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Fargo Fukes posted:Why does everyone think they're about to die? According to their half-yearly report they made nearly £8m in the last six months (before tax). Wouldn't they have to be losing money for a while to go belly-up? What am I not getting here? GWs prices are sustained by one thing; their domination of wargaming, particularly in the UK. They can charge so much for their product because they have very little (or used to have very little) competition. Over the past few years their sales have been slipping, but that's been covered up by cutting costs and increasing prices. That means that the either the number of people playing Warhammer/40k is dropping, or people playing those games are spending less. It's looking more and more likely that it's more the former than the latter. At some point GW will lose their critical mass that sustains the high prices, since players can play other games at a fraction of the cost. The past few years have seen a steady decline, and the latest six months show a sharp drop which could be the number of players dropping below that critical mass. Why pay £200+ to get started playing 40k if you can drop £25 with any of the other competitors and get started? A full size army will often set you back well in excess of £300, with another £100 on top for rulebooks while competitors aim for the £100-£150 for full-size army + rules. The only reason up until now as because it was so much easier to get a game of 40k than Warmachine, Kings of War, Infinity, Bolt Action etc, but by all accounts those games are now reaching their sustainable mass where you can easily get a game in. A lot of commentators don't seem to see the difference between "losing money" and "not making as much money" true, but the downward trend seen over the past years has accelerated. The next two reports will make for very interesting and much more indicative reading.
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Jan 25, 2014 15:19
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SUPER NEAT TOY posted:GW also made like 2 million less just on licensing, so the numbers are a bit skewed. From £0.4m in 2012 to £1m in 2013... The royalties actually went up which cover up some more of the drop in sales. Unless I'm reading the wrong part of the document?
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Jan 25, 2014 16:12
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Thundercracker posted:Isn't the creation of Mantic itself a direct result of GWS ditching them as a supplier? Ummm, no? Ronnie left GW. I don't know whether he left or was pushed, but I know he didn't like the culture and business practices that had emerged. Knowing him he would have kicked up a stink. Given GWs comments about only hiring Yes-Men in their financial reports then he would have either been kicked out or strongly hinted that he should leave. He travelled for a year, came back and started up Mantic to compete with GW completely afresh. He didn't get any equipment or anything for free and I'm not sure where the original cash injection came from, but he started from scratch. He used Rendedra (another bunch of ex-GW guys who specialise in plastic production) to make plastics and hired a bunch of ex-GW sculptors to sculpt the actual models. The only in-house production that Mantic runs is metals.
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Jan 28, 2014 18:25
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SUPER NEAT TOY posted:Basically, yes. That's what Chapterhouse was doing beforehand. They didn't make Space Marine shoulderpads, they made Astro Knight shoulderpads (wowee they sure do look like SM shoulderpads though, what an odd coincedence!). I think GW could have won the suit (if they handled it better), but instead they pulled the usual GW poo poo and acted like toddlers. I thought originally Chapterhouse was being cagey about their names but the thing that pushed GW over the edge was when CH started flat out calling their stuff "Trygon conversion kits" and "Salamander conversion kits"? That was the difference between CH and other 3rd party bits manufacturers (other than quality) which meant they incurred GWs wrath.
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Jan 28, 2014 18:40
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FordCQC posted:I still can't find any attribution anywhere that you can't play pick-up games of WH40K anymore. My local store posted on his Facebook that it's a ludicrous assertion. No-one's saying you can't, just that it's getting harder depending on the area. My LGS by comparison has a grand total of 2 regular 40k players and a minimum of 6 Warmahordes players, averaging 8-9 on wargaming nights. A year ago is was the opposite.
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Jan 28, 2014 19:42
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Ah, well that's at least partly true at my local GW store. About a year ago I think they dropped pick up games in favour of pre-arranged games only. I don't know if it's been changed back.
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Jan 28, 2014 19:55
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Ex-GW guys Renedra: http://www.renedra.co.uk/history.html Seems to be a who's-who of ex-GW-Plastic-Sprue-Toolers. Not exactly "famous" but obviously another company sprung out from GW and it now makes sprues for a large number of companies including Perry Miniatures, Mantic and Warlord.
