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So most of us here love GW and think it is a great company, so I was wondering why such a great company hasn't yet decided they need to update their aging Rhino, Chimera, or Leman Russ models. I mean, if they updated those bad boys once every 10 years they would make a killing.
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Sep 25, 2014 02:44
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BULBASAUR posted:So most of us here love GW and think it is a great company, so I was wondering why such a great company hasn't yet decided they need to update their aging Rhino, Chimera, or Leman Russ models. I mean, if they updated those bad boys once every 10 years they would make a killing. Because crafting the steel molds necessary to do sprues for new vehicles ain't cheap? They would have to gamble that enough people would be willing to buy the revamped vehicle designs in order to make the costs of design and production worthwhile, and that isn't a gamble I think they're willing to take. Especially these days.
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Sep 25, 2014 02:49
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I posted this several months ago in the last 40k thread. This seems like a good place to re-post it, as there have been some really great developments recently. It reads like the plot to one of those lovely underdog sports movies and it is long-winded, so apologies in advance. Fresno California is a city that, 8 years ago had next to no wargaming except for a handful of living room / garage gamers, like myself, who played with our own groups, got drunk while pushing around plastic soldiers and generally didn't know of other people in the area. Fast forward to 2014 and there is a very sizable community with several shops around town and even an annual tournament held at the Veteran's Memorial Center in Clovis (Brawl in the Fall). Almost all of which started from my soft-spoken friend who is an enthusiastic manager at the local game store. He pushed the hesitant owners into stocking 40k and Fantasy and had (still has) such a huge love for the game that he took every chance he could to promote the product, offer discounts, hold demo's and even cleared out the whole back of the store to set up tables and start Friday night gaming events. He joked that he does it so that he can have more people to actually get in a game with. Within a couple years his store becomes one of this highest volume retailers of GW product on the west coast. The distributors send him tons of extra GW swag because they know it will sell. (They sent him 26 box sets of the most recent Space Hulk, when a lot of similar sized stores got 5-8). This guy played an absolutely huge part in introducing the city to wargaming and making it accessible to people who wanted to give it a shot. A couple of years ago, Fresno pops up on Games Workshop's radar from all of the business going through the city. My buddy gets a phone call from some higher up regional director-of-something-or-other and he offers him a job. He tells my buddy that Fresno is doing so well in sales that they're going to open up a Games Workshop location in town to directly compete with him... Even though he is selling Games Workshop's product. He declined the position and asked why Games Workshop would put a store in the same area to compete with his business when he is the one already selling their products. He told me that the director guy became snarkier as the conversation continued. My friend pressed the question, taking offense that GW would pull a dirty move like that. The call ended with the guy telling my buddy something to the effect of 'putting his store under'. Fast forward to 2013, GW opens their store right here in town. It's about the size of a WalMart men's room. They put up 2 tables, none of which may be gamed on unless they are used to demo either 40k, Fantasy or The Hobbit, and the only mini's allowed on the tables are the pre-painted ones supplied by GW. There are no events, no publicity, and the place feels cold and unwelcoming. The update to the story: I'm proud to say that the Games Workshop store closed up shop after less than a year in business. Apparently, the majority of people in town never bothered going there and instead just kept going to the couple FLGS that got everyone into the hobby in the first place. The place was a ghost town the entire time it was open. If you had asked me ten years ago if I wanted a Games Workshop store in my home town I would have said "gently caress yeah a Games Workshop store right here in our town?!". After the brazen stunt they pulled by allowing my buddy and a few others to build up their customer base through years of patience and goodwill, then swooping in to steal it from under him and cannibalize his business, Games Workshop can go gently caress themselves. Sell the company to Hasbro or Activision or something. Keep producing the minis, because I love them, and gut the monstrosity that GW has become. Dump_Stat fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Sep 25, 2014 03:40
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I'm surprised that GW didn't just gently caress with his ability to order their product honestly.
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Sep 25, 2014 03:52
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Nah, I doubt they'd do that. They still want their product to move. There is also a smaller, but pretty good sized Warmahordes and Flames of War gathering in town, so he probably would've just started selling their stuff more prominently if they pulled that move. We were having beers the other night and he was telling me that the whole thing just seemed really bizarre.
