them. I'm not sure about the 3rd one, I've just heard about it haven't looked into it yet.

And just to be funny, but it probably isn't.
Does any one think a Pepsi store would work?

No, but a Nike store might.

I was looking at all the small-press miniatures I love to drool over, but thinking "They're not that cheap really, when I factor in postage to Australia".

Then I went and looked at current GW prices. Now, I'd given up 40K but had fond dreams of completing an Eldar force (I had to give up on it in high school and later due to no income) to play some pick up games with the GW crowd.

Current prices are insane. Just insane. I would never ever buy anything from them at current retail. Even the big plastic sets with lots of troops are more expensive than choice metals imported from the UK against the exchange rate and with +35% postage. At lower prices I might consider it but at this rate it'd take my ENTIRE hobby budget to finish an army in 40K leaving nothing for impulse buys, characters, RPGs, or terrain.

Screw that!

I pity the kids… How can a child justify to himself a $26 USD AU purchase for 1 Space Marine Character (Commander) let alone justify it to his Mum???

T-w-e-n-t-y s-i-x d-o-l-l-a-r-s for one bloody mini. What a joke.

Even $35 USD AU for 5 scouts is a joke.

Found on GW webshite in Australia: Space Marine 750pt army deal Beta (29 minis, 750 pts… not even enough for a full army) costs AU $243. USD

And you'd have to add on top of that:

GW paints. Add GW paint brushes. Add GW glue. Add GW sand and GW flock/static grass. Add extra components for the conversion fad. Add GW carry case. Add GW battle mat. Add GW trees. Add GW hills. Add gw green stuff. Add gw metal sculping tool for green stuff work. Add GW clippers. Add gw pva glue. Add gw hills. Add gw rulebook. Add 2 gw codixes (space marines and special chapter codex). Add Wargear book. Add GW dice. Add gw tape measure. Add 12 months of White Gnome magazine.

Then add another 750 points worth because:

1. you can't get a game unless you have 1500 points.

2. The game was really intended for battles of 1500 points (noone cares about the y 500pt scenarios) a side.

Ok, so off to the local gw store for another 750 points worth. I guess it will cost another $243. USD Wrong. Firstly, $243 USD was the online SPECIAL price. Secondly, that was only for some infantry and scouts and a commander. To get the nice Terminators, dreadnoughts, vehicles and their ilk, we'll need to fork out the premium bucks. I can't be bothered looking at how much that will cost but we all know that the price will be obscene.

Sales woe for GW, eh? Gee wiz, with these affordable prices, the stock must be running out the door!

On the other hand, perhaps the overall prohibative price to complete an army works in GW's favour.

Perhaps someone buys $300 USD bucks worth and doesn't get around to playing much because he hasn't invested the sufficient dosh to get a game worthy army on the table. He then gets bored with the army (or a new army list comes out and gets hyped up in White Supprem… I mean White Dwarf) and he starts all over again.

One of the many things that now makes me laugh when reading WD is the way GW are subtly trying to imply on both WD adn on their website that you build say one Space Marine army, then when the new sculpts are out you *really* should then buy the army again using the new sculpts. I do wonder when they'll try the "you can only play in store and at their tournaments with the latest figures for the army" again.

I used to really enjoy WD with Fat Bloke and then Guy. Yes I realise it's more of a catalogue than magazine (how I miss the pre-issue 90 days!) but every month they'd print something that'd get me painting or trying new things out.

The new WD under Owen is seriously making me think about not renewing my subscription this year due to the constant "bargain" prices being shoved down my throat on every page and article!

The articles are getting too hard sell generally as is and I really don't need everything priced next to each article to show me I only need to spend 50 GBP to play a scenario and by bulk buying I am saving 8 GBP! Or thinly disguised adverts on why I should buy unbreakable troops in WHFB.

Oh well eh?

I let my US WD subscription run out, as I got tired of all the "staff painting" competitions they kept showing. And the "buy this Forgeworld thingy to make your army unbeatable" stuff WITHIN articles was a bit too blatant. Now, if they'd had the free regt. box with renewal, I would have bit, but with the insulting "$20- free minis (*our choice*)" offer, I decided to save $60- a year….

