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GW Watch: The Day Everything Changed?
January 23, 2014 by warzan
Being a fan of the largest gaming company in the history of little plastic men, can be a very time consuming thing, perhaps even all encompassing! So excuse me while I indulge this little obsession once again 😉
Today maybe (and I stress maybe) the day everything changed at Games Workshop. Sure we can dig away at rumors and speculation, but sometimes the signs that something is changing are in plain sight. They can be very slight, but if you know what you're looking for…
For any of the ‘Marketers’ out there among you (and by that I mean everyone as we’re all bedroom marketers at the end of the day) there was an interesting shift in today's email from Games Workshop.
Let me show you…
That right there I believe is a shift in pattern for GW, of course I’m happy to be proved wrong on this, but I have dug through some past emails and generally don’t see any emphasis on price.
To have two statements of ‘Value’ connected directly to price in this email, surprised me… because that's not how Games Workshop roll.
The company doesn't have a marketing department, but even so have been very careful 'Marketers' over the years, and have always pegged their ‘Value’ on other aspects such as design and intellectual property, but never price.
Rightly so as arguably the best miniature producer in the world (I only put arguably in there as someone will no doubt want to argue with me about that!) they had oodles of strengths to attach the value of their brand to , in fact everything but price.
So for a company that wanted to be seen as a luxury brand, attaching any value to price is a highly risky move if not handled correctly.
Case in point, is you are unlikely to see ‘Only $500!’ or ‘One Fantastic Price!’ ever uttered on official Apple promotional materials.
Because for Apple products they attach the value to the ‘unique’ things about an Apple product, things you cannot realistically debate.
Is £105 really a ‘fantastic’ price for a Tyranid swarm… well i would say that is highly debatable (even for Beasts of War who ‘Never Mention Price!’)
So what are we seeing?
1) Someone new taking over the newsletters who doesn't understand the ‘value’ proposition within GW, in which case this is likely to be a one off.
2) GW are perhaps running out of ideas a little and are resorting to tried and tested sales speak to see if it has any positive effect on their Conversion Rate.
3) Perhaps this is part of something more thought out, where the language of ‘price’ is starting to become more important to them. (Perhaps part of The Chairman's (And CEO too now lets not forget!) strategy to sell harder!)
As someone who's been involved in marketing for ‘quite a while’ now, it doesn't sit well for me. To be in a position where your whole value conversation shifts from look at these exquisite models you will find no where else on earth, to look at the cost of these models ‘it’s ONLY!’ blah blah … is a road most wouldn't ever want to venture down.
So is it a blip, am I doing the kooky blogger thing of seeing a mountain where there is a mole hill, we’ll that’s what the comments section below is for…
… you tell me!
" you are unlikely to see ‘Only $500!’ or ‘One Fantastic Price!’ ever uttered on official Apple promotional materials"
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or I could just be being pedantic! (Don’t rule that out as it does happen! 😉 )
Nah, I think you’ve nailed it. There’s a multi page thread over on Dakka asking what GW need to do to get people buying again. Amongst the usual infighting and tangents, the two overwhelming things are “better rules” and price. Better rules would take time and investment, but price is something they can start to address immediately and at no real cost. Actually, price. Isn’t really the issue, but value more pertinently, and these things you’ve highlighted certainly are focussing in that.
Of course, you can pick these up from independents with a further discount, but *shrug*
I think “lower prices” is a bit naive, what they actually need to do is provide better value for money, dropping prices would do this short term, but eventually they’d have to raise them again due to costs or a VAT change or something, what would really help is a pocket money range in the £5 area, maybe with blind bag models or something.
That sounds like a FANTASTIC idea, actually. I can vividly remember being a young teenager, just getting in to the hobby in the mid 90’s , not having much pocket money a week and eyeing up the prices in my local GW store, wishing I had a little more money saved up or wishing GW products weren’t so pricey. This was back in the days when a Blister pack of five METAL (lead) human / orc sized miniatures cost you £2:99! (I really didn’t know how good we had it back then….) and a rhino tank cost you five or six squid! (ohhhhh for the use of a time machine e.g. TARDIS or Federation Starship doing warp 12 or higher, with temporal dampeners switched off. Captain Kirk not absolutely necessary….. lolz.
I too remember when all this were fields… actually thinking back to then, the perfect vehicles for a collectable game is already a GW property(well two actually) Necromunda and Gorkamorka, combine the two into an Armageddon hive game: a few starter boxes for the houses/factions then blind bags with a couple of rules cards(equipment etc to use in the game) and a mini(with its rules).
The main thing you change with price is who buys from you.
May be a blip Warren, it will take more then a one off incident for GW to show use they are serious.
am i missing something?
ive racked my brains trying to focus on what the hell direction games workshop is going in for many years having many armies and teams etc from multiple games workshop ranges whilst i had a good job and could afford it. however as we all know there are times of boom and bust and today are economy is bust.. we cant deny this and everyone at some point has a moment where he or she is robbing peter to pay paul or like me their luck changes they become disabled and cant work or something similar.
that said i look to my local shop in Hull and see mostly kids playing the game with a few grizzled older folk that is when the shop can be bothered to open as described.
what i cant fathom is the level their products have increased in price given the current climate. what parent can afford items aimed in the hundreds of pounds bracket when just getting by and paying the bills is bad enough. the christmas gift guide was example enough as i couldnt afford anything from it being on a low income, so what of the parents of the kids into GW stuff in similar positions?
i dont think that GW is really in touch with its client base and the restrictions and reality of modern life. like many fine suggestions already they need to rethink and aim to deliver a product compatible for the majority of kids pockets and parents pockets alike, never mind just an elite that manage to get the big bucks.
i actually wrote to GW telling them that after being a 20+ year follower of GW and its products, i was now priced out of carrying on with the hobby due to rule changes and subsequent price strategy. i didnt even get a reply not even a glimmer surely 20+ years of buying their stuff would have got at least an acknowledgement or automated response but no sadly it didnt, highlighting a basic lack of customer focus something i fear is deeply routed within GW and a likely contributor to low sales.
i too remember the days of grenadier marauder etc and the low prices but then GW had passionate people on their phones taking time to discuss the hobby,your purchases and selection of items for conversions etc real customer focus now today its automatons bored with the 9-5.
i only hope that the GW board hire someone from the real world to shake them up to the reality of modern life and some time soon or i fear that there race to populate the world with shops and unrealistic sales targets will end in tears.. well thats an old gits opinion rant done with keep up with the good work chaps at BOW thanks to you guys ive discovered many other games i can keep pace with on a low budget cant wait for the new season of on the table
I think you make a good point that GW seems out of touch. Having given it some thought due to being frustrated with poor rules, army balances, and pricing, I have decided much the same. The general feeling I get is that GW is run by ruthless business people who up until recent years have enjoyed a comfortable monopoly, and rather than rewarding gamers with discounts on minis and effort in rules design, they simply maximized their profits.
However, you can only be like Apple if you offer that level of quality. My point is that I believe a good gaming business must strike a balance, and this balance should definitely be biased towards quality, well designed, affordable rules and minis.
Now we have companies offering minis that, in some cases, surpass the quality and design of GW, coupled with an interesting, balanced rule set. I hear GW share prices dropped 25% recently, and you have to wonder why. It’s annoying that this is what it takes for them to ‘reward’ years of loyal spending with some discounts. And lets face it, if fledgling companies can offer more affordable quality, then these ‘discounts’ aren’t really hurting GW, considering their stuff is without a doubt overpriced to begin with.
Speaking of being like Apple, even Apple doesn’t work in a vacuum when their customers become upset. Look at what they have done with the iPad, iPhone and iOS in response to previous customer disappointments or problems. GW, on the other hand, seems completely oblivious to what is going on around them in the market. Kind of reminds me more like Kodak with the rise of digital cameras while they focused on the wonderful margins they made on film. Of course, we all know where that lead.
As for the article, the particular emphasis on price is easy to spot why here. First, the Swarm bundle does save over buying the components separately (though they are still way overpriced) and the new carnifexes with two are cheaper than the previous Finecast ones per model. In fact, this is why I believe they have left the Finecast Carnifex on the site so you can see the plastic ones are less expensive. However, at the same time they snuck in an almost 10% increase on the box price of Tyranid Warriors and almost doubled the price of White Dwarf by going weekly format for the same page count in a month.
Personally, I believe we are going to see a lot of strange things this year from GW because they know their total sales volume is dropping and they are now losing more customers than they are gaining. Problem is, I believe, GW hasn’t got a clue as to why it is happening. Quite frankly, their current rules are cumbersome and their value to pricing ratio is way out of whack.
I think I’m in a fairly similar position to you, Wolf. I started out in the hobby twenty or so years ago ; (also in Hull, before there was even a Games Workshop store in Hull at all. I think it was just “Model Box” off of George Street , which I think had two branches in the city, and The Model Shop, on Ferrensway Opposite Paragon Station. It all seemed quite specialist and exclusive until GW opened a store round the side and across the street from the City Hall ; and that’s probably when I really got suckered in to the hobby. Up until then it was just me trying to keep pace with my older brother and our little gang of friends.