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Jan 28, 2014 23:51
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Kai Tave posted:That's amazing. If you liked that, you'll love these: quote:Photos of Painted Models quote:Conversions quote:Unreleased Material quote:T-shirts, Clothes, Tatoos and the Like quote:Model Conversion Kits Source: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?catId=&categoryId=§ion=&pIndex=3&aId=3900002&start=4&multiPageMode=true
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Jan 29, 2014 10:29
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neonchameleon posted:Because their stock price recently crashed 24% in one day thanks in part to their not paying a dividend without even issuing a profit warning. Jesus Christ the avatar of that guy: 
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Jan 29, 2014 14:41
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JerryLee posted:I saw a new post in this thread and thought it would be something about their most recent Betting that 40k 7th edition does come out. Seems like GW logic. "Hey, we make a crapload of money whenever we release a new 40k edition right? Let's do one every two years!" Considering the exodus that 6th ed saw, I doubt another £45 rulebook will help matters.
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Apr 10, 2014 15:44
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in the form of the website redesign, but nope.
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Fenn the Fool! posted:Did 6th have major issues that caused this, or was it just timing and general lack of interest? Timing, lack of interest and some of the changes did not sit well with people - particularly those hit hard. While the initial quick rollout of new codex's were great, the multitude of e-releases and extra crap over the past few months have made it impossible to keep up. Seconding Warpath for an alternative core ruleset to 40k. The armies aren't fleshed out yet and the core rules are still in beta but using it as a starting point and writing your own army lists/tweaks will work brilliantly until the full release next year.
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Apr 10, 2014 23:24
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Numlock posted:October 29th 2015 Some dork already claimed my B-day. I think given time, a competitor would take over the reigns although hopefully a few different competitors rather than a single company having a monopoly. PP are in a good position to take over as noted, but there are plenty of other companies taking over GWs market share. In the short term, particularly in the UK, there will be a big problem when GW stores disappear. At the moment probably around 90% of the gaming stores in the UK are GW, and GW stores make up around 99% of the clean, well lit and friendly stores. If they vanish then people walking in and picking up the hobby will dry up (though by a lot of accounts that's stopping anyway when people see the price tags).
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Apr 12, 2014 09:58
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Apollodorus posted:You may be exaggerating, but really, 90 percent? That's a significant difference from the US; in my area, for example (two medium-sized cities and one smaller city, with a bunch of suburbs) there is one GW store in a low-rent strip mall, and four or five independent stores that are much larger in square footage, receive far more foot traffic, stock basically the full GW (and PP, Mantic, Infinity, etc) retail lines, and are better located. Also people actually play GW games there on a regular basis. Yeah it's completely different to the US. Having an indie store is extremely rare, let alone one in a central location. Leeds is the third largest city in the UK and is "the shopping capital of the North". We have: 1. Games Workshop Leeds in the city centre - a decent sized store that has shifted locations a few times over the last decade. By all accounts one of the best performers in the country and so far has managed to resist the change to the one-man store. 2. Travelling Man in the city centre. About a 50/50 split between comic books and board games. There is a corner dedicated to wargames in the corner of the basement but no demo space, cabinets or anything. The only stock held is a few core sets for GW games and Warmahordes. 3. Patriot Games, about 10 minute walk outside the city centre (no passing trade). This is a MTG shop, with board games on the side, with wargames on the side of that. It does provide playspace and dedicated wargaming nights and a small selection of 2nd hand miniatures in a cabinet for sale. There's no dedicated demo table or anything, though the owner will take someone through 40k if they ask. If someone walks in wanting to get started in nerd hobbies though, the owner will always get them playing MTG instead. That is it for shops which stock wargaming products. If we start to look further afield at neighbouring cities and towns - Wakefield, Bradford, Harrogate and York then they only have GW shops or more travelling man shops. No indies. If GW Leeds disappears then there will be no-one recruited into wargaming by walking into a shop, looking at the minis and being taken through a demo game. And this is in the third largest city in the UK.
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Apr 12, 2014 14:58
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There are no chains at the moment. I'd love it if GW split its miniatures and retail arms into separate companies. If the retail shops were allowed to sell other manufacturers then it would be a huge boom for UK wargaming.
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Apr 12, 2014 21:01
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He probably meant primary wargame.