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Sep 25, 2014 04:00
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GW Death Pool: the whole thing just seemed really bizarre
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Sep 25, 2014 04:06
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Your buddy should call up that GW manager and tell him "if you pay me double what I am making now I can make this work for you in Fresno"Sydney Bottocks posted:Because crafting the steel molds necessary to do sprues for new vehicles ain't cheap? They would have to gamble that enough people would be willing to buy the revamped vehicle designs in order to make the costs of design and production worthwhile, and that isn't a gamble I think they're willing to take. Especially these days. They make new molds for plastic models regularly. Why aren't they doing this with their flagship and probably most successful armies?
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Sep 25, 2014 04:40
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BULBASAUR posted:Your buddy should call up that GW manager and tell him "if you pay me double what I am making now I can make this work for you in Fresno" They probably have a warehouse full of nothing but Rhinos and know that they will sell. They have no reason to make new Rhino models at all. Same thing with Leman Russes, Chimeras, whatever. They make new molds for plastic models because their long term goal is having their model ranges be pretty much all plastic, but that doesn't mean they care about updating plastic kits that already sell super well. Why spend the money on that?
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Sep 25, 2014 04:46
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I may be wrong, but haven't both the Chimera and Leman Russes been updated in the last few years? I remember the older kits where you had to assemble almost every piece of track and all of the track wheels individually. I put together a Russ and Chimera about a year ago and it seemed like it was a new-ish mold. There was a lot less work involved.
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Sep 25, 2014 04:58
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Dump_Stat posted:I may be wrong, but haven't both the Chimera and Leman Russes been updated in the last few years? I remember the older kits where you had to assemble almost every piece of track and all of the track wheels individually. I put together a Russ and Chimera about a year ago and it seemed like it was a new-ish mold. There was a lot less work involved. Updated for ease of assembly although I don't think they actually added anything to the sprues/kit.
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Sep 25, 2014 05:09
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They put all of the options into plastic, and now all Chimera kits share a single sprue instead of a half dozen.
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Sep 25, 2014 05:25
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MasterSlowPoke posted:What model is it? Wood elf waywatcher lord / waystalker.
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Sep 25, 2014 06:09
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Dump_Stat posted:Nah, I doubt they'd do that. They still want their product to move. There is also a smaller, but pretty good sized Warmahordes and Flames of War gathering in town, so he probably would've just started selling their stuff more prominently if they pulled that move. We were having beers the other night and he was telling me that the whole thing just seemed really bizarre. There is a semi-large FLGS in the mall across the street from where my local Bloodbowl leagues venue used to be. A bunch of the guys that lived in the area got to know the owner pretty well and started to get him to order in their GW mini teams for them. Apparently after a year of selling teams to all the guys, GW got in touch with him about this problem. See he was selling too much Bloodbowl and no 40k or fantasy, and they were not going to stand for that. I don't think they cut him off entirely, but they scaled back what they were going to provide him. Unaware of this I popped in to see what he had in stock, and got a rant about how he was never going to deal with those assholes ever again. I also got a great deal on the last GW product that dude is ever going to sell.
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Sep 25, 2014 06:17
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ocrumsprug posted:There is a semi-large FLGS in the mall across the street from where my local Bloodbowl leagues venue used to be. A bunch of the guys that lived in the area got to know the owner pretty well and started to get him to order in their GW mini teams for them. Apparently after a year of selling teams to all the guys, GW got in touch with him about this problem. See he was selling too much Bloodbowl and no 40k or fantasy, and they were not going to stand for that. I don't think they cut him off entirely, but they scaled back what they were going to provide him. God GW is retarded.
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Sep 25, 2014 06:23
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S.J. posted:They probably have a warehouse full of nothing but Rhinos and know that they will sell. They have no reason to make new Rhino models at all. Same thing with Leman Russes, Chimeras, whatever. They make new molds for plastic models because their long term goal is having their model ranges be pretty much all plastic, but that doesn't mean they care about updating plastic kits that already sell super well. Why spend the money on that? Plus, the old models are probably just fine even if the rivets could be a little bit crisper or they could make a new accessory sprue or something. If anything, the bigger problem is that GW is doubling down on producing all these new flashy plastic kits rather than fixing the systemic problem with their organization and their attitude. (Please note. I am not saying I dislike the new plastics themselves. On the contrary, I think many of them are amazing, or at least are amazing technical feats in their own right.) The message we should be sending, to the extent we can send a message at all, is "okay, we know you can do amazing things with mass produced plastic, how about we call that a good job for now and work on the lovely rules and the mostly toxic customer-facing attitudes for a bit?"