I also wonder what the thinking is behind their policy of only having their stores staffed by one lonely guy sat there on his todd. I assume on Saturdays when all the kids are off school and they run big participation games they must have more boots on the ground, but at their current rate, I can’t see that as being more than two guys; certainly in my current local, the Croydon Store. Perhaps in a big one like Hull they have a few more guys running the place but I can’t see that as being more than two, really. I also have minis from multiple ranges , kept in a more chaotic manner than is intended probably, partly cause I don’t really have an exclusive space for my hobby anymore and also cause it’s difficult to focus on building one army or on one game system when from month to month GW changes its focus on what army or game it’s going to feature. But that’s a problem with my self and what sort of a person I am. Honestly with the advent of Finecast and the dumping of metal as a subject substance for their main wares, I should have given up the hobby right there and then, but I’m not that sort of person and I probably have a somewhat addictive personality. As it is , I barely go in to my local store these days cause it’s sort of depressing, partly cause I work on Saturdays so can’t go gallavanting round gaming shops flashing my modest pay package when the store is likely at its busiest and the place actually has its soul back. I remember someone making the comparison with a hobby in rifling and how expensive that was and GW and how cheap it was in comparison…. the problem with that argument being that I’m not in to rifling and am unlikely ever to be in to it. Also – GW is supposed to be a hobby for kids and young adults but goodness knows how a kid of 13 -14 is supposed to get in to the hobby these days when the most basic blister pack ( or clamp pack or what ever the damned things are called in their current form) is ten squid or £12 or £13… I remember that the idea of buying something that cost ten pounds or there abouts back then required months of saving up, and that was assuming some other bright shiny item that I desired more than life its self didn’t come along in the mean time. Other than that , there was always Christmas and Birthdays to look forward to, but that didn’t really mean so much when nowadays you’ve got people spending hundreds – maybe thousands of pounds on their kids’ birthdays! I wonder where they get the money from…… are they spending right up to the hilt on credit cards or are they re mortgaging the house or selling off the family silver that granny was expecting to retire on to the value of.
I feel like it’s probably the recession to blame for GW’s current predicament but I also find it too easy to imagine it’s down to bad business practices and poor attitudes towards client base and general indifference towards the hobbyist. Perhaps if they had had a more friendly attitude towards their clientele they might have weathered the storm better and retained a larger customer fan base to see them through said storm. It seems like too obvious a suggestion to make that keeping their older customers onside would have been a wise move , considering that the older customers have more money to spend and don’t have to badger and beg mummy to buy them that nice new Grey Knight – Dread Knight box set that looks so bright and shiny with all its weapons and guns bristling in the breeze.
I honestly don’t want to see the company go out of business; much as it pains me to say so; after repeated slaps in the face by the mighty GW, (one of the most notable being the dumping of the entire race of Space Dwarves or Squats, of which I still have a reasonable army which I’m planning at some point to resurrect and bolster with some Forge Father models from Mantic minis, whom I don’t feel quite so priced out of the market for just yet.
The other thing that really caught my ear was the idea of getting on the phone to some bright GW enthusiast for advice on this or that aspect of the hobby, something I find it all too easy to believe has gone the way of the Dodo and the dinosaurs . This seems like such a good kind of support base to have for the hobby as it only feeds your passion for the game / games and makes you hungry for more. Hopefully GW will fire the idiot / board of idiots that have brought them and us to this situation and they’ll adopt a radically different attitude to pricing and the way they interact with the customer. Maybe too they’ll think about restoring Games Day to what it has been in previous years too, cause if the reports I’ve heard of what it was like at Games Day 2013 are true then I’m really glad I didn’t waste the ticket fare and coach ticket price too to go last September.
Warren , forgive me for the absolute Disagreed and Agreed function of your heading… Its all the same Gw do this people aren’t happy, Gw do this People aren’t happy…
Point of fact with people and on this note the complaint about prices when in fact the truth of the matter is quite a loaded and unbalanced argument for both sides and here is why.
We as a community love miniatures and good and bad and in our passionate hobby at times become misty eyed. I love the memories of how i started but today get everything i dreamed (apart from the plastic thunder hawk) and most in plastic and the possibilities are endless now.
So here are the point of facts…
1. Are Gw expense? in my opinion 50/50 as it can range from box to box. space marines £20 a box for 10 and a multitude of options and parts, Sanguine guard £20 for 5 models of the most insane quality VS Space Marine Centurion Squad £47.50 for 3 models. Boxes including the new tyrannies are great value works out at £1 per miniature (wtf a carnefex for £1)?
2. Games workshop a history of trading, now if you look at the company history it is anything but stable that since 95 has had its share price rice from under £200 a share to £800 4 times based on the launches and product line (normally 40k and space marine) then drops significantly in intervals of 6 years.
3. Products are great and getting better every year bar none armies more complete rules books (not that they are always good) online, black library, computer licences, forge world, special releases. They are fantastic.
So summing this up for me really says the problem lies with how Gw have out priced themselves by giving us what we wanted. We wanted the big tanks. Big battles, Big armies and in that they have built a game to those standards. So we are left here complaining that we can no longer afford the armies we want. So this highlights the gaming system as being in a wrong place and this is where all the smaller systems are taking advantage. Small armies needed = small cost. Create a solid Core 40k like as is but focus on 3 brands within it like a proper built KILL TEAM / SKIRMISH / APOCALYPSE brand but use the smallest range as you footing. because the standard 1750 point army being close and over £500 per person is too much for the average beginner or the longterm veteran. Gw is also very much linked with a luxe brand status, i.e. world economy takes a hit the luxury brands take a hit, increase prices for failing sales profits remain the same, big companies should be more concerned about market share and this is where GW should be scared as they are loosing fast. Games workshop did an amazing job by setting up separate companies under its house and diversifying its self so why not now? GW gaming Centres, GW Tournaments, Gw Tv, Gw property(only set up new sites in places you can buy the freehold(look at MAC D).
Engage with you clients both new and short and look at your community and have a face for the company. Build an online site like this or bells, Create a gaming tournament and develop a gaming centres to have the addicts need to play and want more. Supply the addiction and feed it.
So your products won’t be seen as expensive because you won’t have to spend £500 just to play an army…
Yes I agree , the pricing question is probably quite a difficult one even for the mighty and holy GW to get right, especially seeing as they fail to seem to get the balance right with each differing box they sell. I’m guessing it’s difficult to get a consistant price running through your entire product range when your product range is so large and varied; although a price for weight system seems fair to me, but maybe it’s too fair; I don’t know.
I don’t really concern my self with the argument about good minis and bad minis either. If a model is good enough, I’ll buy it because I like it, regardless of how detailed or well sculpted it is; if I like it then the sculpt is good enough. I must have minis from twenty years ago that GW would say are bad sculpts but I still love them. The old Emperor model from Warhammer Fantasy Battle is apparently obsolete too since they brought out the new plastic version but I’m not going to toss him and Death Claw in the bin, cause I still love him (them) and the paint job I gave him; (not “Them,” cause I’m still painting Deathclaw cause I’ve finally found the right colour scheme to give her that I won’t be ashamed of in twenty years time.) I’ve already broken off the feather in the helmet of the new plastic Emperor too so that confirms my loyalty towards lead or tin/ metal minis was correct too. I too am also effected by the syndrome of getting crap minis just cause I like them too. There might be a little bit on the mini that I think is a bit crap and I don’t like too much but if the mini as a whole is too cool for school , then I’m getting him! As soon as I have the cash to spare or to hand (which ever happens first and despite the fact that it might leave me having to walk home from Croydon to Purley cause I’ve stupidly spent the cash I got out of the machine for my bus/train home on a must have mini;) I’m getting the baaaad buoy!! We’ve all done it , I’m sure… spent that tenner that was washing about in your pocket that you were supposed to buy a new pack of badly needed nappies for your new born on a mini or box of plaggys and for which your girlfriend/ wife is going to kill you / rip out your still beating soul for…… or is that just me? lolz
I’m not an economist or a banker , Or even a “Banker,” (not that I’ll admit to in the street at least…. lolz) in fact I’m a little bit rubbish with money and accounting so the whole share price of GW and MacDonalds is a bit lost on me. But if something isn’t selling so well, just reduce the amount of them that you’re making or make them to order. Like I say , I’m no Christine Lagarde (Head of the international Monetary Fund… lolz) so I have little or no idea of the solution to the woes of GW or any other company for that matter.
As small armies go, I’m perfectly happy to go back to that kind of situation, where an army consisted of just a couple of units of troops , a Squad / regiment of cavalry/ bikers and a general. Luckily I’ve been in the hobby long enough to remember when armies weren’t that big (perhaps only in the tail end of that period,) but that seems like more than enough models to fight a quick skirmish over a lunch break or spare moment in an evening , if not the whole of a rainy Sunday afternoon that can partially be filled with watching a bit of TV or a movie or playing X Box or Wii or another computerised game console of your choice. Heck – there might even be enough time to play with the kids or have a kick about with your mates in the park or street if you’re so inclined…… other more traditional pursuits are available of course. Anyone for knitting or cribbage?
May be it is time that GW scale things back too.
I totally agree about the more social side of the hobby though. Supporting Gaming Clubs, supporting tournaments and being the gamer’s friend and ally is surely good for the company and its future. With any luck there might still be a hobby and gamers interested in your wares left once the boom times return and Wargaming stuff is selling like hot cakes once again cause a few young teenagers in their final years of schooling see someone with a mini or mini war gaming magazine and decide they want a piece of that action.