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Apr 12, 2014 23:38
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Rulebook Heavily posted:With the downgrading of Golden Demon and now this, GW has downgraded "painting models" as a thing they want to encourage people doing. Which is remarkable considering their paint lines are still one of their single most profitable enterprises, but there it is. Seems to be the same tactic as their actual games. They sell the paints and want you to buy the paints, but don't give a poo poo if you actually do paint your models or not. They're only wanting you to make the initial ~£50 splash on paints, hopefully get you to drop £300+ on the mega paint set, but then don't care about your repeat custom afterwards.
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May 26, 2014 22:31
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I think that's only in Australia. While Australia is hardly GWs best continent, it is still telling that a small time manufacturer is outselling the biggest company by such a significant margin. What's also telling is that the Limited Edition rulebook is still available, 3 weeks after release. This is a 2000 print run and it's still available. By comparison, 6th ed had a 5000 copy limited edition that was sold out in two days.
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Jun 11, 2014 10:49
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Me three. Orks are my favourite fictional race, ever. I love every aspect of them - the dark humour, aesthetics and background. I can give/take a lot of the 40k background but Orks are my absolute favourite. However, other than the plastic Shokk Attack Gun, I'm extremely unlikely to buy any of the new Ork models or codex. I have £200/month budget for wargaming and none of it goes on GW now. I'm extremely enthusiastic about the hobby and so far introduced three friends back into wargaming this year, and none of them have taken up GW games. For all GWs bluster about how they rely on word of mouth for advertising, I should be their ideal target audience. I want to like 40k, I really do but at this point I don't see how they could realistically tempt me back. They would at minimum need to: - Rewrite 40k from scratch. Throw out the core rules and all the codexes and start again. Even more of a reboot than 3rd ed was. It would need to be as tight and balanced as Warmachine. Stop using "Beer & Pretzels" and "Forging the narrative" as an excuse for appallingly lovely writing. - Halve their prices. Not necessarily on everything, but elite infantry and heroes are beyond a joke now. The Flash Gitz and Mek Guns really tempted me back into 40k, but the prices are about twice what I'd be willing to pay. I can see there being a *slight* premium on elite units, maybe 10-25% or so, but £35 for 5 models, especially when you're realistically wanting twice as many models in a unit, is just insane. "Extra bitz" does not justify those costs. The only model I've seen so far that I'm tempted by is the Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun, but only as a fun project to paint up. - Model counts in games halved. The size of 40k as standard is now ridiculous. There's no room to manoeuvre on a standard 6x4 board any more. While it's a combination of both model counts and the rules being so staggeringly bad, 2-3 hours to play a standard game is awful. - Get rid of flyers, unbound and titans in standard games. They don't belong. Knock yourselves out if you want them as optional rules variants. I won't ever play the variants, but I won't ever play 40k as long as they're in the standard core rules. Those are just the minimum changes that they'd need to make to 40k, let alone the companies business practices. Even then it depends on how well Mantics Warpath does. Kings of War hit the perfect spot for fantasy mass battles to the point where I don't see any changes to WHF that would tempt me back to that.
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Jun 11, 2014 14:23
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They've been consistently making profits, but only growing at inflation rate while the rest of the industry is booming (analysts reckon 10-15% annual growth for the last 5 years). Prices have been going up well above inflation rate but profits have remained steady, therefore less sales. The limited edition of their flagship game with a print run of 2000 has still not sold out a month after release, while the previous limited edition of the game with a print run of 6000 sold out within hours of release. The last half-year report showed a drop in profits (not a drop in revenue mind) of 10% YOY which is very significant and their share price dropped 23% after the release. While no-one knows for absolute definite, all signs point to an exodus of customers. Since GWs prices and business model are sustained by simply being the biggest company, this is a huge problem. At some point the tipping point will be hit where people struggle to get games in, so why pay GWs prices for awfully lovely rules when you can get other companies stuff for 1/4 of the price? This has happened in some regions (Australia reportedly has now collapsed for GW with a small time manufacturer outselling them 7:1) but the question is whether this is in the process of happening globally. Remember that TSR were healthy right up until the minute that they weren't and the collapse was very, very fast.
