Games workshop keeps selling out on nearly all of their boxed sets when they are released. No wonder they are confident they can increase prices and not have it impact sales.
It would help a lot if they didn’t pretend their 2 and 3 times inflation increases are because they are victims of inflation. They are the perpetrators of inflation and are blaming the actual victims. People are largely price insensitive to models but this particular price increase has definitely caused more ire. Probably because of how often the negative news has been hitting and also there is a last straw for everyone and GW seems absolutely determined to finding it.
You're actually saying GW prices are low, seriously? £52 for a box of plastic figures is fu-k1ng outrageous. I loved 40k in 6th & 7th & already silly prices started being an absolute piss take & I've not given them a penny since, even though I love the lore (not the new inclusive shit). Open your eyes 👀
@@jamesdo3086 You got me. It's so obvious when I read it now. Was so pissed off after the video I took it literally 😖. I do also understand condescension, I'm not a lad 😉
The internet always has fantastic big brain takes with everything GW. It's like gas prices and inflation man. Global pandemic and costs, that's how it is now. Everybody's raises prices. What all the chad dads should be saying to sound really smart is: local gaming stores are going to look like local comic stores in about five years, because their main product line is on an unsustainable course through about ten icebergs, and it's only speeding up. How many starter sets of Space Marines can you sell the exact same audience at +5% a year, except for when it's like 25-50% in a year, before they have enough Space Marines? Gaming stores had better be thinking of ways to diversify now, because it's going to be too late to start before long.
Heard this one before, like 15 years ago. When I was 11 the 40k starter set was $100 and you did what you always do, save up if you want the luxury item. Thanks for the comment!
Inflation isn't some automatic magic hand that forces every.. why are we even talking about inflation? GW lie all the time - they lied last year, they are lying this year. The leaked price rises for a lot of their battleline kits is 10%. Old World is going up 10% and that's already insanely overpriced tat. They are raising their prices THREE TIMES inflation which is the lowest it's ever been in the UK since 2021.
I believe this has been mentioned before but most won't be bothered because they already don't pick up the newest/greatest. A small amount will continue to buy everything new that comes out. The problem I see in my local area Gaming Stores is a lot of people are ageing out/retiring with the collections they already have. We are not seeing much if any new-blood joining the hobby. It's getting harder to get new people involved once they see the price sticker/price shock. There are no good starter boxes to introduce people too.
I'll throw out a couple of ideas (one broad, and one personal). Broadly; I don't think a 3-5% price increase on a luxury item that is already seen by many as having a high price point will drive a lot of people away. I think a ton of people crying "this is too much" already thought it was too much and had already stopped buying. I don't think a 3-5% cherry on top will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. For me personally my price sensitivity to Games Workshop (for a long time) has been their print material. If I pay a high cost for a miniature that I might continue using for 10 or more years, a few dollars one way or the other doesn't really bother me. But buying a book for $60-$100 that might be out of date before the first time I use it is my bridge too far. Just my 2 cents. *One last thought. If that price change in northern Europe goes over without any major issues....what do you think next year's price increases in the rest of the world will end up looking like?
As a more serious comment I think the prices matter a lot less than rule or range changes. People get more upset by revaluation of their existing assets
Just fix the currency conversion. That Necron box is sold for 30 GPB which converts to approximately $37 not $50. They are already taking advantage of American customers.
I worked for a company that did not raise prices regularly due to inflation. On one hand the customers got a steady price for a long time, but when the SHTF we had to jack up the prices 20% just to get back to somewhere reasonable for current costs. I can tell you our customers were not impressed and no matter how many times I pointed out they had gotten a deal for a long time they didn't feel good about it. I think small annual price increases are a better way to go.
The problem with contemporary consumers, is that they are not taught how to think this way where luxury items are concerned. Its understandable that an increase in food prices would upset people. That is a necessity. And prices will never decrease, unless they are on sale or through a 3rd party that can manage to sell them cheaper due to business model. We have it so ingrained that increase to prices is a bad thing, that no one look at things, as you have described in you own story, to understand that we can either get these changes in small increments, or all at once when things are going poorly. I prefer incremental changes over unnecessary dramatic change.
