EpicBattleBaggz wrote:
Draccan wrote:
I am surprised there is no backlash on the gaming forums around the web. I have often found that we as a gamers (AND customers) are too forgiving.
What kind of company does this customers - let them spend so much money and then discontinue a product.
GW's business practices disgust me. Sure I could walk away, but it shouldn't be like that. I played their games since Rogue Trader was first released. Unfortunately the company is a far cry from what they once was.
This ninja stuff they are doing without even an official notice on the website is appalling...
I
Oh there will be backlash...I for one will be forking over the money in long distance calls to scream my dissatisfaction at the unlucky persons on the other end of the line. I will not go quietly in the night.
Yeah lets spend some more money, time and energy on LoTR V2.0 which is a dismal BORE...It's beyond me that the GW upper echelon has not drove their Titanic into the berg
...what a joke....
It's just a licensing merry-go-round. LotR is a huge IP stable, far bigger than GW's. Piggybacking onto LotR brings new customers through the doors, where they are exposed to GW's "better" products. After a short period of time collecting models, GW's own brands become meaningful to those people and therefore more valuable for GW. GW licenses
their IP to computer games studios etc, who have wider market appeal and make lots of money.
Profit = ( LotR figure sales + additional 40K figure sales + additional 40K licensing value ) - ( cannibalised WHFB sales + LotR licensing fees + production costs )
Basically there's more to it than how good the game and models are. GW has to make choices about where to invest its resources (staff time, warehouse space etc) for where it will have maximal return and minimal risk exposure. And it's notable from the annual accounts that third party licensing of GW's IP (think Dawn of War) represents a large proportion of profit. Contrary to popular belief, GW doesn't actually have high profit margins for its models, mainly because its costs are so high compared to its competitors.
So, even if GW can make profit from Epic, it's hard to argue that it can make -more- profit than the alternatives. To give some example reasons that work against Epic:
1. Epic (as a full game system) requires a large range of models - comparable to 40K in number of sculpts
2. The proportion of sales that are cannibalised from 40K sales is not 100%, but still significant
3. Any additional third party licensing value of GW's IP would be minimal
4. Outcomes are unpredictable (i.e. risk is high)
To make matters worse, GW's two most recent experiences of launching Epic were not wild successes - they spent a lot of money on Epic 40K in particular that did not make a return. Unfortunately executives have a tendency to gloss over the detail of why that was - arguably it would not be the same if they did it again and learnt from their mistakes, but it would take some very strong will from someone very influential to change that perception.
As others have said, I think by far the best chance of seeing Epic again in the future lies in a limited edition non-expandable box set. That probably won't happen for a good while.
