Nitpick wrote:
nothing new ever happens because GW is already dead. The fanbase have not accepted it yet, so the expensive life support machine that goes 'ping' keeps the living corpse churning out the same stuff over and over again.
Hmm, you better tell GW then, because their profits are up in the first 6 months of this fiscal year. (
http://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-c ... tement.pdf)
carlisimo109 wrote:
So what if we talk about other companies? What's the business model for Mantic, or Spartan Games after 3D printing takes off?
The business models won't change. Why?
Because it won't make enough of an impact. For all the talk of affordability, printing a 3-D model is not cheap, and will not be for some time (if ever - look at the high cost of printer ink, for God's sake!) When the costs come down enough to make it feasible, you're still not going to get a mass conversion to knockoffs, because most people aren't technically savvy enough to be able to control the process from start to finish.
On top of that, the majority of people who might use 3-D prints are
not the market GW is selling to. GW have made it clear for some time that they are actively pursuing the young kid off the street who can get mom and dad to make the large initial purchases it takes to get into 40K/Fantasy these days. GW does not care about the long-term gamer, and they certainly don't care about niche-gamers like us, because we do not make any money for them.
Will you get people printing out their own models and using them? Of course. But it will more affect niche games like Epic, and not large scale games like 40K.