There was a full page taken out in a recent Australian white dwarf that warned customers of cheap imitations and pirated figs…

There should be a "wallet health" warning sticker on all GW products.

They have seriously lost a paying customer. I'm not paying GW for anything. Ebay or my own sculps now.

It wasn't too hard to make my own squigs, squig hoppers and night goblins out of super sculpy.

That saved me a good $150AU and was rewarding too.

I agree with bugstomper the recent White Dwarfs are really bad a 2 page necron lord article, my 10 year old daughter could have came to the same conclusion.

Black Templars again and next month the start of 3 months of Tau wow I am so impressed.

By the way I was banned from my local store by a manager for having beaky marines and other old models. One of my many run in's with the man in the red shirt.

At a recent wargames show a lot of suppliers were saying the same things, and grumbling about the price rises, 25% on some things. It not only makes it harder to sell the stuff on, but costs more to stock in the first place. It'll be interesting how many independant stores start cutting their ties with GW in coming months.

You mean the few that have not done so, right?

Ah, what I will miss is getting more Blood Bowl figs from a retailer in Mexico that did not mark up already absurdly priced product…

Anyway, it their loss. This time for REAL, it seems.

Actually, if you're not going for cartoony minis, its difficult to find fantasy and futuristic lines that look as good for the same price. I quite enjoy the rulesets, although they have standardized everything a bit too much now it seems. A multiplayer scavenger-hunt version of Mordheim would have been really sweet. As far as price, knock of 15-20% and try and hook the younger kids with box sets of plastics that give a good game with minimal investment, and generate completely new games that aren't just moviecraze. I now buy only the well sculpted figures, and most have been dark haven, warzone and GW. Though, I have much more money nowadays, and used to buy about 10x more figs.

I forgot to say that my huge problem with playing WHFB or 40k is that the rank and file troopers are extremely similar to each other. I think the individual scultping is great and lets people convert with the plastics very easily. However, there should be several sprues of conversion bits and fluff bitz included in each box of plastics.

For an extra 10 dollars, right?

No, no wait… They shoudl be put out by ForgeWolrd at 300% the normal price for not even half the number of COMPLETE figures made in plastic.

Yeah! That would help the sales!!!

I'm a computer gamer, so I've noticed that GW is licensing out its properties more readily now, probably hoping to counteract its poor minis sales.

Oh, and this time they're making sure to license to good companies.

Their last game from Dawn of War, a big hit that has a second expansion pack in development. No doubt it got them a lot of money and that there's a Dawn of War 2 secretly in development.

They also licensed out the warhammer fantasy universe for a fantasy game similar to Rome: Total War.

I'm just wondering why they haven't outsourced all their production to China already. I mean, Tennessee is great for a low-wage union-busting environment, but it has nothing on the Shenzen Special Economic Zone!

If they could figure out how to keep their stuff from being pirated by the Chinese, they'd be over there overnight….

"If they could figure out how to keep their stuff from being pirated by the Chinese"

I'm sure they'd rather pirate the more popular Japanese toys that are made in China than something as niche as GW.

Chinese mass production is a non issue. Their largest markets are in places where stores wouldn't be allowed to sell the bootlegs. Sure, you might find stuff in the local dollar store that looks vaguely spacemarine-ish, but with terrible mould lines and a gummy appearance. But they could do that now.

Sorry, I meant Chinese mass piracy, not production.

@"kharn no mor" – If you're playing at your local GW and you get banned for bringing your beakies to play 40k with complain to the area manager.

If your minis are Citadel minis then you are allowed to play with them in store. Heck, my Dark Elf army is predominantely mid 80's minis.

A number of years ago GW tried the "you can only play with the most recent models in store and at tournaments" line and people simply walked away in their droves.

Of course, they could've changed their mind again.

Yes the manager was moved on I think for breaking a kids dreadnought into pieces for beating him. I did complain and didn't hear a thing but kept going into the store with my old models.

It was during the upgrade phase thankfully as you have stated they realised that this wouldn't work even for them!