Cool but GW don't do small annual price hikes. They do significant ones. 3-5% isn't small and GW lie all the time anyway, they lied last year and this year they're lying again: a lot of the main kits are going up 10%. Warlord Games rarely if ever raised their prices, then the pandemic came and they had to raise them significantly, just like your experience - but plenty of people had good will to Warlord Games and appreciated they never raised their price until a ... global pandemic that killed , wow 7 million at least, or war in Europe.
Eh, it’s a luxury item, they cost what the market will bare. 40K is now more than I care to spend per model, so I play Heresy and Warcry. Still fun times and I get to paint my little people.
it's not a luxury item though. Metal and resin stuff? Sure. But cheap plastic? Nah. The cardboard literally costs more than the miniatures inside. Victrix now produce miniatures that are just as good as the models GW make. And even Mantic are now producing almost as good plastics as GW (thanks to switching to a Polish manufacturer). Victrix charge £1 (after pandemic/Putin price hikes) per plastic miniature which is more GW scale than historical, so they're not even small models. Just as high quality as GW now who charge £3.25 for more or less the same lump of plastic.
Just became a donor on the Patreon. Appreciate the videos guy. Any chance yall will be doing a minis/LGS sales trend update again? It's always fascinating to hear people break down why some things fly off the shelves while some things literally have zero interest (sorry TOW Orks box😂)
I don't think the 5% increase is enough for people one way or another IMO. But for me I have not played 40k since 6th, and I get sticker shock on 120 dollar tanks that are only a 20th of you points you need for a 2k army many of these products are not even new sculpts.
I don’t know anyone who has stopped buying altogether because of the price increases. The internet has a lot of ragers but I’m not convinced they actually buy GW product. I don’t collect every army, or buy every release, so it doesn’t seriously impact me. I do, however, price out an army I want on occasion and say “not going to spend that much just for the new playstyle, I’ll stick to my choices I have and slowly grow their options”
That's because they've stopped buying GW altogether and moved on to other systems and you're not talking to them anymore.... there are loads of people who drop out of GW every year now though the rules are also a factor for that.
I don’t have a problem with price rises but apparently some Old world kits are increasing which I’m a bit salty about because these are only months or weeks old and they should have the pricing set correctly in these very recent releases
It is ok for GW to raise their prices. It keeps space for other companies to make miniatures cheaper and try to complete with GW. I've been playing Wargames for 30 years now and people have always complained about GW. It would be worse if GW made the best miniatures and were the cheapest. There would be no space for other companies and therefore no other choice for alternative miniatures.
I would say the price increase keeps me from buying more GW product about as much as the inability to get a lot of the new models that I am interested in because they sell out almost immediately. I think if their production levels were better the price increase would be less of a big deal for at least some individuals.
This stuff costs what it costs. If it gets too expensive, I'll just turn to an alternative, or work on my enormous backlog ;) . I will say that the recently-revealed price of the AoS 4 release box has dissuaded two of my friends from purchasing - but maybe they'd feel different if they didn't already have most of what they needed to play!
What percentage of their products actually end up with the consumers who truly want them? For one example, when they bundle box paywall a hero unit with a bunch of chaff that means a large percentage of their production is being distributed very inefficiently. To me this causes price inefficiency as well as out-of-stock problems.
Honestly I think GW does those boxes for two reasons: 1. Incentivize someone to start a new army, because it’s not going to stop with just that one battle force box. They’ll make even more money than just that one sale. 2. Poor impulse control - people who do really only need the new hero are spending way more than they otherwise would, and GW is more interested in making the sale than “is the product going to be used by the consumer”. The only thing they’re really trying to combat is scalpers, which is commendable.
