Reply To: [unofficial Weekender] Why is G'Wullu seemingly invincible?

[guillotine 16068xp 5]

GW made itself vulnerable this year with the custodes lore change and mention of female space marines. If the 40k series goes ahead and they break the lore… hard core fans may withdraw from the game taking their money with them…

Nah. The people online who rage about female Custodians or Space Marines are a tiny but loud minority and bunch of people looking to piggy back on the rage-youtube. The real fans who actually buy their products and engage with the events and gaming groups are either happy about GWs approach or don’t care either way.

What you follow up about money in general, I do agree with, and especially pricing. There is a saturation point where they cannot keep increasing the prices anymore. Clearly that’s not near yet with the success they’ve recently enjoyed.

 

The time when GW was vulnerable was after the Lord of the Rings hype vanished and they were moving away from metal miniatures by replacing them with the poor quality finecasts. They also had some weaker game releases after that time and I felt lot of people lost interest and went to other games. However they clawed back from that, with better 40k rules and far broader plastics range catching up and generally new miniature releases being better all the time. Many people were unhappy about the end of Warhammer Fantasy, likely though commercially that was a good choice. And now they’re getting lot of that back with nostalgia and the Old World doing amazingly well.

Fundamentally GW seems “invincible” because they have amazingly good product. And by that I mean the comprehensive “Warhammer” hobby. Just what @kiranamida wrote above, there’s so many ways to enjoy the hobby. And the lore and the miniatures are just so good they keep drawing new people and also old faces like my self back as their customers. These are all further boosted by the licensing deals, which bring money but also visibility. There are SO many people checking out Warhammer now due to the Space Marine II release and I’ve understood lot of Total War: Warhammer fans have gotten now to miniatures for the first time with the Old World. Imagine what a potential smash hit Amazon series would do?

And yes, what @sundancer wrote. GW is the only truly international miniature games company. It’s a massive advantage to anyone else. I think they also have done really smart choice internationally focusing on the Warhammer brand instead of Games Workshop.