He broke a kids Dreadnaught? What a total <insert expletive of choice>!

Funny, I have avoided this thread for nearly a month…

I really would like to see GW go down, but not necessarily out of vindictivness or hatred of them, but rather as a dislike for what I have seen them do to the hobby. They do not seem to care about it.

Their products feel to me like the corporate driven music that drove me to punk and deathrock/goth in the first place. It was that look that Bryan Ansell noticed drew the attention of EVERYONE at the conventions that I attended and that he saw in other Goths in Europe (Mostly England at that time) and the growing community in the US. He and Jackson and Ian whatsisname saw that by marketting to that crowd, or by simply taking that imagery they could massively boost the sales of their games. People NOTICED IT… It was Cool, it was edgy, it was something that drew you to it like a car wreck…

That sort of imagery has been replaced by a comic-book look that has BECOME the corporate produced pablum that they originally were trying to get away from…

Add that to the total disregard of the customer base, and the hobby in general… And you wind up with a company that was just playing the hobby for what it could….

I cannot say what will happen to them…

I would just like to have back a company that brought out cool minis that could be used with anything… A company that had both generic genre games, products, minis, etc AND had lines that were devoted to a specific "universe"…

It just feels to me like they have become the monster that they once fought to slay…

Lets face it GW doesn't care about the Hobby, and thats cool they are a business and all they want to do is milk you for all the money they can get.

I have no problems with businesses making money, I do have a problem with the whole, we care about you and wish to foster the "hobby" and the fact that nothing else exists but them.

They don't even admit that they made other games such as Man O war and Dark Future sometimes.

They will survive they always do!

Hey, if I had a spare 100 million or so I would buy them out and set about doing things right….

But I dont….

So until that day, I hope they get nailed, taken over and properly run.

Rant over…..

I must disagree with you kharn no mor. As a marketing professional who has studied this industry for more than 25 years, I don't think GW will survive unless they change their current business practices and overall impression of themselves in the market.

This industry is littered with the death of companies that fell victim to the fickle tastes of gamers. Most notably, TSR, but other have fallen such a FASA, Ral Partha, etc.

Plain and simple, you put out sub-par products for above-par pricing and you will turn gamers away PERMANENTLY.

Unless GW can defy the history of this industry, I believe they will cease to exist as they are known today. They are large enough, however, that they probably won't go away completely, but will most likely be bought after the senior management is done raping the company and filling their bank accounts (similar to the Blume brothers at the height of the TSR days).

I, for one, have long ago sworn off giving GW any of my business (which used to amount to about $4,000 a year) and let me be the first to say goodbye. The industry will probably be better off without them at this point.

I am only basing this on past results, in the late 80's they had problems in the 90's problems and now they are going through problems of their own making.

I agree though that they need to do something but I don't think they will close completly either. Possibly scale back but yes someone else will buy it.

They always seem to bounce back, but I have also cut back and make most purchases from E-bay now.

The hard core fanboys at GW won't care how much the prices go up, it's not their money anyway, it's the parents.

Someone will always buy the stuff, and thats the problem, if no one did then yes they would have to rethink the strategy or die.

Is there any possibility of original management returning?

I don't want to see any games companies go down, the last time it happened, it had a rippling effect, mainly in England a lot of good little companies never came back. oldbob

I've been driven away from GW products by the high prices, but I haven't permanently given up on 40k itself in spite all the questionable updates and so on. Eventually I'll be able to afford it, but not now.

If GW were to go out of business, I wouldn't mind it as much if there was an alternative that appealed to me. So far none of the other major "40k alternative" games interest me at all. I've turned to historicals, board and PC wargaming in the meantime.

kharn no mor – "The hard core fanboys at GW won't care how much the prices go up, it's not their money anyway, it's the parents."

I don't know kharn, seems to me there is still a limit to what parents will buy for them, and if some of them found out what the stuff actually costs will probably blow their tops. There's a limit to how deep their pockets are as well after all.

Sadly, Tom Kirby has apparently declined to answer the question that I submitted to GW Investor Relations (as reprinted on page 2 of this thread).

Guess Nero is too busy fiddling…