I bought one of those boxes mainly because I didn’t have those units for the army yet, so for me it was a pretty good deal. But for my main army (soul blight) who the hell needs more wolves ?
I bought a 3D printed Nagash proxy this month that I'm really excited about, in part because I would rather play a generic massive skeleton knight than the named character of Nagash. But also I prefer the aesthetics of the 3D model. It's incredibly sculpted and fits in with the OBR miniature line well. It's also $68 vs $120. "The army is going to cost x" has remained the same if you're income and costs keep up with GW price rises, yes. But 3D printing has lowered the cost for armies so much. When I built my drukhari army, I was able to buy 20 wracks for $45 dollars instead of $140 for GW wracks. When most people start armies now, I think they are thinking what can i get in 3D prints and what should I get from GW. Price rises must matter because the larger the price gap between 3D/GW model and the more easy to find alternative GW sculpts, the less GW products people will buy. GW is being attacked on other fronts too, for example Pro-acryl paint has really surpassed GW as a higher quality and cheaper paint range. And army painter speed paints are cheaper and similar in quality to contrast paints. I think 2024 is the year that GW profits decrease and that GW will feel the need to make some changes 4th quarter this year. For the reasons above and also because 10th edition 40k helped boost the numbers in 2023, and I feel that 4th edition AoS and it's skaven and stormcast box isn't going to put up huge numbers that meet the huge expectations. It's amazing for the consumer though. And now is a great time to buy used lots and armies from ebay. I also love that the mini's are already built. I think a lot of people are slowly getting better at reducing their pile of shame and focusing more on their current projects.
Another little point, several of GW’s former employees were able to cash out the shares they were given as part of their compensation and start their own companies. So there’s that as well.
You mentioned the guy who comes in and says they just print everything but what your guys stance on printing? I personally like it for alternative sculpts, bit, and terrain. I've been finding some 3d sculpts rival or surpass GW plastics but there are also some that look like playdough.
I don't buy there paints,tools,books ect just there, minis. It just means I buy a little less. I've stopped buying the phomo boxes & just waited for the exclusive mini/minis in the box. It sucks but I expect the same again next year, unfortunately.
I wouldn't mind if they hadn't stated politicising. One of their artists has been ranting about stringing up the wives and mothers of warhammer fans. I wish I was being hyperbolic.
Corvus Belli did do a press release when they increased their prices. They specifically mentioned the increase costs of metal, and that why they shifted to thermoplastic. Are you guys suggesting that CB does yearly increases that aren't passed onto the consumer?
I don't know if its yearly but for the 10 years we have carried their product price increases were never communicated to us (no emails to retailers etc). I would received new products or restocks from the local distributor and the cost would just be higher then the last time. Maybe the press releases are a new thing, I dunno
Except they up their prices more frequently and more than inflation demands. They also have lowered the model count for the same price. They also made a ton of profit, so they mostly just want to maintain or expand the profit margin. If average Joes like me stop buying their stuff brand new (as I have) or proxy more and more (as I have by using third party) they still will not feel it as long as they have enough fat whales to compensate for it. GW wants profit to placate their shareholders and use any means necessary to gain it. What i'm curious about is if they can keep up this insane price momentum for the coming decade as they never do any good deals or discounts. (portraying themselves as 'quality') Given what gorgeous 3D printed figs I can get nowadays for less and how I can even get recasts not much lower in quality than GW stuff it'll come down to whether or not there will be enough brand addicts with large wallets. They may succeed à la Apple. Or they might start to trip à la Hasbro/WotC. Frankly given that they've wrecked most goodwill i had for the corporation (not the IP) since before Corona. I'm hoping to see them eventually trip and fall on their faces. Might be a wakeup call. Or not. GW has been rather pigheaded for decades in the way they listen to their community. If at all.
I think eventually this will slowly price more and more people out of the hobby. I am lucky i am mostly interested in imperialis and those boxes are not that bad price wise so hopefully it won;t be too bad. Also if i had the money there is a bunch of stuff i would rush out and grab before the price increase.