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Sep 25, 2014 06:26
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BULBASAUR posted:They make new molds for plastic models regularly. Why aren't they doing this with their flagship and probably most successful armies? What S.J. said, plus at the time they updated the Rhino and some of the other tanks, the vast majority of them were still from that period between 2nd and 3rd edition (if not all the way back to Rogue Trader days) and looked really out of place when put next to a revamped Land Raider or whatever. Whereas now the majority of the Imperial tanks look pretty uniform (IIRC) and there's no real need to completely redesign them yet again (and hope that enough people will want the redesigned tanks badly enough to pay GW prices for 'em). It's probably not a big deal for GW to redo the sprues for, say, a Space Marine squad, because they pretty much know that people will buy it no matter what. But a redesigned tank doesn't carry nearly the same level of "guaranteed sale" that a SM squad does, unless they include enough of the type of extra bits that would make it worth getting.
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Sep 25, 2014 06:31
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It's hard for me to believe people wouldn't buy an updated rhino or marine kit that's 2-3 generations newer. People regularly 'upgrade' their games, ipads, cameras, operating systems, cars, and other expensive toys yearly, often with really minor cosmetic differences. Cyclical yearly releases are part of today's consumerism. I'm not saying they should, but for a lovely money driven company I'm really really surprised GW hasn't capitalized on this kind of thing every 5-10 years.
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Sep 25, 2014 07:45
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That's kind of a crappy comparison. My new phone is 10 times more powerful than my old phone and that's a good reason to upgrade. The 20-odd Leman Russes I have play just fine on the table. It's not like they've got less RAM or horsepower than the latest tank or something, it'd be a purely aesthetic choice.
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Sep 25, 2014 08:01
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BULBASAUR posted:It's hard for me to believe people wouldn't buy an updated rhino or marine kit that's 2-3 generations newer. People regularly 'upgrade' their games, ipads, cameras, operating systems, cars, and other expensive toys yearly, often with really minor cosmetic differences. Cyclical yearly releases are part of today's consumerism. They have repeatedly revamped the tactical squad kit to add more options to it and generally make it better. It's pretty much the flagship kit of the entire range and I think GW realizes that. I don't know how much the new kit drives sales versus the old. Personally, I haven't bought any of the newer kits since I got all the tactical marines I'll ever need a long time ago. I'm only two squads away from having a full battle company though.  Not counting all the Ravenwing/Deathwing/whatever.
Safety Factor fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Sep 25, 2014 08:03
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From my understanding metal molds only last for so many uses before they begin to degrade, in a lot of cases companies wait until the molds are in need of being replaced before updating their product. It may be that GW just doesn't reach that point with vehicle molds as quickly as they do with troops.
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Sep 25, 2014 08:05
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Safety Factor posted:Personally, I haven't bought any of the newer kits since I got all the tactical marines I'll ever need a long time ago. This is exactly why they're not gonna update Rhinos or whatever. They sell far fewer than basic marines, and just like yourself, most people that already have a perfectly good version aren't going to just up and buy a whole new set just for the sake of it.
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Sep 25, 2014 12:52
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There was a dying FLGS in the city I went to Uni in. When I first heard about it, they only opened on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings to draft MTG. If you wanted to buy anything you had to catch them at that time and sometimes have to wait for whomever was running the store that day to finish the game they were playing to put your stuff through the till. A new manager took over and started to push for actually making the place a lot more friendly. He got shop copies of boardgames and encouraged people to play them, he wanted people in the shop all the time playing board games or card games or anything for a more welcoming atmosphere. He encouraged guys who knew about boardgames or rpg's to hang around and offer advice to people who came in. The place was pretty tiny but they expanded outward and managed to grab the 3 adjacent shop units and they were used solely for gaming. Once that manager moved on the owner took more interest in the place and picked up where they other guy left off. He really encouraged wargaming, Flames of War and especially Warmachine got really popular in the place, mainly because they had a lot of space, a lot of tables and a lot of scenery. They charged a tiny amount to use a table for the whole day, like less than a can of juice. Over the course of 5-6 years the place went from dead to absolutely heaving. Eventually the FLGS started to stock Warhammer and 40k, they got a big GW branded display and I remember the owner speaking to me about the hassle of stocking the stuff. Apparently it couldn't be shelved near any other wargame, if they had painted miniatures on show they couldn't show any of any other game. They couldn't have signage or posters or anything of other wargames if they stocked the product. In the same city was a Games Workshop, it was a tiny unit with 1 table and hardly any room to walk around the table to see the product on the walls. At this time it was doing really badly, and only had one blue shirt and no red shirts. The lonely blue shirt would close the shop for an entire hour every day it was open so he could get lunch! When he found out that the FLGS was selling GW product, and trying to organise tournaments he started threatening anyone who came into his shop that if he found out they played in the FLGS (and he probably had a secret squirrel) he would ban them from his shop and get them "Ban(ned) from playing in any GW sanctioned tournie ever!" I just love the whole opposite attitudes thing here. I believe the owner even contacted the Blue Shirt about getting official sanction for tournies at the FLGS "We have loads of room, you don't, can we come to an arrangement?" but that didn't go anywhere. Phrosphor fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Sep 25, 2014 14:26
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GW has done a lot of really dumb poo poo in its existence but I reckon the move to single person stores tops them all.