Im going to use that phrase alot now…
Hip Replacement
One Fantastic Price….
your hip
Yeah! the usual cost of a hip being …. priceless, as they don’t grow on trees. In a laboratory perhaps grown from a skin cell on a petri dish or something maybe but not yet on trees. Science is good but it aint quite that advance yet. lolz
I read this e-mail literally moments before logging on to BoW and seeing Warren’s article.
I had, myself, noticed the unusual focus on price. I’m not sure it is great value – I’m sure someone better at maths can do the sums on that. But I can’t remember seeing GW mention price like this for a long time. Recent issues of WD, for instance, make a big effort to ‘sell’ you a product with all the lovely pictures, then finally reveal a page with the prices on. The most recent one had me coughing up cornflakes, with packs of 3 regular troops for the Hobbit weighing in at £15.
Is it a sea change? I, too, am interested to see.
From the site, if you order the Termagaunt or Hormagaunt swarms, it costs £27 for 20.
From that picture, you get 80 of those gaunts, which comes in at 108. Gargoyles are 18, while the Fex (can only be bought in packs of two now?) is probably around 27.
So just by looking at the GW prices, you’re effectively getting the Gargoyles and Fex for free.
95 models for just over 105 quid, isn’t a bad deal most of the time either.
TBH, I’d be interested to see if they’d do that kind of deal with other armies.
They’ve already been doing these deals for a bit now. These new “warhost” or whatever, boxed sets are replacing the old battleforce sets. more expensive, but a MUCH better percentage of discount. go total up the Space Marine and Dark Elf boxes as well. it’s quite a discount over buying all the kits individually.
Haven’t seen them focus on price since the “troll” paper newsletter. Yes newsletters came in paper and not by email once! Could just be that they have finally recognized they have competition…
Com…competition? What is this strange word? We at the Games Workshop bubble never heard of it. Please enlighten us wise master.
wow! I remember “Troll” hahaha! gawd that takes me back! those were the frickin days…..
Looking at the Tyranids my gut reaction is ‘that is actually not a bad price’.
I do not game so I purely look at models from a painting and modelling perspective so in game terms those models could be awful as far as I know.
But an average of just over a quid a model seems to me to be quite good value for money considering the pleasure I would get from building and painting them.
Considering these days in London a pint of beer is about £3-£5 depending where you go and that literally gets flushed down the toilet. Or a 3d cinema ticket for 2 hours entertainment is about £14.
£100 is quite a lot of money but those things would keep me occupied for plenty of hours and at the end of the day you could even sell them and recoup some of the costs.
I do think GW need to have a bit of a pricing strategy review moving forwards, for example Perry produce some truly excellent models at cheaper rates, heaven help GW if Perry ever started doing fantasy or sci-fi stuff.
But that would take the Perrys giving up their dayjob at GW
One thing that struck me about these deals is that I think this is the first time one of their bundles has actually been cheaper than buying the items in the bundle individually*, which really is a noteworthy change.
You’re saving about a tenner on the Carnifex brood. Compare that against the pre-existing Carnifex Crusher Brood, which contains three Carnifexes … for the price of three Carnifexes.
* with the exception of the absurd every Ultramarine ever for £7k bundle
I think for a time, most Battleforce boxes gave you something “free”. A quick look now, picking the Tau box at Random
Crisis Team (40), Piranha (18), Stealth Team (16), Fire warrior team (22), if you bought that all separately, it would be 96, whereas the box is 75. I.e. you almost get the Firewarriors free.
Note, I’ve not gone through the rest.
Ah yes, was forgetting the battleboxes and batallions.
I agree that this seems to herald a change in their strategy but I am unconvinced it is the big day we have all been waiting for. A shift from a sales strategy to a market strategy would be wonderful but this might just represent an adjustment in the sales strategy.
GW might post the prices more prominently to inform consumers that they are THE place to get citadel minis
-or show a price you can expect to pay at any store with a gw trade agreement
-or to combat the Chinese counterfeiters.
-or they may have finally been slapped in the face with the metrics that their prices are so high they have dropped sales below an acceptable point
FW have started doing deals like as well so it’s not an isolated thing. Did GW not start offering discounted deals at the back end of last year as well? I would tend to agree that GW are probably realising that falling sales may be linked to rising prices and are trying to address that.
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Home/Search-Results.html
FW have been doing bundle deals for over a year now – and they’re a significant saving compared to buying the components individually, unlike GW’s “bundles” that cost exactly the same as buying the individual boxes together. But maybe they have finally learn’t something and these new releases are paving the way ahead…… we can only hope.
The recent financial report may have been a bit of a reminder that simply believing in their own myth is no longer sufficient, so they have hired Honest John
Wonder if the new cases will be carpeted.
On the outside
@warzan I think I understand what you are saying but I think that it really depends on how you view GW.
GW, and maybe some of their fans, probably think of themselves as the Apple (as you say) or Ferrari of the miniature world.
However that only works if you really are very very very good at what you do (like Apple and Ferrari).
I would argue that for many (but not all consumers) GW are not perceived as being excellent at what they do (rightly or wrongly). For example, Finecast was a massive failure in terms of quality.
I actually think GW is like Coca Cola rather than Apple. They are the ‘big boys’ in the industry and they certainly produce a nice product. But you don’t see Coca-Cola trying to charge a premium for their drink. Instead they leverage their power in other ways (eg huge marketing campaigns, sponsorship etc).
I honestly feel GW need to remove themselves from this perception of being a ‘luxury brand’, it really doesnt work for them from what I can see.
I hope people understand what Im trying to get at here. Sometimes analogies dont really work so well…
I think in some respects the Ferrari comparison is an apt one. You don’t see Ferrari advertising their products anywhere, they don’t have sales, and they don’t offer value. GW is similar in those ways. In other ways they’re different. A Ferrari is a status symbol in a way a GW product is not, so GW can’t rely on that to drive their sales. Unlike Coca Cola, GW aren’t actively competing against other brands in the market. Coke can only dream of having a monopoly on the soft drinks industry in the way GW have exerted one on the wargaming industry. Internally, GW do not view any other minis company as a competitor. They see themselves as competing with other big brands. I don’t think the deals are meant to appeal to the likes of us so much as they are meant to appeal to parents. GW has for a long time operated on the assumption that many of its sales are made by the parents of the gamer, and that even when times are tough, parents will make sure that the kids still get what they want. These deals aren’t intended to draw is from the arms of Kromlech, Scibor, or Mantic, as they’re meant to let parents know they can get good value for their money now.
It worked fine mate.
I don’t know if it’s so much a fundamental change of marketing tactic but to get people to look at the price of the bundles and notice that they are actually discounting now.
It’s been a long standing gripe that battle forces and bundles didn’t actually represent anything of value, more perhaps convenience. Convenience was even the marketing point on their recent bundles, that you could get it in “one click” but you could easily see by totting up what you were getting there was no real saving to be made over just buying what you actually wanted rather than what you got in their package. This is different though.
Now I don’t know the Tyranid sprues that well but I think you can make the rippers out of everything else so I’m ignoring them when I work out how much this would cost buying separately and I get to £158.50. The bundle is £105 so your saving over a third on the cost. For GW to discount so heavily is, to the best of my knowledge, unprecedented.
So maybe it’s not so much a change of direction in marketing ploy but genuinely a “right, we’re doing something new here with our pricing structure so we’ll need to shout about it to get noticed”. Or it could be this is a one off for an army that’s suffered from rubbish codex’s and been unpopular so they feel that, as a one of, they need to dangle a big carrot to get the buy in and, as such, we’re not going to see this with other armies?
To early to tell at this time but GW discounting by over a third? Worth keeping an eye out on what happens next.
Overall I think with Chapter House , HiTech, Kromlech etc etc getting in on the whole capitalism routine and seeing a niche in the market that GW has to do something in order to Promote sales. It is a retail company and sometimes you just have to well lets face it ….Compete. Other companies make similar models ( Mantic) and its kicking there collective butts especially in the Warhammer Fantasy market. GW really needs to make that sales pitch cause other companies will and they are the ones that will get the hard earned dollars. Putting your product on a pillar for all to see doesn’t work when your average joe cant buy it. I know ive had to search around for deals on GW products…I’ve not bought anything from them Directly in over a decade and wont long as I can get it 20% off and more from Independent retailers ….lets face it GW might think they are a luxury product but thats only their opinion…..
It will be hilarious to see the crazy Xmas Drop Pod by the end of this year ^_^
About being arguably the best… yes, i will argue with you on that when KD:M comes out ;).
GW offered two really great bundles over the holidays, which got little to no attention. The Sigmar’s Blood Scenery was about $40 below buying the individual pieces and the Stormtalons with Stormraven bundle was about the same discount. I think GW realizes they can’t just be an elite model maker with all the smaller companies stealing bits and pieces of market share.
I liken GW more to Blizzard than Apple. Blizzard changed the world of gaming with WOW. We are 12 or 15 years later and the game is still one of the most popular out there. Other games have tried to grab fans and do so for short periods of time, but then they fold and people return to WOW. The price to play WOW has not changed over the years. The content is updated. The game gets new features and new “rules”, but the price stays the same.
