midian wrote:
Markconz wrote:
They don't give a hoot about veteran players I think. Look at the way they just pulled ranges with out any sort of courtesy of telling people. They would aim for a new demographic of young and dumb.
Well, i´m not a GW fanboy, but i think that they are not totally stupid. Space Hulk was a outstanding success, Dreadfleet is still stocking at 50% discount sale in a lot of spanish shops. The first one is the same game as is early incarnations but with a huge quality move on, the later is a brand new game with ligth resemblance to Man o War.
For sure, old grognards are not the market target of GW. But, if they release a new Epic game in a limited version of only one box, i think that we can expect that they will not made the same mistake again.
I'm with Primarch on this one. Here's why.
First, let's dispose of the notion that they care what veteran gamers think. It's not that they hate us; we're just not their target market. Their target audience is 11-13 years old. They buy some rulebooks and collect an army. A year or two later, a codex that piques their fancy comes out. By now their first army has been nerfed by time, and so now they collect army #2.
Then a new edition comes out. They buy into that, updating models to keep their armies current and to buy up (maybe) one last army for their collection. By now they're 16-17, and wargames compete with girls and the looming threat of college for their time. They turn 18 and stop collecting. Maybe they still play, but as a revenue source they're largely done.
New editions/rules also help by keeping the ebay market for old figures under control. Who's going to buy Pariahs for their necron army?
GW is all about maintaining as close to a monopoly as they can. Some of that is offensive, like using retail stores to kill local game stores. Locals are game-agnostic and filled with grognards who play other systems; GW stores have blackshirts and a ban on third party anything. Most game stores are run very close to the edge; even a minor revenue hit from a competing GW store can kill them once and for all. GW has the deep pockets to keep a store running, and its distro arrangements help in this too.
Some moves are defensive. IMO the LoTR license was all about this. If some other company had grabbed the license, they might have parlayed it into a challenge to GW's dominance. Similarly, when Uncharted Seas became big, GW used Dreadfleet to soften the impact on their customers. Notice that it isn't compatible with Man O War. These one-offs are just that-- defensive moves. They're not intended to be huge long term money-makers.
Currently, if I were them, I'd be wondering who is the up-and-coming challenge. 10mm or 6mm might be a good move for them, to block Flames of War and Dystopian Wars and the ilk. 15mm is out of the question-- too close to 28mm.
I don't think they care one way or the other about specialist games. They're getting out of metal, and there was no way they were going to redo their whole SG back catalog as resin or plastic. Dumping the Hobbit game
was odd-- I suppose to clear the decks for movie-derived products? I'd have appreciated some notice, at least from forgeworld, but I suspect that that's more neglect and disinterest than malice.
If this game comes out in 6mm, then great. It means some new models and that's always fun. I'm not expecting any long-term changes to the E:A scene.