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Sep 25, 2014 14:53
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Seeing a GW store have to close for lunch and the lone employee kicking people out midgame for an hour was surreal.
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Sep 25, 2014 15:05
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JerryLee posted:Plus, the old models are probably just fine even if the rivets could be a little bit crisper or they could make a new accessory sprue or something. If anything, the bigger problem is that GW is doubling down on producing all these new flashy plastic kits rather than fixing the systemic problem with their organization and their attitude. (Please note. I am not saying I dislike the new plastics themselves. On the contrary, I think many of them are amazing, or at least are amazing technical feats in their own right.) Have they actually even progressed in the plastics department either? I was dumb and bought the giant tau robot cuz it was on sale but since regretted it but at least picked up painting minis (x-wing and infinity in this case cuz they are far superior games) again. It was no better than the poo poo they had a decade ago. Meanwhile, my gundam real grade released 2 years ago has incredible paneling detail and moving parts that GW can't even bother putting on their large robots and baby carriers. And no flash. Just because the giant skeleton wizard on a horse is bigger doesn't mean it's become any better. It probably still has the same amount of detail as the elf dragon released 6? 8? Years ago that I oohed and aahed about. And I bet it still doesn't wag its tail.
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Sep 25, 2014 15:32
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Gough Suppressant posted:GW has done a lot of really dumb poo poo in its existence but I reckon the move to single person stores tops them all. Agreed. Especially if they're pushing the whole luxury attitude - I can't imagine walking into, say, a ferrari showroom, and being told you can't have a test-drive till the sole staff member is finished dealing with this other customer. It just completely floors me how obvious it is that it's a dumb move, though that's pretty much GW.txt.
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Sep 25, 2014 16:03
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Chill la Chill posted:Have they actually even progressed in the plastics department either? I was dumb and bought the giant tau robot cuz it was on sale but since regretted it but at least picked up painting minis (x-wing and infinity in this case cuz they are far superior games) again. It was no better than the poo poo they had a decade ago. Meanwhile, my gundam real grade released 2 years ago has incredible paneling detail and moving parts that GW can't even bother putting on their large robots and baby carriers. And no flash. If you are asking for MODULAR stuff... um... well, the Gorkanaut/Morkanaut can be put together so that you can rotate their weapons, open their doors, move their heads... Also, well, modular stuff for a miniature wargame is probably not entirely desirable? The gundam is, at the end of the day, a model to put on a cool pose and then on a shelf. A wargaming miniature gets moved, stored, knocked over, and so on. I really do like the plastic miniatures. They are cool and can be put together really easily, without using super glue that sticks to your FREAKING FINGERS  ... and they are much easier to put back together in case they fall apart, unlike resin and metal.Of course this all is meaningless until somebody finds the intelligence-feeding leech that has attached to the GW higher-ups, because holy poo poo some of these stories.
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Sep 25, 2014 17:03
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Phrosphor posted:When he found out that the FLGS was selling GW product, and trying to organise tournaments he started threatening anyone who came into his shop that if he found out they played in the FLGS (and he probably had a secret squirrel) he would ban them from his shop and get them "Ban(ned) from playing in any GW sanctioned tournie ever!" Reminder: There's no official GW organized play.
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Sep 25, 2014 17:40
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Kerzoro posted:If you are asking for MODULAR stuff... um... well, the Gorkanaut/Morkanaut can be put together so that you can rotate their weapons, open their doors, move their heads... I don't know if that's much of an argument to be honest. We've been dealing with metal models that explode at the drop of a hat forever, and models like gundam kits aren't any worse.
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Sep 25, 2014 17:52
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If I could build Gunpla and then have them wage a ridiculously non-canon war against each other with real rules and everything it would be incredible and I would never stop playing it.