I think GW could learn a lot from this buy looking at the life cycle or “journey” of a gamer and planning around that life cycle. It seems they have now gotten a wake up call with the stock plummet and I hope they bring in someone to get the ship back on course. As much as I hate their policies, they do make some amazing minis.
I like the comparison to WOW. However, where as technology costs have come way down over the years, GW’s overhead costs with respect to their retail operations have not. Yes GW faces new competition on the manufacturing side who can offer cheaper minis – but they don’t have the same level of distribution, overhear, nor do they have the same level of retail support. I can walk into any GW store and learn about their gaming systems. The same can not be said about every hobby shop that carries minis.
Well certainly one thing we can say is that over the past two or three months GW have gone back to offering multi-product deals (beyond just the battle forces/army deals) that do actually save you money over individual purchases. They abandoned entirely a couple years ago, so it’s been nice to see their return at any rate.
@warzan I see the point you’re trying to make but I don’t think comparing GW and Apple is quite… fair?
You could argue that both companies like to believe themselves above their competition and both have fairly closed doors when it comes to product development but there are some big differences.
Apple has become a skilled hunter, they only enter a market that they feel they can offer something unique to. (Think about the mp3 pre-Ipod or the tablet market pre-Ipad) Their product is very carefully tuned to meet customer demands and once they’ve done that they begin their iteration cycle.
Conversely GW has been so entrenched in this hobby that they bring nothing new to the table and are simply iterating. They don’t have the luxury to “enter the market” like Apple does. IF anything we should be comparing GW to Microsoft. They have a stable of products that are reworked and reworked till people hate them and wish they could go back to the “good old days”.
…Or maybe I’ve just been dealing with Windows 8.1 for too long.
The comparison with Apple was actually first touted to me from ‘people’ within GW 😉
Of course, why wouldn’t a business want to compare themselves with Apple? 😉
Are you sure they were comparing themselves with Apple Mac? you may have misheard them comparing themselves with Beta Mac 😛
The problem with that one is that Apple are a soft ware and computer firm and Games Work shop are a fantasy war game manufacturer. A comparison with them and Dungeons and Dragons or War-machine would have been more suitable and relevant.
Apple do make software (itunes, iOS etc) but they are first and foremost a hardware and have been since they were founded. Comparing GW to Apple is not a bad comparison when it comes to looking at how they view themselves. Neither company presents its products in terms of financial value, they present them as items of quality beyond financial value – much like designer clothes. The implication is that although you get a similar item elsewhere, that item simply won’t carry the quality that the GW or Apple hallmark brings. In both cases, the belief is mistaken (IMO) as there are alternatives to both that are equal if not better. Both companies are now finding they don’t have an unassailable market position, although the lesson has been harder for GW I think. That doesn’t mean I don’t think either product has selling points and let’s face it, both companies still carry significant brand loyalty.
The key difference between Apple and GW is, as others have pointed out, Apple products are a status symbol – a true “designer” item. GW are not – FW is the closest thing GW has to designer range.
To use another example, Volkwagen Audi; citadel miniatures are the Seat of the FW group, Forge World are the Audi. Seat need to price competitively to earn their market share and sales, Audi is a luxury brand aimed at a market less concerned with prices and more with quality. But no matter how well one does, VWs performance is tied to both. In GW’s case, I suspect their FW brand is doing relatively well – it consistently receives high praise for its quality, which is a significant step up from citadel) and being recognised as a luxury brand, little criticism over price (most of what I see looks like “FW is soooo expensive” “yeah, but they’re worth it!”). On the other hand, the main citadel range has taken a real battering this last year. There’s been the relentless price increases, the outrageous pricing policy based on game value, the multi-kits price increases(baneblade/shadowsword etc) coupled with some very prominent design failures (Lord of Skulls, Centurions and IMO Tesseract Vault, to name but 3). I remember when I used to be wowed and amazed by almost every model GW produced, now I cringe at many of their products and their apparent obsession with size. I now open the pages of White Dwarf with a sense dread at what horrors might lie within.
So as a company, their products no longer have a quality hallmark to justify a designer price tag, as a result brand loyalty is being eroded and sales have fallen.
Hah! I’m sure you meant ‘people’ who must remain anonymous, but when I read it I first read it I thought. “Warren has proof GW is a really staffed by non-humans!”
They can’t drop their prices without it looking like they were wrong, and that could cause a further drop in the share value. So a push on box sets that contain value for money may tempt some folk back to the GW table. This dosen’t surprise me at all, it’s an easy way for them to provide a cheaper way into playing their core games, without having to drop prices across the board and lose face. I wouldn’t be surprised if new starter sets for the core games offer much better value in the future. The problem they have is recruiting new people, but price has become an issue for anyone looking to start playing and collecting GW armies.
Respectfully I have to disagree. Any manufacturer or retailer, when faced with declining sales, will adjust pricing as needed.
As a business mentor once said to me a long time ago, “20% of $100 million is a lot more than 60% of $10 million.” I have never forgot this phrase in my almost thirty year career in business. What it means is focusing on the % rather than the $ is a dangerous thing. What GW is doing is focusing too much on the profit made per model rather than maximizing the amount of cash they put in the bank at the end of each month. They should be using their size to literally control the pricing on the smaller guys by putting out high quality at a lower price point than the smaller guys in this industry. They can’t, however, because their retail chain is a massive cost albatross around their neck, and their pricing must help account for that.
I think with the 25% drop in stock is just the start of the steady decline of GW over the next 5-10 years. Unless GW does some major changes like dropping prices. Lets face it over priced miniatures are over priced miniatures. There are too many other choices for gamers out there and only the die hard fans of GW are willing to keep paying their prices. Eventually they will price themselves out of the market completely. Lets face it in the end no matter how great their models are As Warren said “they are just plastic toy soldiers” and that is how they are going to be viewed by people who are either new to the hobby or outside of the hobby. If GW is trying to draw more new people to the hobby when they see $50-70 for a toy plastic tank they just see an expensive toy tank and not worth the high price no matter how cool the model looks, its play-ability in the game, or the back history.
The great thing about this hobby is that you don’t need the Forge World or expensive models to play. It is a scalable game at the end of the day. Encouraging regulars to play in-store is something they need to do more of. A “good” core group of ambassadors is needed. People who don’t work for the company, but gamers who can articulate themselves and demonstrate the game play will aspire the necessity of other models. Cap the points to limit the types of models people bring in on occasion to play in-store and to maximize gaming time. Encourage more people to use the paint stations more. When I started to play this hobby GW offered the free paint station – however, people did take advantage and product would go missing all too frequently.
I don’t know about the US stores, but the 1-man stores in Canada close in the middle of the day for 30 minutes – which is annoying (but I understand it is labour law and everyone likes a lunch/pee break)
At the end of the day – rent, utilities, salaries are not cheap. GW has this asset, in my opinion, something the competition does not have – and they need to leverage it more.
My favorite… show a teenager the $30 plastic Space Marine Librarian. Then listen as they tell you how completely whacked a company is that thinks they can charge $30 for one plastic guy. Have them then look at the $29 plastic Cadian Shock Trooper box for ten plastic guys and listen to the fun comments after that.
On a serious note, this is the impression GW is leaving on potential new customers. I saw this exact scenario now twice in my local gaming store. What did those kids eventually buy – Infinity. So GW did a great job there. Corvus Belli benefited from GW pricing. Gotta love the irony.
Frankly I think the more long in the tooth gamers have stopped buying the myth about the best minis on the market a long time ago. I doubt anyone is going to forget the ‘Failcast’ tm debacle nor GW’s feck you attitude to customers complaints or production of a £10 fix it yourself kit. Now we are told that this was always the plan and was a stop gap in converting to plastic for all. After this wonderful display of testing customer gullibility the revenge of the sales fall was seen by all bar the board. They need a new myth. Guess what. We give you a tiny bit more plastic if you sell us your soul? The carnifex deal might be fair but only someone starting an army from scratch will benefit from the swarm deal That is not a try out level army its a deep in the sea one. When they actually do affordable deals across the entire range then maybe I will look. Failcast finished GW for me.
Hopefully this a turn in the right direction.
Tyranids swarm!
Only 110 GBP (205 CAD$) tax not included – in Canada
Only 315 GBP (315 NZ $) – in New Zealand
ouch
Its about 160 gbp in nzd(315) but still sucks. Effectively allows nzers to ONLY pay the Full uk price per model instead of 50% more……is it cheaper to buy a 3d printer than a starter army now?
Yep, we Canadians get it up the back end even with “deals”
Stock was over-priced already….that is just the market catching up to when they took the price over volume strategy. Said strategy takes a lot of intestnal fortitude..so you either stay the course or change. After all, a 1% increase in price provides a 20% increase in profit at the same volume. Just depends on what is important to the company leaders…total profit growth or showing improved $/unit margins. The street wants to keep using the antiquated earning/share…therefore the market correction was inevitable.
Lower prices may boost sales, but it won’t improve profits…polish it however you want to, the earnings sag will continue.
They would be better off re-organizing and going into growth mode. New editions of the same products at high entry points will not bring in new buisness….you need new products at lower entry points to start replacing the older products that have matured along the pricing life cycle. Only way to keep the profits up is toll sell out your business and then replace lower profitable products with new ones. The Price over volume strategy will only get you so far.
is everyone saying that GW is selling figures for less if you buy bundles? Im a bit confused?
