^epic^

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I will neither confirm or deny such rumors ! However, my answer to wellspring , LOL !!!! RLMAO !!

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

This used to be the business model for all of SG. Everyone involved was pretty open when SG was set up that it was assumed from the outset that margins and ROI were going to be lower than the main GW lines. The indirect benefit was to help drive market share to GW as a whole. SG was to provide older, experienced gamers alternative experiences (to keep them buying GW after they tired of the main lines) and to help keep the a high profile for GW games and the GW-verse in gaming circles.

I don't know if I'm willing to believe they are going back to that. While SG generally did better on sales and ROI than expected, I'm not sure anyone at the corporate level really believed in the "capture market share" business concept. My impression has been that the newer one-off game productions have been viewed as short-term sales, as an add-on novelty release, than as part of an integrated, long term market strategy.


That said, an Epic one-off release could just as easily fit a short-term business model. If they see an opportunity, a potential minimum guaranteed market, based on the same kind of nostalgia that drove Space Hulk, that attitude might even improve the chances of a one-off for Epic.

The problem is that they have a dominant market position in gaming already. For them, growing revenue consists of recruiting new players into "the Games Workshop hobby" as their financial disclosures call it. Ideally, players who never have and never will play another game. Or even be exposed to one.



That's how I read it, except that it's also vaccine against their player base "cheating" on them with other games. If they have an epic-lite, then their players have a way to scratch their scifi mass combat itch without branching out. For it to work, they make it a limited edition box game, so that gamers are still funneled back to the core product line.

If I was in their situation, I would allow several of the smaller firms to produce the SG line's under licence. Allow them to concentrate on their core revenue streams, but still have something coming in from SG. In my experience the SG stuff tends to be played by the older hands with more disposable income (I personally havent played 40K in 20 years, but recently started Epic and have always played a few games of Dungeon Bowl a year)

There are always going to be firms producing items the Epic community can use as proxies, and as we all know there are even firms that produce copies. Instead of GW getting annoyed with this, they should see it as a buisness opportunity for a low risk revenue stream. No investment on their part, a steady fee, keeps the fans happy, and increases the awareness of their products. Thats what my company does

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Walk softly. And carry a big gun.

I agree, but they just won't do it any more.....

I'm sure there are reasons (some of them may even be good reasons) but GW do not let anyone but GW manufacture GW-IP miniatures

I reckon someone should make some really nice GW style tanks, with moulded bases and sell the idea to GW that they are tokens or counters, rather than miniatures, I'm pretty sure that's how FFG makes the playing pieces for their GW licenced games

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It just seems narrow minded. "here, have the rules for free. But you cant buy anything new to play them with" its almost like they want to hold the values in the second hand market!

I would dearly love to know their thinking behind not doing it under licence. Almost all companies will licence their older products that they no longer have a place for in their current strategy. Even car manufacturers let other countries produce their cars under licence!!

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Walk softly. And carry a big gun.

The main reason is that licensed production provides a stable source of profit that a company can use to cover the fixed costs of expansion. It's a common story in business: a company outsources production to another company. That company builds infrastructure, production expertise, and distribution to service the outsource arrangement. Then they hire a creative group and suddenly, poof!, new competitor. The production of televisions in the USA was almost completely destroyed by this process-- and it's happened in many other industries.

So, no, outsourcing production isn't very smart for GW considering their strategy. Even if they were licensed to do metal only.

I disagree with a lot of GW's policies-- I think they're shortsighted and self-destructive. But this particular one is sound.

GW has been burned by licensing in the past. There is a reason former licensees like Armorcast and Epicast were replaced by Forge World, a division of GW, and it's not just profits.

This doesn't make sense to me. If they are licensing for something other people are making proxies for or indeed just straight copying, where is the risk? I suppose it is the IPR they are licensing (I am not sure how detailed this is) and what is contained in the licensing agreement. Plus, if a licensee was in breach, could GW really extract their worth in damages from a small company?

But ... since from a business standpoint, GW, like all businesses, wants to make a profit. Even in a generally bad economic market. So do they want to risk expending assets making a smaller demand "niche" line like Epic ? Or ... expend those assets on expanding much bigger [and more profitable] existing lines ... with limited risk as opposed to the smaller "niche" [Epic] line ? Many here having a predilection for Epic, may be suffering from "wishful thinking", verses a more sound business model of producing more products for their more profitable existing lines ... For every business that takes a risk on a certain product or line of products, very few actually see the big return on investments. Like for example, we currently have seen with many tech companies ... The bottonline is not what a company would like to make [being artist driven] vs. what will sell and make profit ...

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

I think that there really is no need for debate here. We just wait and see what happens

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