I have been thinking about this for some time ( Whilst heavily involved in historicals and the setting up of a gaming club etc) and spoke to quite a few GW staff about it as well.

I raised the point that all GW efforts certainly for this year at least appear to be heavily weighted in favour of 40K.

Now I for one like and enjoy a game of 40K every now and then so I don't want this thread turning into an anti 40K thread.

However there is no doubt about it that 40K and associated 40k spin offs ie Space Hulk, Planet Stike et all appeared to have monopolised GW's release and coverge schedules this year. I don't know whether this status quo will be changing next year as it is difficult to tell with GW's policy of tightening up of leaked rumours etc.

All I can see from the Warhammer fantasy point of view is the Lizard Men that were released earlier in the year and Skaven about to be released ( November) at the end of the year with a handful of Empire releases inbetween.

This is quite alarming as I am sure previous years have brought more WFB releases or am I wrong and that I am spending too much time doing historicals and time has passed me by!?

"The straw that broke the camels back" for me was the Games Day UK which apart from the 3 Skaven models there was little else apart from numerous releases and future releases for 40K ,even the White Dwarfs Latest incarnation was that of the old 40K Squats!

What do you guys think?

It has been claimed that next year will be a fantasy year, with much more focus on that. It has also been speculated that 8th Edition will be released soon, next year or the year after.

I'm also suspicious that in the economic downturn GW decided to just invest in items that had a better chance of a solid return worldwide.

IME in america 40K crowds are a bit younger and thus a bit more insulated from the market downturns. . .

Gjnoronh
I think you are correct as 40K particularly space marines out sells everything else GW produces. As it tends the younger end who obtain probably an allowance from their parents and therfore the range still sells well despite adverse economic conditions.

From what I have gleaned from an historical website forum I contribute too is that the adult wargamers are cutting back on the money they spend on GW ( Mostly fantasy) without cutting back on their historicals. By all accounts the historical wargames market particularly in the UK is quite bouyant with influxes of new figures and rules and extra shows this year for example the one that was held in my hometown of Bolton.

It is also noticable that for the fantasy range GW has an increasing number of competitors in the fantasy department but 40K still appears to be an almost monopoly situation.

I do think GW need to look at the competition more closely as they are slowly catching up. It would be nice if this activity would force them into lowering thir prices but i doubt very much this would happen.

It certainly has seemed like that though. I hope you're right, mrtn, that they'll be getting to fantasy big time next year. Honestly GW's business plan makes no sense to me at all. Why get rid of bitz ordering? Why make so many things direct order? Why close one of the most sucessful GW stores in the US and one of the only ones left in New England? It's easy to say this, but sometimes I feel like anyone who plays the hobby could do a better job at managing the company.

Really? Doesn't seem that long ago since 7th was released. Does this mean that the Beast book will be one of the last ones realeased for 7th?

Era

great comments but I think you are looking it from a purely hobbyists point of view. :)

However from a business point of view the bitz side was definatley making a loss. The Direct order side allows GW to control costs more easily knowing they havn't got X number of blisters sitting around GW stores all over the world. Therefore they can manufacture things to order for people which makes business sense.

I hope Mrtn is right about the fantasy but seeing the number of 40K products purchased at the till compared to fantasy it would be better business sense to concentrate on what sells well.

These arn't my wishes by the way but are business driven decisions made by the board at GW.
We often forget that GW are a public limited company and as such are obligated in providing profits for their shareholders. Harsh but thats business. :huh:

@waghi: If that rumour is right, then yes, Beasts would be one of the last armies in 7th. Which is actually very good, since then they'd try to make it fit the new edition, so that the book ages well, just like wood elves and dwarves last time.

@ungorlucky: Apparently the popularity of the different systems vary a great deal between countries and stores. For example I think I read somewhere that Fantasy is the most popular system in Sweden. LotR may be dead weight in some stores, but bigger than Fantasy in others, and so on.

I have no confidence in their ability to do so. It'll be totally random as to whether the last 7th book will fit in 8th or not.

GW has been cutting back on things "veterans" would value and pissing them off for years. At the same time new entrants in the historicals market is making it easier and cheaper than ever to participate. No wonder GW is loosing "veteran's" custom. A very bad move with the sudden economic downturn, not that they could have foreseen it.