Its a strange new world…
I don’t know man, there are still a lot of retarded ‘1 click bundles’.
I bought 2 Swarms because well GW have sort of done this before recently but on limited runs… Perhaps you are right but GW in the past (during their high prices period note) did used to run Mega Forces etc where you saved a LOT of money, and they would mention that in the small print if you read it ha ha. They use to run an Eldar Walker box set where you saved money, when the new Eldar Codex was released.. that vanished pretty quickly.
I just want to point out that the Swarm may well be because someone realised they might not sell so many of these models.
Note GW this Christmas DID NOT have any of their amazing Mega Force / Army deals. For the first time in a while.
They are offering a slight saving if you buy a bundle…
i loved onlyonepinmans comment likening GW to VW audi but would have to make one small adjustment namely that if GW dont do something radical and soon to address the problems then it will be Skoda being quoted and i do mean before the VW takeover lol
dont Forget Vapnartak wargames show, York racecourse this sunday 2nd Feb 2014 a good day for all young and old
Skoda? They’ll be lucky if they’re even comparable to Lada at this rate. A very expensive Lada!
I’m probably being a little unfair. Quality wise, they’re still quite good, just not as consistently good as they used to be and certainly not worth the money.
To compare and contrast I recently looked at Mantic specifically to compare prices. 10 Empire State Troops for £15 vs £20 Paladins for £20. That’s 50% more per model for GW. I didn’t bother comparing the Greatswords because I didn’t want to seem like I was trying to beat them up too much.
For me the issues with GW are
Price per model is too high and gets worse the more powerful the unit.
Multi-kit models with higher prices (I don’t care that I can make one of several possible models, I’m still only buying one)
Kits priced basesd on game value.
Although they’ve made some utter train wrecks of kits over the last 12 months, by and large I still like their models and, as someone who primarily paints rather than gaming, some of their character models are superb. I think they need to invest in their design team to rebuild their quality Hallmark, or repair it. I’m not sure how they sort out the pricing issue. Obviously I could say simply lower them but I don’t know how realistic that is, I’m not a businessman.
They need to make entry into the core games cheaper.
When they bring the costs of the codexes down then I might look to get back into the game. Its all very well having ‘the best minis in the biz’ and charging a premium for them, but is there any excuse for charging £30 for each codex just to play with an army? The fluff is fair enough, but if I wanted a whole book of it then I would go to the Black Library site. They should offer gamer codexes with just the rules in them, maybe included in battle boxes?
The second edition codex chaos was £18 when it came out 18 years ago, so £12 extra now isn’t all that much an increase at £1.50 a year.
deaddaev – I agree
checkout this website
£18 in 1996 calculates to £28.62
and I’d suggest it’s a better production (not looking to discuss rules and balancing) now…
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/Historic-inflation-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html
That’s a bit misleading as it’s not representative of the costs of codices in 1996. Even as recently as 2009 (and possibly later), a 40K didn’t cost £18. The 2nd ed Chaos Codex was also a lot longer than the current codices and had a lot of lists and rules in it.
redben – I’m sure you’re right as I wasn’t gaming at that time. My intent was to show that things cost more now. If you look at movie ticket prices over the same period, they have doubled too. But the books are now hardback and full colour and the illustrations are of a higher quality.
I payed £15 for my second edition codex ultramarines, so they weren’t exactly cheap back then.
Since I am in the US, I will have to talk in dollars.
When almost every other miniatures company is selling 256 pg. full-color hardbound rulebooks for around $40 and GW is selling a 104 pg. Codex for almost $50 they are looking severely out of touch with the market. Essentially they are charging 220% MORE for their product than the rest of the market – and thus why they are having trouble getting new players.
This is their problem, they compare it to what they used to charge instead of what the market will bear versus the competition. When second edition came out 18 years ago, GW had little to no competition in the space. Today, they have a ton of competition, but they still view the world as if it is 1999.
I have an answer for the codex problem: ThePirateBay
don’t use it often but thanks to that I have the rulebook on my phone and laptop.
shoooosh, don’t say what everything is thinking
Back in the old days GW did army deals quite often, the shift to touting themselves as unique almost luxury products apple style happened around the time they signed deals with new line for LOTR- speculation being that there was a clause that prevented the LOTR stuff going on sales/offers so GW decided to have no more sales or offers to stop 40k and squarebase prices strangling the lotr range, I would guess that the hobbit range is either established enough they feel it can weather the storm now, or possibly, with its apparent exclusion from white dwarf weekly, its performing poorly enough on its own merrit that they don’t mind hurting its sales if it provides a shot in the arm from 40k sales.
squarebase :p ha ha
End of the day, GW have out priced them self and it’s finally coming back and biting them in there backside.
Why are they still the most successful in the industry then?
Because we are just witnessing the turning point. It tends to mover quick from here. Just ask Kodak how it worked out for them as they continued to ignore competition in the market from digital cameras (newer options for consumers) while they continued to focus on high-margin film products. They went down hill very, very fast and I feel we are about to witness the same for GW unless they wake up soon.
£105 seems a good price on that Swarm box, but it’s even better if you buy from an independent retailer. My local (Tabletop Tyrant) sells this box for about £85 I think, which is actually very tempting to pick up as a starter army.
At £85 that is quite tempting and a good saving…
Ha ha, I was thinking that, until I read the new Codex now I’m not 100% sure the content would be useful ….but then, what is, is the new Codex eh?
“The company doesn’t have a marketing department[…]”
I thought the design studio (including the none-rule-writing members of the White Dwarf team)
was the marketing department of GW?!
While I am not getting any emails from GW itself, I have started getting daily emails from Forgeworld. There used to be may one per month, then one per week but it has gone nuts since shortly before Christmas.
And no offence to Forgeworld, I am still not interested.
If this is going to be how GW climbs down on pricing I’m all for it. Though I’d still like to see them climb down another run or three. Also, if they really do dump 4ok 7th ed after only 2 years…I may just pack them in all together for anything other than collecting and painting the occasional mini.
Given the snail pace at which I paint minis, that swarm would last me 3 years! £105 for 3 years worth of models is good value, but only if you suck at finishing what you started like me. 😛
My 2 cents based on my observations and assumptions if I may:
-GW – Tyranid Swarm – 105 quid on their online store
-My favorite online store – Tyranid Swarm – 88 quid
I am guessing, based on another tread I read and I agree with: GW’s online store is well capable of servicing all of their customers globally without independent online stores (ok, argument for them treating reetailers the way they do, I understand, no problem with that)
However, why would anyone buy from GW online when they can go to other places? And does GW not see that their focus on price is absolutely futile until we, it’s internet savvy customer base, have alternatives?
An idea: Just shut down all independent retail outlets to make us ‘blind to their extreme markups (if they can sell to independents who then sell for 88 quid, which already has their mark-up) it is pretty clear that GW’s markup is minimum 17 pounds. Heck, bring back all those sales to yourselves GW, and we’d be none the wiser how much ur taking out of our pockets… may even lower ur prices as u are making more sales, more profit, so no need to reduce the price really (we’d never know with no comparison options)…. but then again, u wouldnt even really need to… cuz again… we don’t know… and we’ll prolly complain about 95 pounds same as we do about 105 🙂
Apologies… turned into a bit of a rant… Im just so emotional right now 😀
People complained about the prices back in the mid 90s, so it’s nothing new.
In the mid 90s there was not much competition in the market for plastics. It has been over the past 5 years that companies have really got their act together in terms of making plastic minis. In the 90s the prices did eventually go down (due to the arrival of mass plastic units).
Are you sure? I remember being able to afford Codexes of armies I hated *just* for intel purposes, and I was a kid then. Are you sure people complained about the prices in the mid 90s?
*I suppose without the internet in those days it’s hard to see ALL HAIL THE INTERNET GOD
I’m quite sure people complained, i remember gaming in the shop and quite a number of other gamers moaning about the cost of… Well everything pretty much. I particular remember my parents moaning about the cost of the second edition boxset, was £60 when they bought it for me.
I wonder if many other companies have put there prices up because of GW prices? and GW have created a bench mark for prices in the wargames market?
Perhaps the latest has been the wake up call needed to show that they aren’t the giant they once were as hobbyists are investing as much if not more in other systems. Perhaps it’s a sign that GW are starting to take off the blinkers and see things without rose tinted glasses? What can I say I’m optimistic.
I noticed something a while back. Games Workshop made a box of 3 bikes which cost a bit less than buying the bikes individually.
It scared me senseless because it looked as if the price had gone down on some of their figures essentially. I was quite worried that their Chairmen must be having some kind of mental breakdown.
Selling in bundles tho almost always gets you stuff cheaper. You save if you buy a huge jar of nutella, vs buying same quantity in little packets. Selling three bikes together cheaper than individually is totally normal and should be expected, and that applies from toothpaste to heck, airplanes even
-They are selling more (3 vs 1) so at that moment they are immediately making more money, so sellers will be ok with giving a discount
-Saves on packaging and processing the product / order, so they’ll pass some of that back to you (but of course not all)
I wish GW operated their main website more like Forgeworld. Even though FW models are even more expensive you don’t hear anywhere near the same amount of complaints from people. Sure their buyer base is probably lower but when you buy from FW it’s the same price for everyone worldwide you just have to work it out in your own currency. I am worried being Australian that when they merge the sites FW might double in price for us. Whenever I read White Dwarf and see something i want to buy the first thing I do is click on the price to see if it’s cheaper overseas.