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Sep 25, 2014 17:56
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Interesting point on prices I never considered - one of my law tutors used to work for a law firm which counted among its clients... Games workshop. GW has an enormous market share depending on your definition of market - potentially up to 97%. It has to comply with European competition regulations and has to be very careful about this (art 101/102 TFEU). Price adjustments could well be considered anticompetitive in certain circumstances.
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Sep 25, 2014 18:10
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I live where up until recently there was an absolutely giant GW. Large main store area with ample room for painting(and coming in and doing your priming and painting was encouraged...obviously very nice for anyone who lives in an apartment or condo) and at least 7 full-size gaming tables. They had regular blood bowl leagues and everything. Plus they had an extra storefont with about 8 additional tables they opened for big events. I had been out of any of the hobby stuff for a few years, but when I bought the new Space Hulk I had it shipped to a GW store...but that giant one had closed down. Instead it was delivered to a new/different place 3 miles away. I go in there, and as you guys say it was tiny and sad as hell. The whole place was smaller than my spare bedroom(which is not large), and one guy was working. At least it seemed there were two games of 40k going on at the two tables that dominated the storefront, but man, this company is hosed.
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Sep 25, 2014 18:26
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Lord Twisted posted:Interesting point on prices I never considered - one of my law tutors used to work for a law firm which counted among its clients... Games workshop. You mean lowering prices, right? As in, lowering prices where they already have a giant market share could be construed as intentionally underpricing their competitors to discourage competition?
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Sep 25, 2014 18:30
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Lord Twisted posted:GW has an enormous market share depending on your definition of market - potentially up to 97%. Can you elaborate on what exactly the definitions of market are, then? Is it just counting stuff like GB/EU (where other games haven't penetrated as much)? I know all the anecdotes of retailers and/or consumers being driven into the arms of GW's competitors are just that, anecdotes, but goddamn there are a lot of them now.
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Sep 25, 2014 20:35
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Lord Twisted posted:Interesting point on prices I never considered - one of my law tutors used to work for a law firm which counted among its clients... Games workshop. The legal rumour mill (I work in law) tells me that up until their big IP debacle, Games Workshop paid their law firm on a fixed-fee basis by the matter-start (in other words, with a flat sum for every new file opened). This fuelled some of their nastier anti-fansite and C&D shenanigans, as naturally their lawyers wanted to run as many quick-turnover cases as possible. Since they were one of those mass-production volume shops, they supposedly had teams of paralegals searching the web constantly for new sites to sue. I've always wondered if this was a fan wanting to exonerate his beloved company by saying no really it was the lawyers' fault, but I can believe it. I know those volume shops did (and still do) exist and operate like that.
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Sep 25, 2014 21:38
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I'm pretty sure the term in Britain is Voulume Shoppe.
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Sep 26, 2014 00:33
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Literally The Worst posted:If I could build Gunpla and then have them wage a ridiculously non-canon war against each other with real rules and everything it would be incredible and I would never stop playing it. The guy who wrote In a Wicked Age and Dogs in the Vineyard wrote a game for fighting LEGO robots that's basically just a Gunpla wargame if you scaled it up. Edit: I know this because we used it for a Gundam wargame back when it was called Mechaton, I believe it's Mobile Frame Zero now. El Estrago Bonito fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Sep 26, 2014 |
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Sep 26, 2014 01:20
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Lord Twisted posted:Price adjustments could well be considered anticompetitive in certain circumstances. Good point, but I'm not sure it really holds up in practice - it's not as if GW has held prices the same for ages. If they've been wanting to lower prices, presumably they'd start by not raising prices.
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Sep 27, 2014 04:52
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Also that sort of anti-competitive law only usually comes into play when the price drops are making smaller companies unable to compete eg razor thin margins or loss leaders.
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Sep 27, 2014 05:05
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To reply to the above - Pretty sure the tutor isn't a fanboy for his old firm, he just used it as a real world example of a business consideration with price setting intersecting with regulation. The major problem would be price cuts being seen to cripple smaller companies which can't operate at thin margins (who am I kidding they would use this as an excuse even if it wasn't true!) Market share can be defined as miniatures, miniatures wargames, just Sci fi miniatures, all of the above for the UK, or Europe, or just EU, etc. It has multiple definitions for anticompetition law. Also yes I have heard the same rumours on the legal grapevine of fairly poor practice by the firm in question. GW also lost badly, making it worse.
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Sep 27, 2014 07:54
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