STAR WARS FIRESALE! But it’s Shatterpoint!

[sundancer 44342xp 1]

Direct from the horses mouth:

Atomic Mass Games announces strategic focus on key game lines to strengthen core portfolio and support long-term growth.

Last night AMG dropped this bomb on facebook and their Press Release portal [Link]

A key driver of the reorganization is to allow Atomic Mass Games to enhance focus on its flagship titles, Star Wars™: Legion and Marvel: Crisis Protocol, delivering the depth, innovation, and high-quality gameplay experiences that players expect. As part of this realignment, Atomic Mass Games’ Star Wars™: Shatterpoint product line will be transitioning into a specialist core game line. As a specialist game, Shatterpoint will continue to be supported to ensure consistent availability and the highest level of gameplay experience possible by AMG, while streamlining the number of releases to align with the restructured development resources of the studio.

Specialist Core Game. Yeah. Sounds like “we put it on the shelf with X-Wing and Armada”. Was it the scale? The extra production costs? Or did it simply not sell? I, for one, am happy that SW:L continues.

[dags 4028xp 3]

To be honest it sounds like jargon around whats already been happening ie: release cadence being significantly reduced, mcp and legion are now both getting monthly to bi-monthly releases and shatterpoint seems to be about quarterly.

I initially avoided because it seemed somewhere between Legion and MCP and none of the marketting really got across how different the game play is.  I do think shard IP but a bigger scale is a hard sell as inquistor proved

[pagan8th 14181xp 1]

I like the sculpts in Shatterpoint, although lightsabers are frightening thin and fragile, but it does feel like better value than MCP as you get four minis per box instead of two in MCP (or even one in  some cases).

Honestly, not played Shaterpoint, MCP, or Legion yet. Partly because I haven’t painted enough stuff, but also because my wargaming opponent has had distractions in recent times because of family health issues.

I get the feeling all of the above will probably only get used in RPG’s… or maybe I’ll try some solo games to get a feel for the rules and that might inspire me to paint them all.

[limburger 22420xp 1]

I do wonder if this announcement was why they really had a firesale of Shatterpoint at the local convention last year.
I got to pick up squad boxes for 15 Euro … and kind of wished I had gotten as many as I could carry 😀

The release schedule (or rather : lack thereof) also appeared to hint at ‘reduced focus’.
I think this is AMG admitting that they lack the capacity to produce and sell content for more than 2 games.

I also blame the absolutely terrible Starwars series that have been produced. They’ve managed to make the prequels look good.
As such a focus on content from the original trilogy and the prequels is a good move as folk don’t want to be reminded of the crap that came afterwards. Rogue One and Andor have been the only consistent exceptions.

One question: will Marvel Crisis Protocol get any new content or is Legion the only one that is getting new stuff this year ?

[onlyonepinman 18112xp 1]

One of the things I like about Mantic – and to a degree, GW have started doing this as well – is that most miniatures are cross compatible between games.  Kings of War had Vanguard, it now has Champions but your miniatures were compatible.  Miniatures for Deadzone are compatible with Firefight.  I found it a bit strange that AMG went down a different route for Shatter Point and decided it should be a different scale to Legion, rather than a new way to play

[sundancer 44342xp 0]

I think the reason behind that is twofold:

1. Smaller groups, bigger minis = looks great on the table
2. Marvel Crisis Protocol already was bigger. And they are “siblings” in regards to the target audience I guess.

Also: had they done Shatterpoint via the means of “same scale as SW:L” there wouldn’t be much incentive to buy new minis for most people.

[onlyonepinman 18112xp 0]

Not sure how the “incentive to buy new minis” has worked out given that they are kind of sidelining it – they wouldn’t be doing that if it was flying off the shelves.  However, hindsight is always 20/20 as they say.

[pagan8th 14181xp 1]

Be interesting to see what Shatterpoint minis go on sale now. Some online stores may decide to clear stock and there may be discounts at UK Games Expo this year.

Edit: I just googled Shatterpoint and some stores are all ready selling the teams for about half price as ‘reduced to clear’.

[limburger 22420xp 0]

(insert standard rant about how a distance is not a scale and thus inevitably creates scaling issues between products).

Multi award winning Moonstone uses ‘standard’ sized minis and you’ve got a maximum of 6 models per team.

GW suffered from scale creep over the years.

//

@pagan8th it makes sense that stores would want to clear out precious shelf space the moment they hear the news that a game got its ‘end of life’ notice.

There’s a few squad boxes I want that I’d buy immediately if they were cheaper.

[jeffersonpowers 617xp 0]

I’m a fairly avid Shatterpoint player (well, as avid as I can be given how thinly my attention span is stretched) and honestly I’m fine with it. There are already a lot of models for the game, I’m not sure it really needs much more. I’ll be happy to keep playing with what I already have, but that’s easy for me to say as I only play at home and am not reliant on in-store interest or tournament support.

[limburger 22420xp 0]

I got most of what I wanted. There’s a few squad packs that I would have wanted once I had completed at least some of my current bits, but now it feels like I should grab them as soon as I can afford to. 🙁

I really wished we could have had Yoda and Palpatine to complete the set of main characters.

I want to know what is going to happen to the squad packs that were announced last year :

Ministravaganza 2025 Previews – Star Wars™: Shatterpoint

The cards appear to be available (soon-ish), but everything else ?

 

[dags 4028xp 1]

They are preview some new at Adepticon – something in the sands and I expect the squad packs previewed will still come out.

Also it still states there will be releases and development.  So it feels like an attempt to reassure people reduced releases isn’t an end.  However it has not been handled well and I think has had the opposite effect, practical examples would have done wonders

None of the places I normally shop have applied any clearence rates yet, but I mostly have the stuff I am truly bothered about

[limburger 22420xp 0]

that’s the “technical true” bit of the press release.
Yes, there will still be releases.
But they also cut the development team by a significant amount (it’s hidden in their press release).

So how much ‘new’ stuff do you expect them to ‘develop’ with a team of 0 ?

Keep in mind that a lot of the stuff was promised in 2025!
Given that we haven’t seen a 2026 listing for Shatterpoint that means there will be nothing in 2027.

And again I need to emphasize that this was a statement directed at shareholders.
It speaks in their language.

It tells them there’s profit to be made, because they’re going to make a new game that will sell more stuff (pinky promise).
It doesn’t matter that they won’t be selling more stuff to existing customers, because that’s pennies at best as only a few will buy all of the stuff. The amount of core boxes sold to ‘new’ players is negligible or else they wouldn’t have cut another game.

New people buying core boxes for the new game is far more profitable.

[jeffersonpowers 617xp 1]

AMG posted an announcement on their website clarifying the Shatterpoint situation. OTT isn’t letting me post the link, but if you go to the AMG site and go to Transmissions > Studio News, you’ll see it.

It basically says more-or-less what we’ve surmised: they plan to release everything they’ve announced, but probably nothing (or at least a lot less) after that.

[limburger]

AMG is really really bad at communicating with regular folk, aren’t they ?

it’s as if they only ever talk to investors and similar corporate types.

” … , we have come to the conclusion that the Sequel Trilogy provides both us and the players a fantastic celebratory bookend to an incredible era….”

(translation: we have come to realise that the sequel trilogy was crap and hated by everyone so we best cut our losses and focus on the bits of starwars folk still love rather than let it drag us down even further ) 😉

• This reply was modified 2 days, 15 hours ago by limburger.

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