The reason for the "monopoly" in 40k is that they've managed to corner it in using their "own" IP (and yes I'm using the term loosely). It is nearly impossible to make anything that would fit a Space Marine and not be infringing on GW. And with Space Marines being such a huge part of the whole thing... In fantasy an Orc is an Orc and are all borrowed from Tolkien. You could make futuristic humans soldiers, weird elf-type warriors, "alien insectoids" and terminator-esque robots if you wanted. But that's still a very small part of the whole market. Every now and then I see an attempt but with GW's strangle hold on gaming venues in many parts its not easy. And GW has managed to stake out a huge swathe of the archetypes and since possession is 9/10 of the law, they are sitting pretty securely on them as well.

[B]Snowblizz

Thanks for that you have emphasised my point nicely . Well not very nice for us fantasy fans!

But yes you are right it is very difficult for anyone to muscle into the 40K market.

Humbrol/Airfix connection tried it a few years ago with "ROBOGEAR"and ended up with a big law suite against them with the confiscation of their moulds and incurring other costs and legal fees which sent Airfix into administration . This company has now been saved and taken over by Hornby Hobbies. I beleive they are now begining a campaign to clamp down on some of the "cottage industries" that provide accessories eg Space Marine Shoulder pads. Sometimes it can be a horrible world we live in but I suppose from GW's point of view they are protecting themselves and future business. :(

I can certainly see why that would make sense, but time and time again I've seen people coming into stores looking for something particular. If the store doesn't have it, they'll go somewhere else. A friend of mine needed a giant for a tournament the following weekend, so of course if he had needed to direct order it, he wouldn't have gotten it on time. Personally, a lot of my Warhammer purchases are on the fly because I'm poor and I don't know when I'll have money again. If it's sitting on the shelf and I've run out of stuff to build and paint, then naturally I'll buy it. It seems like they're not taking those types of sales into consideration.

That's elementary inventory management.

Like in all retail it is pretty much impossible to have everything on display or in stock. You have to pick and choose what you think will sell.

They are most definitely taking it into consideration, its just that that the gains from stocking some items are probably less than the cost of doing so.

The interesting thing with GW is that they seem to be more interested in controlling our buying behaviour than selling us products. Time and again they have stuff I would have expected to be in store only available on-line. And some things cannot be bought in a store at all. There's long list of items my local store cannot buy even if they wanted to as GW only sells it direct.

In my opinion GW are sending out mixed messages by having more models which are available at Mail Order only.

Normally this sends out signals that they are looking at trimming the store network. Inreality it appears to be the opposite with many new stores in the UK are about to open.

I just cannot see the rationale behind this at the moment or am I missing something?

Incidently the fast growing Historical Wargames Company " Battlefront" who at the moment specialize in WW2 are doing the opposite.

They have just reached an agreement with Hobbycraft in the UK for the to disrtribute their products through the large Hobbycraft store network. Earlier in the year they took over the UK's biggest selling Wargames Magazine "Wargames Illustrated".

Whilst no where near as big as GW yet this company means business.

Yeah, that's what I was talking about: direct order. I wasn't talking about stocking shelves. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was talking about direct order.

So I have a good friend who works in the mail order room at GW USA

The bitz orders were definitely a money loser - lots of space/inventory and OOP molds they were keeping in circulation. Same issue with stores stocking the entire GW line - every shelf you stock with X means you can't stock Y so it ends up being a problem planning what you want to keep in stock.

FWIW my local indy offers a 10% discount if you need to mail order something through him that he doesn't stock

Agreed. Just thinking of the logistics of it makes it pretty obvious how labour intensive the process was. I wish they added a lot more bits packs as they stand now, since the conversion side of the hobby is a lot more difficult without easy access to bits.

That's certainly where I'm at. I fully understand that the old version was untenable economically speaking. That doesn't mean I can approve of the shoddy way they are doing the replacing. I expected more.

Though, technically, since there are several Internet retailers making a living off bitz, it cannot be THAT loss-leading can it?

The bits sites that do it work with a very different process. GW would cast metals to order, since they were largely serving people who wanted 30 of arm A. So they go find the mold and cast it 30 times, needing to melt down the other stuff they made. Beyond that, they needed to maintain and manage all those molds, which are rubber and wear down (leading to some very bad casts towards the end of that life). By putting the molds in storage, they remove a lot of extra costs.

Bits sites get packages and split them up, making sure to at least double (more like triple) their price since they have to cover for unpopular bits. That kind of thing wasn't GW's focus. I think most of the bits resellers deal with plastics, with the metal ones tending to have a pretty horrible selection.