GW should also do more to encourage people to buy online and in-store. Setup a rewards system like other websites e.g. every $100 you spend might give you ticket into a draw to win a 1500 point army of your choice and do that 4 times a year. Apart from the bundles they do there is no reason for me to pay full retail when I can get it discounted somewhere else.
Yes! Very much like the incentive idea!
They are even lagging on the incentives on delivery, other sites will give you free delivery at much less of a purchase price
Another 2 cts from another marketeer: the absence of a marketing dept might explain GW current (and, IMO, future) straits. It’s all about brand image. GW is the biggest company in the market. Their dominance comes from that: they have bigger range(s), comprehensive portfolio and bigger share of voice. They are the standard against which the others are measured.Other companies might claim a prize over them, ( and many deserve it), not the other way around.
GW problem is twofold:
A) a significant (and growing) percentage of gamers have come to believe they are (or behave like) a gang of overbearing extorsionists, willing to kill the fun in the hobby in exchange of bigger profits and less competition. This has often taken years, but the perception is now deep seated in many, and a lot of gamers now go out of their way just NOT to buy GW….
B) Internet growth, globalization, technological progress in figure production and crowd funding have made it possible for small companies to sprout everywhere (God be thanked for that!). GW isn’t looking good in comparison with many (most?) of the new ventures. Post-Dark Eldar plastic figures are great ( but then you have Malifaux…), but the resins were just an unashamed rip-off. Other companies’ products, be it metal or resin, are great today, and they seem planned to increase the customer satisfaction in his hobby, not just profits.
I agree pricing strategy (especially by alone) is not going to change GW situation. They must decide that they want to nurse their ailing image back to reasonable confidence levels, and start there.
It took years to ruin their image though…
Notice I didn’t once refer to Privateer Press. I fear they are starting down the same path.
Terribly long post, I am sorry!
I’ve been enjoying GW products since the mid-80’s. For the last two years or so, I’ve seen constant price increases and apparent lack of concern for what customers want or can afford. I decided that I’ll keep playing the game but if I can get the models from another company, I’m in. Granted there will always be the die-hard GW-files that can’t live without the newest but they seem to be fewer all the time. As I see it it has more to do with GW feeling the new kids on the block “Mantic, Priveteer Press, so on” nipping at their heels rather than them caring what we think! To me that’s the shame of it.
GW was always expensive. The thing is most commercial minis did not compare especially in the early 90s. I will say somewhere I assembled my first space marine set with 30 multipart plastic nearly 25 years ago. The plastic sets were not very good (except the original space marine plastic minis). I had plastic genestealers, genestealer hybrids, marines, marine Scouts. Tyranid warriors , squats, and terminators in 1992. Metal was still the way to go. Then again that was back in the day you could play with cardboard cutouts and build your own vehicles out of elmers glue bottles…
I think bundles at real discounts are good. Last year their one click bundles saved you nothing so it hardly encouraged players to buy a large amount. I just wish they would push the nice bundles to their independent retailers. Notice other companies sell at MSRP on their website so they do not directly compete against the LGSs. Privateer press sells exclusives on their website, but they are alternate model sculpts not core models. GW is trying to draw people from buying at the LGS and instead focus on their website. It hurts everyone in the long run.
GW plastic crack….is a finefail..hmm….it is time for a new king……example..Hasbro killed D&D and paizo resurrected it with Pathfinder….and never looked back….and we followed…because it was true to D&D.
Time for the fat blotted GW hog to be replaced…..watch…actually look mantic, perry, privateer, warlord, wizkids…to name a few good quality miniatures for the buck…they are hungry….but doing it better…..better yet…they listen and love their fans who are the bread and butter and they know that is part of the magic formula of success.
GW just has too big of a ego….as a gamer and my buddies and thier buddies and hobby stops…we gave up on GW years ago…i look for bang for my buck….
I remember you can’t play unless painted…you can’t play unless 3+ colors…can’t play unless all GW minis……well those tables and shops have magic gathering, pathfinders, star wars x wing products and active tourneys. Where is the GW assmonkeys now?? god knows.
BACK In my manshack….all miniature armies welcome……If your spout GW gospel…..to the wolves with ya…..and the rest play on…..because its about fun and gaming and war. not elitism. painted or not……because we gather to warmonger, trade tips and tricks and boost our testosterone levels…..from wifely influences….
and we get some wild and unique armies…..yes i will admit we are using 6th Ed warhammer…modified….as the magic sucks…..even earlier versions…..but we found half dozen books in the bargain bin for 20$….
the best rule is we can outfit a army with a world of diversity of any miniature….like a minotaur army coming this spring….
like all goblins and orcs are clones?? more like in bred hillybilly elves from northern angle stock if i read my tolkien right.
But again….A toast to GW screaming demise..let it crash…as it will not be felt here in alberta….we already knew it years ago. but miracles may happen….berlin wall was one….
GW is just corporate greed with a heavy dose of PMS…..ok she gone but its still a bitch.
GW has fumbled and fumbled and fumbled and now with the clock set to run out…they realize that they are in there own end zone…..
and the new game has to many players….which means….with time running out……they may get a sphincter to chew on after all is said and done…..with whats left of the miniature market…..ok maybe a scrotum
I believe myself to be a good target customer for GW’s latest move. I was really really tempted to buy the Tyranid Swarm box set at $205CAD, I was considering going to FLGS with a 20% discount its acutrally a price I’m willing to pay money for. But after thinking long and hard I decided against it. Here is the reason.
40K (and WFB) has become a bloated game in terms of models and rules. Model wise is that it demands a hugh quanitly of the same models to play. Every other game company make their game so that 1 squad of a unit is enough to make a game fun and competitive. PP’s models is a good example, they are expensive for a squad but usually all you really need is that 1 squad. With 40K and WFB you need TONS of the same unit for a game. Take Tyraind for example. the ‘valued’ army battlebox set gives you 40 models of termagants, realisticly that won’t be enough for an army, you are better off with 100 models. This unrealistic model counts combined with high prices is really what prevents newcomers and verterns from starting a new 40K Army, GW has a 1-click army collection for $2000CAD. It just shows how expensive 40K and WFB is.
Second issue with 40K is rules, and there are many issues with it. First is price, Rulebook and Codex is expensive enough as is. But with introduction of supplments codes, suppliment game rules, dataslates…. its just cost too much just to understand how this game is played. Second is balance, I don’t blame the playersssss who bring their Lord of War + Fortress + Tauder/Eldau list, I blame the company’s lack of playtesting, and if everyone brings the same list to stay competitive and WAAC, my fluffly fully painted Dark Angels or Blood Angels list becomes not fun to play. GW’s response has always been ‘well why don’t you buy the newest OP list?’ Since I have been screwed twice by GW for changing the rules to render both of my army uncompetitive. I decided there is no reason to start the Tyranids, even if the price is tempting, the way they make their rules really pulls the interest out of me.
28mm SF/fantasy figures at roughly 1 quid each? Sign me up… It’s nice to see these larger boxes actually offer value again. We’ve been shafted by their so called “deals” for so long I haven’t really bothered to calculate their worth in a long while (and consequently haven’t bought any either).
As for the Apple thing… they are deluded if they compare themselves to Apple. Yes, Apple is very successful and profitable — but it also doesn’t hold majority marketshare in ANYTHING (except maybe MP3 players? They had the tablet market when they created it, but have since lost majority — and even then it’s questionable whether you should include laptops in that or not).
The Apple/Ferrari model depends on operating in a large market and skimming the cream off the top and leaving the low-cost, low-margin bulk products to others. Forge World is in position to be Apple in the miniatures/GW world, not GW itself.
To aspire to be a better company (like apple) is fine in my books. Failing to achieve this is not bad as long as you keep trying and improve.
MY viewpoint is this.
GW want to be an amazing model making and gaming company and believe that that passion will be so clear that they don’t need a traditional marketing function to ‘spread the word’. But this is not working out and the vacuum allows for views to decide their own narrative which seems to be shareholder pressure and the evil of making money.
Apple have shareholders too.
Apple have made finecast mistakes in the past too.
Apple makes a lot of money.
I believe that it’s clumsy (not malicious) handling of traders and media is about them thinking that ‘have’ to be a ‘grown up’ company and legal depts and control the media.
Just look how long it took for them to get the internet and websites. Investment vs return on a webstore is a no brainer for a hard nosed business person, but GW wanted to find it in their own time. Again apple is very comfortable being apple and live that very clearly and passionately, to a position where people hate apple for being so well …apple. My mate understands the apple quality but won’t buy them, doesn’t believe in them. Apple are ok with this.
In this way GW is like Apple – very marmite. You love it or hate it.