The problem isn't the price increase, it's the condescending way that they do it. Inflation has caused everything to go up yes. But they were raising prices every year when things weren't going up in price. They raised prices when they went to cheaper materials. Yet every time they hide their hikes behind the wall of everyone else is going up so we are as well. Just put the price up say you are increasing the price be transparent about that and then don't elaborate. If they really wanted to show transparency tell us the price increase and then tell us your margins on your product.
I appreciate all the different takes, but I would like to share a story that happened a year ago. A regular customer came into my store and was telling me about her childs heart condition and how he was struggling to make friends as he couldn't do activities and sports. I told her about Warhammer and how much fun I had as a child playing it. I showed her the website and her face went from excitement to sheer horror when she saw the prices. I felt very out of touch in that moment. Although I'm cool, these prices are completely out of touch to poorer families and children. The value box sets that were a great starting point have been obliterated, and the new combat patrols are not value for money. The start collecting boxes should be reintroduced as a good will gesture, i dont think any sane/fair person can argue against that. There are things GW can do to mitigate the rising costs and many of these comments aren't being fair to people that are not in our demographic.
I hear that and feel that. But that was no different in 1996 when I first walked into a Games Workshop. Ultimately your issue is with an economy that provides some people with the ability to afford luxury products, and many without. I have to agree with you there.
I get that mini wargaming is an expensive hobby. I get why GW prices things the way they do. But it remains difficult to get into the hobby or get others into the hobby when products are so expensive and the starting point is so high. It's $150.00 CAD for the rules and a codex. That's before any plastic or paints are bought. I get it. But I don't get why, for example, Kill Team isn't a cool $100 for mini's, rules etc as an entry point to the hobby. GW is making money, they're still in business so I guess they know what they're doing. but I don't get it.
Yea I have to agree, the entry point has especially gotten much higher in these past few years. Kill team is pretty much what you describe though with their starter set, just over 100 bucks for a pretty good entry experience.
I love how measured your approach is. You guys approach this whole thing from a multi picture view. How do you deal with people convinced you are simping for GW? That said, great video, I like hearing about the business side of all of this and your insider understanding/knowledge. As for the price hike? I dont really care. To me the hike is like any other hobby, the prices will go up. They dont stay stagnant. And even then, with all that said, its a relatively cheap hobby to be in, in comparison to so many other hobbies.
thanks for the kind words, people also forget their existing collections all go up in value. You can now command more for your existing models on the secondary market
@@DaXiS1987i know some technic stuff (like night and thermal vision) that goes down but thats mostly because they are better at manufacturing those aswell as an increase in competition and a steady advance in the field. Other than that i dont know. Gasoline is in my reagion like 70% more expensive than it was 4 years ago.
Price increases make me angry. I feel like it's lazy, unimaginative, and entitled. When is this supposed increase in popularity going to translate into greater availability? It never has. It's still a small group of devoted people, paying through the nose to support a company that doesn't respect them.
So this price rise among other moves (sigmar/warcry range pruning) has made me resolve to stop buying GW products. Will it hurt their sales though? Absolutely not. GW knows what they're doing; as you said in the video, they're shifting their consumer market, pricing out people like me in favour of those who buy 2 or 3 Leviathan box sets. GW is shifitng to a whale hunting model, where they want a small percent of players to make up the majority of sales. I find this business model exploitative. Yes they're a public company and legally can't do otherwise, but that just means I'll never buy from them. They know what they're doing, recreation industries across the board have been copying the whale hunting model for years now because it works. I find it quite abhorrent honestly (since usually these whales aren't oil princes, but are being taken advantage of) but with mobile gambling made legal in Canada and around the world, I don't see these awful business practices changing anytime soon. I'll just try to buy models in systems like Relicblade since I can actually afford those games, but I do hope some people who are eating shit under GW decide to do the same
Different topic: How do you folks feel about an LGS increasing product costs to match secondary market? If an item is sold out online, should an LGS double the charge price over MRSP to match secondary market prices ?