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Jun 16, 2014 08:25
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BeigeJacket posted:^^^^^^^^ Next report is due end of July. The retail chain is a business model that worked in the 80s and 90s and if there's one thing that has contributed to their current predicament as much as their prices, it's the inability of the executives to build a 21st century business. A lot of people (me included) think that the retail chain is what will kill them. At least if they didn't have a retail chain then they could just limp along and shrink down to a minor player in wargaming, but if their profit dips below a certain level then their leases will land them in debt the same as TSRs failed print runs.
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Jun 16, 2014 08:52
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But don't you realise that catering to tournaments by balancing the game and writing clear, concise rules is somehow bad for casual play?
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Jun 22, 2014 13:33
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GW has reported solid, steady and regular growth for the past 5 years. It's a good investment if you just look at the headline figures. It's only if you're aware of the wider market and how badly GW treats its customers that you start to realise that not everything is as rosy as the headline figures suggest. Even with another 20% drop, the stock will be in far better shape than what it fell to after the LOTR bubble burst.  It would have to drop by more than 40% to reach the initial drop in 2005, and drop by 75% to reach the absolute depths that it reached in 2008. There's a long way to go before GW is dead. How fast that comes about is up for debate since the reasons it's happening this time are very different to the LOTR bubble. Arguably the reasons for the current problems are a lot more systemic, hard to turn around and might result in a much faster drop. If the downward trend is as slow as the LOTR bubble was then it might not be too late to save the ship. There would need to be a lot of severe changes extending far beyond their last response of trimming the fat.
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Jun 22, 2014 21:38
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A few people are saying that they've skipped them in the past, but no-one's been able to say what year. Also bear in mind that we don't know for definite that it's cancelled, but it's looking very likely. After last years disaster it's no surprise.
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Jun 30, 2014 21:51
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It sounds like a poo poo-stirrer and I've not seen anything confirming it (or the claim that they'd done it before). As of 1st December they still had £9.3m in cash reserves alone, down from £15.6m in Dec 2012. With 20p per share dividend, it's around £6m in dividends.
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Jun 30, 2014 22:36
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SirPhoebos posted:Can you elaborate on what happened? The most obvious one was Games Day Italy:   The heaving masses indulging in the hobby of buying GW minis. Games Day Germany was much the same: http://masterminis.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/epic-battles-of-miniature-history_6.html Games Day Uk had zero games, only a sales area and a couple of stands with the White Dwarf, Black Library and Forgeworld teams. The number of tickets were limited to 4,000, down on 8,000 in 2012 and by all accounts they failed to sell even half of that. Golden Daemon was thrown into a dark dungeon with horrific lighting and once you'd seen that, had a glance at the Forgeworld stand there was nothing to do, other than buy GW stuff.
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Jun 30, 2014 23:18
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NTRabbit posted:Rumour is the financial report is being written by Matt Ward Fat chance of the books being balanced then.
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Jul 2, 2014 17:41
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I shouldn't have really started the derail  I've worked with Alessio C on a few different things and know how badly the Internet have affected him and his confidence so I'd be very surprised if it doesn't affect Ward in the same way. Truth is we don't know for definite how much of MAT WARDs writing is him and how much is studio interference/pressure. I'd be interested in anything Serious Gaylord posts about accountants vs the design studio in terms of rule writing.I have been told by someone on the inside that codex's aren't written by one person any more. The studio team rotates between projects every week or so. I don't know if there's an overall project head who's responsible for compiling the work or vetoing things, but it's certainly a collaborative effort. Which means that multiple people thought that the new Ork mob rule was a good idea. Daedleh fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Jul 2, 2014 |
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Jul 2, 2014 21:43
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Silhouette posted:Yeah, seriously. Who the hell has an even remote dislike of Alessio? Dude is one of the best rules guys in the business. Kings of War is a masterpiece, and he loving wrote that poo poo drunk on a dare! Kings of war is indeed amazeballs. There's always been vitriol at GW about 40k. I remember when Gav Thorpe was the Mat Ward of 3rd/4th edition but it's never been as bad or consistent as it is now. I think when Alessio was the lead designer he took all criticism personally, even the people slagging off designers personally and questioning their competence. It's made Alessio a little defensive when it comes to criticism and feedback. I definitely approached him the wrong way the first time I worked with him and he didn't respond well to my bluntness. I apologised and we worked it out. I now make sure to tip-toe around any issues I have and gradually lead Alessio to them rather than flat out saying "hey Alessio, Elohi are pretty game breaking right now". He's a great guy and cool to work with. Very enthusiastic and knows his stuff. We're all human at the end of the day and I can't imagine I'd fare any better with the Internet poring over my work, ripping it to shreds and lobbing personal insults at me. So yeah, I really shouldn't make cheap shots at Mat Ward and feel pretty bad about it.