Odd they are promoting it now, the christmas boxes and these are a saving – which is a positive change. As for value, well what value is of plastic toy soldiers? while monetary that is fixed, the value is entirely subjective as to what you place on the product. Lets face it cost per pound of plastic vs pretty any other plastic product it is rather hideous, but that’s not what we are buying. Maybe this is the sign GW are admitting what latest financials show, they have over valued their product and are trying to climb down without shattering share price
After reading through these posts, and many more like this over the past weeks, I am nervously excited. I’ve been collecting 40k and nothing else for over 15 years. I am frustrated with GW because I want them to succeed and stay around for many more than that. There is a ray of hope, that they may improve, finally, it seems clear now they see the error of their ways. But their choices leading up to this point make me nervous that the choices they make in trying to correct things will be made just like the ones they made getting them this low. Please GW, dig urselves out of this hole, do not dig deeper.
Touching on the points Wufai made.
The Swarm for $205 CAD seems good value at first. But is it a playable army given the latest rules set? Is it a competitive army?
GW’s updating of 40k rules is what killed it for me. It went from an army of a couple of units, a couple of tanks and a leader to several units, squadrons of vehicles and now to be competitive you need at least a flyer. And remember the modelling sections and alternative play styles aka Killteam that was in one of the previous versions?
WFB is just as bad. It went from a couple of core units, maybe an elite unit, a big monster or cannon and a leader to multiple horde units etc.
I was the biggest GW fanboy, would be in the store every time we went to the mall. I collected 2 armies for each of the core games twice (first when in UK and again when I emmigrated to Canada). They are all for sale btw lol.
But the ever expanding rules with focus on more and more models and the price changes (I think this particular horse is beyond another beating) put me off the company for good.
I don’t see GW changing their overall pricing structures enough to earn many fans’ hard earned cash and I hope the masses don’t fall for gimicky pricing ploys.
They really need to re-invent themselves from scratch.
They won’t change until they start advertising for PR/marketing team members…. They need to address the bad reputation they have online, and they need to be less secretive and have a clear marketing stratergy.
Actually , I might have to get my calculator out and do the Math on that one; (as our American friends say,) and weigh up the costs of that Tyranid deal. For a man that’s trying to construct a horrifying Tyranid force at the moment and considering that a Battle force of Tyranids costs in excess of £60 now , that might be a fairly good deal; disregarding picking up the equivalent stash of Tyranid miniatures off of ebay that is…. hmmmn.
The share price just lost all of yesterday’s gain as soon as the market opened….
Sorry take that back, it’s just the way BBC show the data, they had the share price at 540, then at 533, it closed at 533 yesterday.
I agree the new army sets over battle forces are a better buy, albeit at a greater initial outlay. I think GW have overpriced themselves by about 10-20% on most kits. If they want to get more direct sales the way to do it is by bundles, even limited time bundles – so their ‘one-click’ collections could save you 20% for example. Another way to do it would be to offer percentage discounts for larger purchases or a ‘spend £100 get 10% off’ etc up to 25% for a £300+ purchase. Hell even if they threw in an army book for a specific starter set at a discount that would be better.
They also shouldn’t have canned metal – finecast is such a poor replacement that metal models have gone up in price by as much as 2-3x their initial GW value – which means there’s great demand for it. They should have asked us through a simple poll on their website and let us know their plans. Collectors like metal – not brittle or cheap resin. They could have kept metal for limited edition runs upon a new release to give collectors something to buy once or twice a month – instead they all hit ebay. Money is being exchanged quite regularly – £40+ for a single Battlefleet Gothic vessel, £30-60+ for Gangs and BB Teams etc…I know it seems off topic but it is an avenue of revenue they shut down completely…because of this ‘must cut’ mentality, which is okay at first, but when you start cutting whole parts of your business off you may soon realise that you’ve become too thin. Specialist Games could have become a separate business arm with a little backing and then they could have let it sink or swim, instead of just cutting it off completely – they didn’t even try.
GW’s back catalogue is hugely popular among collector’s. If they still have any master’s it may be worth while taking a look into it. There is so much they can do, depending on cost/possibility, it begs belief.
Warren rightly pointed to their rich history, that history is still worth quite a bit of money to many people – GW shouldn’t be afraid of their past, they should embrace it for the same reason that old movies, music etc still sell. How much resource they may be willing to devote to that is their only problem.
I just hope the board wakes up and smells the hobby, rather than the money – because if they focused on what the GW hobby is and communicated with us like hobbyists, they’d make more money – their resistance to people’s enthusiasm for their product over the last 4-5 years has cost them 25% of their stock and the last variety of their catalogues, metal and, most of all, custom and respect. How about an apology or a little humility? It may go a long way to bring lost custom back.
I think comparing GW to Apple isnt really the way to go GW is reality is a small company though looks big in a minority hobby that we all partake in
I haven’t bought any 40K stuff in almost 30 years same with WFB though I have bought other fantasy and Sci Fi stuff in that period mainly due to price and in my opinion the awful figures they produce
Now if they brought back Specialist games ( though I doubt they will) and put them in the stores then I could see myself ( and a lot of my friends) going back to them. The Specialists games were good, ok like all rules they had dodgy parts in them but at least Epic and Warmaster looked like what mass battle should be
I also dont understand why they do limited runs on things like BOFA and Space Hulk, both popular especially Space Hulk and the BOFA figures weren’t bad eiher either
Another way to look at it aside from the obvious cost effectiveness part, is that a major problem with a lot of people being turned off by GW products is the accessibility. Imagine if you are new to it and want to start your own army, but then see that you have to buy tons of boxes at huge cost, which is a tad daunting. I think what they are trying to do here (I hope!) is make the game easier to start for new players, here you have a playable army in one box making it a lot less confusing for newbies. £105 is still quite expensive even if cheaper than getting them individually, so for me, it’s not exactly the deal of the century they are trying to make it out to be.
For me, I would like to see GW engage with the community more, after all it is the community that drives their sales. When I went into my local GW recently to purchase some paints and modelling supplies, I asked the store manager if I could arrange short game session on one of their gaming tables to go through some of the rules etc I wanted to learn more about. I was told that they don’t do games in the stores and that I needed to go to my local gaming club. This is wrong to me, sure there are gaming clubs, but it would be nice to have small skirmish games in store rather than just being the general attitude of, ‘You buy from us, nothing else’. Feels a major disconnect with their fanbase and customers (including all the legal threats and bullying etc). Anyhow, I digress, yes, better value for money is good, as is making it easier for people wanting to get into the hobby, but it still feels weak, they need to do a hell of a lot more.
Price isn’t the major issue for me, yes it costs a lot, but I love every moment of painting and playing. The biggest problem is the disconnect from the community/customers/fanbase, if that is fixed then spending a lot of money on their products is worth every penny.
GW lost the plot on value proposition a while back byt thinking value is just in the products – otherwise they wouldn’t have screwed up their store policies by alienating people like me at weekends. The store community/hobby centre service was a big chunk of the VP I was buying into when I purchased in store; as soon as I lost it so did the will to buy at store list prices!
Never confuse value with price – and even then there’s intrinsic and perceived value. I’m currently working close to Regent Street and wonder just who sees perceived value in a £200 jumper that doesn’t look that different from the budget branded jumper I got for Christmas.
GW have confused this, feeling they have to compete on price against the on-line retailers. If as you suggest they start treating their products as commodities rather than rebuild a full brand VP around them they’ll continue to spiral down.
Creating scale based pricing strategies (not quite BOGOF level) can work for them as they support a “collect an army to play with quicker” VP. Their battleforce/army boxes have always done that – providing the contents are relevant and not wasteful to the purchaser.
@poosh – I Disagree, the Ghost Army deal was just that – saving £30-40 pounds on the bundle.
They are a replacement but they were model-specific. And there were 4/5 of these boxes, I believe the Tau and Eldar made any real savings, the others were minimal if I recall. These are not the same as the mega-forces or army deals which were great not just for general re-reinforcements but also great buys for people starting out.
The biggest mistake GW made was a marketing one. When they decided to drop metal for plastic and fine cast, they told the customer the reason was its cheaper to produce. This then translated to us the customers as cheaper retail price. So when GW increased the cost we as the customer became angry, and righty so. That’s was GW biggest mistake, if they had always intended to increase the retail cost then they should have never informed us the reason for switching production material was due to lower costs for GW. We would have never been wiser about it, and as such wouldn’t have been up in arms about being charged more for a cheaper product.
That was a marketing and PR disaster, and why you need people with those skills sets working within the company. A good PR/marketeer wouldn’t allowed that disastrous mistake to have been made.
I’m not sure this is entirely to do with the recent fall in sales – I would love to believe that the air of arrogance Games Workshop have had has been shattered in a way most humiliating as the whole Finecast thing was an absolute disrespect to us. “we are switching to this new material because it’s better and cheaper, but we are going to charge you more for it and it isn’t actually better fro making highly detailed models with”. It’s especially arrogant bearing in mind the alternatives out there now – Infinity is by far a superior game, and while GW make THE BEST multi part plastic kits, their models are not as good as Infinity or Confrontation outside of the plastic boxes.
I think the recent price drop suits the larger scale of the game they now make, encouraging people to ultimately spend the same or more money but now the larger scale is more accessible. I suspect this has been a part of their plan all along as the game is no longer a ‘large skirmish’ but is now creeping towards Epic 40K in 28mm.