The price hikes at GW is unique to Games Workshop Since the 1990s GW have raised their prices every year (with a few years exception 2015) since 1990s. Other miniature companies have raised their prices since the pandemic and invasion of Ukraine (causing a supply chain meltdown and an energy price crisis, respectfully). But those companies, be in Warlord, Mantic, Victrix, never raised their prices every single year without fail prior to that. GW do. GW can eat the cost of inflation but never do, often the increase % they give is 66% lower than the real price increase. It's always well above inflation. Other miniature companies eat that inflation as do many other companies: inflation is not something you HAVE to do, depending on your circumstances. GW are rich enough to eat these costs. Mantic etc. who are tiny companies in comparison, always ate the cost of inflation until the pandemic. This is entirely unique to Games Workshop.
I have to disagree with you general statement. I work at a shop and we sell a lot of optics (binoculars) and clothes and we get every year an updated pricelist from every distributer. Quite often they increase the price without telling us and send the current pricelist a month or two later. We also have some company who increase prices twice a year. So in the overall business GW is not a standout. For the Miniature stuff in particular there may be other cpmpetitor who dont do that. But all of them are small in comparisson to gw and have fewer employees and fewer shops. All of these things frive the price because you dont finance the plastik of the mini you also pay for the gamestores, warehouses etc. And those prices rise as well.
So here’s what happens to mini companies that don’t…. They end up raising prices really high all at once. I recall x-wing doing exactly two price increases (once at edition change and once later for inflation) and both times it was well over what GW does.
@@uwesca6263 I appreciate your experience but when it comes to the miniature wargaming industry we have a number of producers in the UK, who while not massive like GW are not small either, and have never raised their prices unless entirely necessary - such as post-pandemic/Russian attack on Ukraine. Victrix, for example, produce plastics that are now on the same level as GW yet price them as £1 per model, they're also GW scale so they're bigger than you average historical: they have only really raised their prices since 2021. It is entirely true and you are super right to point out that GW's price factors in the cost of running the physical GW stores, but that doesn't and probably shouldn't be the case. A GW store should survive on its own imo and the customer shouldn't have to shelter the cost. At any rate, that cost is easily covered by GW's massive profits.
@@ccgear4367 I know, it's embarrassing seeing people think inflation is some sort of magical law where whatever "inflation is" all companies raise costs. They don't - and many choose not to. Some people and some parts of your business may not be affected by inflation of other materials at all, whilst others simply choose to take the hit and NOT pass it on to customers. It's weird how people don't understand inflation, isn't it eh?
It is a luxury and hobby item, and they actually invest their margins into more stuff, they’re not just sitting on top of their money doing nothing. Sure, the price increases suck, but I understand them. And I’m saying this as a Swede, so the price increase is going to be 10+ percent at my FLGS for sure.
In simplest terms, if you can't afford the extra $6 - $10, you couldn't afford the original $200 either. I know it's rough, but come on folks; you will not ever be ten bucks over the poverty line because of the model kits that you realistically should only buy maybe 1 - 2 of a month. Also folks, if all of the stuff you buy went up, all of the stuff that your favorite companies buy went up as well. Making this an official announcement along with the great Stormcast "squatting" is just stupid. Sometimes, you just gotta hop out of the second floor window and take your sneaky win; you don't get bonus points by knocking on the front door and telling her dad. GW is doing a lot of *knock knock "Guess what I just did sir!" statements when literally saying nothing would have been better.
In 1975 gasoline was 34 cents a gallon in the USA, and a Big Mac was 40 cents. Fuel and food. Necessities. If you want to get upset about something, maybe look at that. Oh, and minimum wage was $2.10/hour. Now it’s $7.25/hour. So the necessities have increased tenfold while wages have only roughly tripled. Put a different way, if you’re making $21.00/hour in 2024, you’re making the equivalent of minimum wage compared to 1975.
