Warhammer 40K Tabletop Thread XLII: The Dice Make Fools of Us All

[Avaris]

...People who are disenfranchised about non-first party content being demonitised, decided to boycott GW. As predicted, that part of the market doesn't make up as big - or as relevant - a market as it thinks it does.

'I brought people to the hobby!' ...Did you? Did you really? I'd wager that the vast majority of people who watch Warhammer-related content are either:

a) Already in the hobby, hence why they watch the content. The hobby is why they watch the content. The content doesn't drive the hobby.
b) Already voting with their wallet by watching free content. Someone who's incentive to watch free content, is the fact that it's free, isn't going to go out and buy a few-hundred dollarydoo box.

Finally, boycotts are meaningless because GW makes limited copies. As long as there's no product on the shelf, GW wins.

It doesn't matter if 1000 people boycott a product if the aim is actually to only sell 100 limited copies to 200 aquatic mammals people. And even better, GW doesn't actually care if a scalper buys six copies to box-break later, and five 'real gamers' miss out. It doesn't matter. Scalpers are actually good for the corporation doing the selling, because at least scalpers are guaranteed customers no matter what.

'We sold out and yet the aquatic mammals people want more!' looks real good on an investor report.

…did you miss the bit where GW is now experimenting with ‘limited’ products being only time limited, rather than quantity limited (like I’ve been saying they should do for years)?

The announcement of this new approach directly undercuts the scalper business model of ‘get all copies of a limited release and sell to those who miss out’. There will still be a niche, for selling to people who only want a single piece of a box, but it’ll be interesting to see how demand works once it isn’t ‘hammer F5 or miss out’.

And you’re right that GW doesn’t want unsold product on the shelves, but this approach demonstrates that they probably aren’t intentionally shorting production to achieve the ‘we sold out and there is still demand’ story. It’s an issue of production capacity: they can’t just flick a switch and make more instantly. The barrier so far has been that, once a thing is off production, fitting it in alongside everything else is likely a difficult ask. My guess is that the Cursed City experience gave them the incentive to try and find a solution (rather than Hexfire as Lans said: getting to a position to promise this takes time internally, and I didn’t think Hexfire was so massively in demand?).

There is of course the truly limited, ‘only 1000 copies’ special edition type releases, but I think there is much less demand for these? Also, whether people are willing to wait months for a product.

What are you talking about!? How does promoting a Black Templars box fix the fact that I can't play Kill Team!?

I very much took that as a ‘we’re trying to use this model for all releases, and here is a hint at the next one’ rather than ‘here is something else you can have instead’. It’s a teaser, not a directly related product.