I can definitely see why it isn't profitable to keep all of those bits. I just loved that service so much! I ordered some Ushabti from my local GW a few years ago, and they got a shipment of four of the same exact one. Thanks to bitz ordering, I was able to make three completely different Ushabti. Now I need Kroq-Gar for a conversion, but I can't get him unless I want to be the entire carnasaur, too. That being said, if anyone has a Kroq-Gar model, I'll gladly take it off your hands ;)

You didn't check the last message of your Army Diary, did you? ;)

Obviously bitz sites do it differently. I'm just thinking if they can profit AND pay GW first then GW could also do this themselves.

It just a question of organising the process efficiently. And GW does seem to be very bad at doing this. Casting to order obviously is problematic. So don't. Again, take a cue from other manufacturers. Some smaller manufacturers will hold the order until a sufficient number can be made. Or even better. Make resin casts of the bitz range. Isn't that less expensive in small numbers?

I'd gladly wait a few month if it meant I could get the old Keeper of Secrets heads again. Why didn't I buy more when I did. Whyyyyyyyyyyy?

I always imagined that the bitz process consisted of a guy who walk through their rather large warehouse picking out the things you ordered from badly labeled boxes of parts. I'm sure I've seen pics.

I'm certain a better warehousing system could have cut costs by a fair margin. That and having trained monkeys do it. The untrained ones didn't seem to be working out.

At the end of the day, I remain convinced another major reason was someone at GW thought stopping bitz services would force people to buy whole boxes or blisters for a measly part. Sure it works beautifully for them, but again they don't seem to have got this whole "service" concept.

Oh just going back to my original point!

I have just been advised by my store manager that Tyranids are going to be a January release followed by either Dark Elder or Necrons. Also GW are looking at doing yes another Space Marine Codex , this time its the Blood Angels. This he admitted was purely to raise sales as obviously the downloadable version ( Not sure if this is on the new GW website) was not making any money for GW.

I don't know about a 1 trip pony How's about a Cash Cow!!!!! :lol:

Yes I still think its going to be another 40K year for 2010. :(

WE could even change the name of the Web Site to Space Stone!! :P

To be fair though BA and Nids fit well with the massively popular space hulk so it makes sense to sell them. After that though we might finnally see new dark eldar.

PS I can't think of any books beside us and OK who really need a update but I really don't want to buy a whole new rulebook

Space Marines are the easy path to money for them, since 90% of the 40k playerbase play some form of them, chaos or otherwise. It lets them maintain a fairly small central set of miniatures with different add-ons, requiring minimal development effort on their part. Contrast that with, say, any fantasy army where every troop type is completely physically a different sculpt on even the most fundemental levels, and its easy to see how crapping out another Marine book is easy money for them.

Plus, as stated, the ADD crowd loves them some space marines....

Although I have to add...that we know about Blood Angels and Tyrands doesn't mean it'll be a 40k year. From every rumour I've seen, it'll be a big Fantasy year including a big campaign-style release in the summer with models for several armies.

@Snowblizz the guy I know who worked in trade sales is a college educated guy and a smart cookie.

As Decker points out the 'bits sites' are buying boxed plastic sets and splitting them up and selling specific bits at a huge profit. Run low on a bit and order a bunch of boxes from GW at retail price. That's very easy to make economically feasible which is why lots of mom and pop ebay stores have been running bits services. Can't make a profit on splitting a kit they can stop splitting that one.

The bits services GW used to run was predominantly METAL - they didn't at least in the US have to melt down old stuff - but they did frequently have to cast up more for large orders.

The warehouse in the US seems quite reasonably set up (having been in it many times over the last twenty years) the problem in particular is how BIG the GW total stock inventory over the last twenty years has gotten - and how even if you go to BIN 3444568 to pull night goblin squig herder left arm #2 it's pretty easy to mix that with night goblinsquigherder left arm #3. So you've got to have folks who really know the range even the really old stuff. There are literally tens of thousands of parts in the total catelogue.

If GW is the evil empire desperate to make money off of us - do you think if they could find a way to make it financially viable they would have given it up? The reality is the vast majority of sales were on a handful of bits - which is why they've decided to focus on selling what most folks were buying. Stocking tens of thousands of parts to sell maybe 100 bits is hard to justify.