Absolutely not. I’m 66 years old. I can remember paying those prices. I had a motorcycle with a 3.5 gallon tank and I had to get pretty close to empty to put $1.00 in the tank. And I know what my first minimum wage fast food job paid. $2.10 an hour. Yes, perhaps other items haven’t increased quite as much but two more prices. In 1970 a four bedroom bi-level house in a upper middle class suburban neighborhood sold for $40,000 - my parents bought that house when we moved to New Jersey. In 1975 my father bought a brand new Chevy Nova for $3600, so that through a series of intrafamilial trades, I could get my grandfather’s 1964 Chevell to commute to work and college. Those same items would be at least 10 times more expensive today.
@@earnestwanderer2471 There is a formula tot calculate "CPI" (consumer price index) that way you can use the actual number. CPI_t=\frac{C_t}{C_0} * 100CPI_t=\frac{C_t}{C_0} * 100
Honestly, to me it feels like they're withholding Old World restocks till the price hike hits. I've been watching restocks for weeks in the hopes my stuff restocks and they had 2-3 kits restock daily for Tomb Kings/Bretonnia until they announced the price hike. After that we've had 0 restocks of anything so even if I wanted to 'rush buy' the kits I want before the hike I can't because the kits are being held in the GULAG till the hike so I'll prolly end up paying 55 bucks per 3 Grail/Questing Knights, 35-40 for the Tomb Scorpion and like 55 for the Screaming Skull Catapult.... and it's got me worked up to the point where I may just get STL files for scanned versions of the models and have them printed. If GW doesn't want to sell me the mini's I've wanted since I was a teenager... then I'll have to acquire them via other means while giving a certain hand gesture to GW.
For me time is still the limiting factor for the hobby and not money. For young kids it's probably different and this hurts them more.
I've quickly became a fan of you guys. I hope to see more frequent and longer content in the future.
Games workshop keeps selling out on nearly all of their boxed sets when they are released. No wonder they are confident they can increase prices and not have it impact sales.
But we don't ever know how many kits they produce, so selling out is kinda meaningless without that data.
But a lot of those boxed sets that sell out are saver boxes lol :p GW are so dumb
It would help a lot if they didn’t pretend their 2 and 3 times inflation increases are because they are victims of inflation. They are the perpetrators of inflation and are blaming the actual victims.
People are largely price insensitive to models but this particular price increase has definitely caused more ire. Probably because of how often the negative news has been hitting and also there is a last straw for everyone and GW seems absolutely determined to finding it.
They’ve done their best to keep prices low everyone , they did their best. GW trying so hard.
😂
heh
You're actually saying GW prices are low, seriously? £52 for a box of plastic figures is fu-k1ng outrageous. I loved 40k in 6th & 7th & already silly prices started being an absolute piss take & I've not given them a penny since, even though I love the lore (not the new inclusive shit). Open your eyes 👀
@@50caliber29 I don't think you understand how sarcasm works lad
@@jamesdo3086 You got me. It's so obvious when I read it now. Was so pissed off after the video I took it literally 😖. I do also understand condescension, I'm not a lad 😉
The internet always has fantastic big brain takes with everything GW. It's like gas prices and inflation man. Global pandemic and costs, that's how it is now. Everybody's raises prices.
What all the chad dads should be saying to sound really smart is: local gaming stores are going to look like local comic stores in about five years, because their main product line is on an unsustainable course through about ten icebergs, and it's only speeding up. How many starter sets of Space Marines can you sell the exact same audience at +5% a year, except for when it's like 25-50% in a year, before they have enough Space Marines? Gaming stores had better be thinking of ways to diversify now, because it's going to be too late to start before long.
3rd-PR: 🤖🖨Brrrrrrrrr❓
( *_Brrrrrrrrr....🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖 )_*
Heard this one before, like 15 years ago.