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Jul 3, 2014 08:18
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moths posted:Mantic is working on v3 of their Warpath game, but so far it doesn't look as great an improvement as Kings of War was over Warhammer Fantasy. I've seen people working on porting it to Tomorrow's War with an emphasis on bringing it in-line with the fluff, but don't know much about that. There was a crazy hold-out group that was making 2e rules for everything new - but I don't think they went much past Dark Eldar. *ahem* http://forum.manticblog.com/showthread.php?8380-Warpath-2-5-Fan-Edition Also, when v3 is released if it doesn't appeal to you then please take the time to tell Mantic as such. If there's significant feedback then Mantic will make changes.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:04
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Where is this magical unbound thread?
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Jul 21, 2014 18:10
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To be fair, fully interactive ebooks apparently cost more than regular books to produce because of the extra programming on top. Of course, once the fixed cost of developing the ebook has been paid off then the materials cost is £0 and everything after is pure profit, but there's still that initial outlay to pay off.
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Jul 23, 2014 19:15
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I agree. The common view that I disagree with is that ebooks should automatically be cheaper than printed copies because "it just costs them bandwidth!" when that's not the only cost. Without knowing what sort of volume GW sell, we don't know whether it's actual price gouging or just a standard profit margin.
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Jul 23, 2014 19:30
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BULBASAUR posted:Have you worked with some of the publishing tools? My understanding is that, if you worked in parallel, its drat easy to port over your print designs into digital because you are already working in that format when laying out the designs to be published. $60 for an ebook is insanely stupid. If it's just a flat PDF, yes. If you're adding functionality, such as rules highlighting, linking etc then no. I don't know how complex GWs ebooks are since I've never used them. If it's anything like Mantics digital offerings, where there is additional functionality built in rather than being a plain PDF then yeah, there were additional development costs up front.
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Jul 23, 2014 21:23
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That... seems incredibly unprofessional. Is it? Do you think he even realises that GW/40k is operating on a bubble, just like LOTR did and it seems to be bursting? Edit: going for 25%.
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Jul 28, 2014 19:14
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Hollismason posted:The hits just keep on coming from Kirby That was 2013 :P Didn't he also say to ignore the numbers last year and that 13/14 would be better, or did I imagine that?
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Jul 28, 2014 20:08
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As far as I know, it's standard practice for reports to be produced at the start of business hours.
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Jul 28, 2014 20:43
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http://www.oandp.com/resources/projects/stocker/Corporate_Deathspiral.pdf This seems quite relevant. It's not as long as it first appears - the interesting stuff starts on page 18.
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Jul 28, 2014 22:00
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serious gaylord posted:Its...well, its not good. Those are the kind of numbers that will make the big pension investment shareholders question their commitment. I can't open the report at work, but is the 30% drop in customers released figures or something you've heard from your sources?
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Jul 29, 2014 11:35
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Hipster Occultist posted:In plain-as-gently caress layman terms for someone who does not understand stuff like sockes, earning per share etc, can someone explain just what this report says? Everything is down. They aren't losing money, but the money that they made dropped by 50% compared to last year. Tom Kirby blames this solely on one-off costs, such as the website and CHS trial. They were a significant factor, but their sales were down too. This is with multiple major sellers launching in the year (space marines, knights, 7th ed). Those launches should have bumped their sales up significantly, and have done in the past. That sales still dropped despite those releases is borderline catastrophic. Tom Kirby brushes over these issues and says that he expects the business to improve next year, but gives no indication why he thinks this or what his plan is. Hr states that he has no need to carry out any customer research and provides several ludicrous statements that people will be quoting for years to come.
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Jul 29, 2014 12:25
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Pierzak posted:How does that "take loan to pay dividends" thing fit in here? Or was that pure unsubstantiated rumor? Unsubstantiated rumour.
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Jul 29, 2014 12:29
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