I’m quite interested in buying this as I have the previous battleforce (which the genestealers and tyranid warriors) and the swarmlord purely for a display item. Adding the new battleforce would dramatically increase the size of my nids swarm and because of a discount I receive at my local independent retailer I’d save a further 10%.
Only reason I wouldn’t buy this boxed set as a new 40k gamer is the absence of a Synapse creature. It would of been a smarter marketing idea had GW thought to of swapped the gargoyles with a single Zoanthrope instead.
Vote with your wallets people. Not only have they stagnated in gaming but they are now regurgitating the same game with poor rules. Not too long ago that box would have been £40. Frankly Nids will make you cut up all the foam in your case so stay away people!
A lot of this comes down to quality and the assumption you can trade on a name, while battering the competition because you re obsessed over the fact that you are a ‘name’ and therefore always right.
Rules and figures, they pushe the name and hope people buy into, but over time, gamers see better looking, better quality and cheaper goods and so Grow up and realise that GW is not all there is.
They other day, I just ordered the bag of 80 plastic Warzone troopers (to proxy for Imperial Guard) at $27 from Prince August. I think GW must have found out that I did that, and this is what finally pushed them over the edge…
White dwarf is now roughly £16 a month??? Weekly stuff and a monthly magazine? They are dead to me! Unless the release some new space marines lol. And please no more flying skips. I refuse to believe that any design from the 40k universe can fly?
GW should start a loyalty card for in store and online purchases only, with a good reward system along the lines of the Game store. Also don’t hold back release pre heresy as plastics with a different rule system before I die and reap the benefits. Open up the warhammer fantasy map and release new minis. Something like Romans and historical armies might just pull some people back. And above all be nice. I have been put off by the negative press they are getting.
The problem is regardless of price most people are not attending a GW store. Their model is predicated on having a store to push people to their website. They are directly competing against the independent retailer who has variety. The problem is gamers go to the LGS and unless you are a warhammer fan you will not go to a GW store as they only have 2 products (wfb and w40k). You have basically lost a huge market opportunity to attract new customers. The other issue is the LGS owner has little incentive of supporting GW products because they encourage people to buy directly from GW rather than the LGS.
Only £55 for a carnifex!! Seriously! And to think the classic original Screamer Killer cost you less than a flippin’ tenner!! WAY LESS than a tenner! But maybe I should be pleased , I’m only paying 55. It seems If I were paying in Dollars or some other currency I’d be forking out hundreds! such is the way with exchange rated and all that s**t…. (face buried in hands )
Did not last.
Mine is a farrie
GW needs the money for their investors so they are liquidating stock that isn’t selling well, such as Finecast (Which has all but died and no one really noticed or cared) and selling off items such as Tyranids which due to the new updated codex, no one likes.
They’re scrabbling to get back some of the money they’ve lost without seeing the larger picture and burying themselves even more.
I’d love to know who GW considers their competition. I bet it’s Microsoft and Sony.
It’s the Russian diamond mines. You see GW makes their miniatures with liquid diamond then wait for them to harden with our atmosphere due to the different gravity.
I guess I can understand this article at a couple of different levels. I really think this is just a swipe at marketing based on my own spending habits. Remember when assault on black reach came out. Man that was an incredible savings so I bought three and built 2 great and very large armies with them.
So if I were to look at the nids in this way I can see the savings here as well. To list the price in a way that I can easily number crunch will draw me in quick
When it comes to war gaming in general I’m with out doubt a sucker for good deals.
Another cool article I like these last few that have been posted
I am a long time GW fan and still have minis I bought in the 80’s , but i also am a Manager with a major supermarket and know a thing or two about marketing. When GW stopped selling other manufacturers products in the late 80,s ( i think ) a fundamental change took place and they stopped being a retailer and became a manufacture focusing on the products that they made themselves. They lost customers (including me ) but were able to focus on the fantastic games they were making, looking back now this was a smart move. However I think that over the years GW have forgotten how to be a retailer. The stores are a former shadow of themselves the one I used to go to in Birmingham was huge and always full ,now they are are the size of a postage stamp.But that’s not really the point, retailers do deals, Special offers etc and GW just don’t.
Let me give u a real example, My local independent stockist has a loyalty scheme you get a little card and for every £5 you spend you get a stamp when the book is full you get £10 of anything in the shop, this works out at about 10%, but you can save up your books and spend them in one go ( i got a free Landraider! ) so I go to the shop not the internet and not GW hobby centers ( to get that Landrader I have spent £400 in his shop! ) Everyone at my local club goes there its just a no brainer. That is just fantastic marketing locking in customers for repeat sales.I am sure that lots of independents have similar schemes and this takes profit away from GW who have to sell to the retailers at wholesale prices.So Could GW do it? for sure, will they? No. GW need to get a retailer in its top management someone outside the hobby industry who can look at their strategy in an objective way. Until they do something radical I cant see them continuing to grow .
Though I can see the sense in what you are saying there is a far more fundamental error going on at GW. No one on the board is a dedicated gamer. They are all suits and as far as they are concerned they could be selling peanuts instead of pieces of plastic. Their focal interest is lining the pockets of shareholders which includes every single member of the board. The actual product and its marketplace are neither understood nor cared about at senior management level. This isolationism will finish the company unless someone at top level shows they care about the product and the customer base. After the failcast episode and feck you attitude that came from GW regarding the absence of quality and fix it yourself reaction, I somehow doubt anything short of sacking the board and employing people that care about product and customers will save this situation.
Totally agree. I hate what’s happened to GW the last few years. Their prices, crappy looking rules and hysterically bad business decisions have really deflated me and my mates and we no longer play.
The only way it’s going to change is if the board includes at least some people who like the hobby, who can push at getting the rules and prices to a fair level.
If that doesn’t happen, GW can wave bye bye to being in business. Some of my mates actually want them to fall, and I can’t find much reason to disagree with them.
Exactly how many families can afford to have a GW games player? It isn’t only the current economical crisis (maybe milder in the UK?), but the fact that all products/commodities/services are gowing up in price while income is stalling or going down. How many times can the family dine each week so that Junior (or Father…) can buy more little plastic soldiers?
It is not just the individual box price, it is their well planned rules that have been making the hobby expensive: just go to WD battle reports are compute the armies cost. Fifty-strong infantry units, indeed! and not just one either…
Taking more and more money from each of a shrinking grumbling “customer” base is a lazy strategy, when compared to working for a growing number of satisfied “partners”.
GW is different from Apple, that’s clear, but, more than that: I am not sure their management ever saw the products they sell. They behave like they think it is Vuitton bags or Louboutin shoes.
They want it all, they want it now, and they don’t want anybody else to get anything at all. Just look at their practices towards the retailer market.
The question is not, at this point, what they can do to recover. The question is who will be the next dominant company in this market.
Just read Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”…
Unfortunately, if honest, nobody, will even be able to carve that fine phrase on their tombstone, because no, really they did not “mean well”…
Fernando
Maybe having reasonable prices is the way to go, eg 5 Dire Avengers for what is almost the same price when they were 10, or new DE/HE kits with Wyches and Maidens/Shadow warriors, an extra torso doesnt justify why you have to pay 45 euros.
High prices keeps veterans away, and new players wont start his game with new prices.
GW needs to adress this, lower price on boxes so we can start buying in quantity again, if we buy more, they get more.
“Maybe having reasonable prices are the way to go, Aug 5 Dire Avengers for what is almost the same price when they were 10, or new DE/HE kits with Wyches and Maidens/Shadow warriors, an extra torso doesn’t justify why you have to pay 45 euros. ”
This is a big issue and even more so when the look of the figures is kiddy’ish and in some cases bloody awful. They go with the original darker look in the books, realistic images in a way’ and yet the cartoon style figures. Said before elsewhere, but ‘remember the chat with others over the realistic look of Redbox games, figures and the horse faced dark elf GW figure’ it’s a lol moment and deadly true.
They need to start talking to gamers, drop the more aggressive anti fan approach with the C&D’s and look at their ranges in both style and price.
Well, I am surprised they don’t have more of these bundles, but as direct only to compete with the internet discounters on the normal boxes.
And Dwarves have just been announced on GW’s site… is it just me or does it feel like GW is picking up the pace to try and please? Seems like we are waiting less and less for new stuff. Now I’m looking forward to IG and space wolves.
I find my self wondering where the original founders of Games Workshop are now. Perhaps they’re living on their own private desert island, living off the insane profits they managed to make fleecing all of us dumb shmucks who subscribed to the hobby and probably spent more than the price of a small mansion at their stores.
More likely, (I hope) is that they’re languishing in retirement somewhere wondering what the hell has happened to their company and why it got so messed up by money grabbing Ba****s!!! And how their vision turned to such rubbish!
I see the shares took another tumble today…
This is a very interest turn of events. Games Workshop has been view for years as the premium brand of miniature Wargaming. They are the Apple of our hobby. Like you said Warren, when you are in that position, you never highlight the price of your product, you highlight the quality. Let the costumer themselves judge if your product is worth the price you put on it.
When you DO point out the price, you walk a very fine line. You might open a door so a competitor can swoop in. Look at the Kindle Fire HD vs iPad ad Amazon did not long ago (I think it still airs now, sorry, I don’t watch much TV anymore, thank Hulu+ and Netflix for that).
GW’s new private pricing strategy?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251429979927?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649