When I was 11 the 40k starter set was $100 and you did what you always do, save up if you want the luxury item.
Thanks for the comment!
Inflation isn't some automatic magic hand that forces every.. why are we even talking about inflation? GW lie all the time - they lied last year, they are lying this year. The leaked price rises for a lot of their battleline kits is 10%. Old World is going up 10% and that's already insanely overpriced tat. They are raising their prices THREE TIMES inflation which is the lowest it's ever been in the UK since 2021.
I only buy battleforce boxes. Maybe combat patrols but not anymore. I also 3d print a lot as well. I have 16 armies
I believe this has been mentioned before but most won't be bothered because they already don't pick up the newest/greatest. A small amount will continue to buy everything new that comes out. The problem I see in my local area Gaming Stores is a lot of people are ageing out/retiring with the collections they already have. We are not seeing much if any new-blood joining the hobby. It's getting harder to get new people involved once they see the price sticker/price shock. There are no good starter boxes to introduce people too.
I'll throw out a couple of ideas (one broad, and one personal).
Broadly; I don't think a 3-5% price increase on a luxury item that is already seen by many as having a high price point will drive a lot of people away. I think a ton of people crying "this is too much" already thought it was too much and had already stopped buying. I don't think a 3-5% cherry on top will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
For me personally my price sensitivity to Games Workshop (for a long time) has been their print material. If I pay a high cost for a miniature that I might continue using for 10 or more years, a few dollars one way or the other doesn't really bother me. But buying a book for $60-$100 that might be out of date before the first time I use it is my bridge too far.
Just my 2 cents.
*One last thought. If that price change in northern Europe goes over without any major issues....what do you think next year's price increases in the rest of the world will end up looking like?
Another price increase has crashed into the hobby industry
As a more serious comment I think the prices matter a lot less than rule or range changes. People get more upset by revaluation of their existing assets
Just fix the currency conversion. That Necron box is sold for 30 GPB which converts to approximately $37 not $50. They are already taking advantage of American customers.
I worked for a company that did not raise prices regularly due to inflation. On one hand the customers got a steady price for a long time, but when the SHTF we had to jack up the prices 20% just to get back to somewhere reasonable for current costs. I can tell you our customers were not impressed and no matter how many times I pointed out they had gotten a deal for a long time they didn't feel good about it. I think small annual price increases are a better way to go.
The problem with contemporary consumers, is that they are not taught how to think this way where luxury items are concerned. Its understandable that an increase in food prices would upset people. That is a necessity. And prices will never decrease, unless they are on sale or through a 3rd party that can manage to sell them cheaper due to business model.
We have it so ingrained that increase to prices is a bad thing, that no one look at things, as you have described in you own story, to understand that we can either get these changes in small increments, or all at once when things are going poorly.
I prefer incremental changes over unnecessary dramatic change.
Cool but GW don't do small annual price hikes. They do significant ones. 3-5% isn't small and GW lie all the time anyway, they lied last year and this year they're lying again: a lot of the main kits are going up 10%.
Warlord Games rarely if ever raised their prices, then the pandemic came and they had to raise them significantly, just like your experience - but plenty of people had good will to Warlord Games and appreciated they never raised their price until a ... global pandemic that killed , wow 7 million at least, or war in Europe.
I think most people just end up thinking "guess I'll buy one fewer X this year"
Yup, I just bought half the space marine wave last year instead of all of it (which marines are one of my two armies).
I just wait for the recasters or 3D print an alternative. Both have more reliable availability than GW on new releases these days, lol.
@@crann777 When I first started playing I would have killed for 3D printers lol. You literally couldn't buy half the Eldar Codex units in '99
Eh, it’s a luxury item, they cost what the market will bare. 40K is now more than I care to spend per model, so I play Heresy and Warcry. Still fun times and I get to paint my little people.
🧐GW's🤑 *_10,000%_*_ profit_ on Little Platic Men *_Ain't_*_ Bad, Eh_ (?)
Playing with toys shouldn't be a luxury hobby.
@@bryanvestal3923not every toy is a luxury brand. 🤷♂️
@@margaretwood152 We don’t have to buy their stuff. We choose to. I’ve chosen to not buy some of their stuff based on my sense of balance in my hobby.
it's not a luxury item though. Metal and resin stuff? Sure. But cheap plastic? Nah. The cardboard literally costs more than the miniatures inside.
Victrix now produce miniatures that are just as good as the models GW make. And even Mantic are now producing almost as good plastics as GW (thanks to switching to a Polish manufacturer). Victrix charge £1 (after pandemic/Putin price hikes) per plastic miniature which is more GW scale than historical, so they're not even small models. Just as high quality as GW now who charge £3.25 for more or less the same lump of plastic.
Just became a donor on the Patreon. Appreciate the videos guy. Any chance yall will be doing a minis/LGS sales trend update again? It's always fascinating to hear people break down why some things fly off the shelves while some things literally have zero interest (sorry TOW Orks box😂)
Thank you so much! We put the money 💰 back into the channel
I don't think the 5% increase is enough for people one way or another IMO. But for me I have not played 40k since 6th, and I get sticker shock on 120 dollar tanks that are only a 20th of you points you need for a 2k army many of these products are not even new sculpts.
I don’t know anyone who has stopped buying altogether because of the price increases. The internet has a lot of ragers but I’m not convinced they actually buy GW product.
I don’t collect every army, or buy every release, so it doesn’t seriously impact me. I do, however, price out an army I want on occasion and say “not going to spend that much just for the new playstyle, I’ll stick to my choices I have and slowly grow their options”
That's because they've stopped buying GW altogether and moved on to other systems and you're not talking to them anymore.... there are loads of people who drop out of GW every year now though the rules are also a factor for that.
I don’t have a problem with price rises but apparently some Old world kits are increasing which I’m a bit salty about because these are only months or weeks old and they should have the pricing set correctly in these very recent releases
It is ok for GW to raise their prices.
It keeps space for other companies to make miniatures cheaper and try to complete with GW.
I've been playing Wargames for 30 years now and people have always complained about GW.
It would be worse if GW made the best miniatures and were the cheapest. There would be no space for other companies and therefore no other choice for alternative miniatures.
That's a very interesting take!
I would say the price increase keeps me from buying more GW product about as much as the inability to get a lot of the new models that I am interested in because they sell out almost immediately. I think if their production levels were better the price increase would be less of a big deal for at least some individuals.
This stuff costs what it costs. If it gets too expensive, I'll just turn to an alternative, or work on my enormous backlog ;) . I will say that the recently-revealed price of the AoS 4 release box has dissuaded two of my friends from purchasing - but maybe they'd feel different if they didn't already have most of what they needed to play!
What percentage of their products actually end up with the consumers who truly want them? For one example, when they bundle box paywall a hero unit with a bunch of chaff that means a large percentage of their production is being distributed very inefficiently. To me this causes price inefficiency as well as out-of-stock problems.
Honestly I think GW does those boxes for two reasons:
1. Incentivize someone to start a new army, because it’s not going to stop with just that one battle force box. They’ll make even more money than just that one sale.
2. Poor impulse control - people who do really only need the new hero are spending way more than they otherwise would, and GW is more interested in making the sale than “is the product going to be used by the consumer”. The only thing they’re really trying to combat is scalpers, which is commendable.
I bought one of those boxes mainly because I didn’t have those units for the army yet, so for me it was a pretty good deal. But for my main army (soul blight) who the hell needs more wolves ?
I bought a 3D printed Nagash proxy this month that I'm really excited about, in part because I would rather play a generic massive skeleton knight than the named character of Nagash. But also I prefer the aesthetics of the 3D model. It's incredibly sculpted and fits in with the OBR miniature line well. It's also $68 vs $120.
"The army is going to cost x" has remained the same if you're income and costs keep up with GW price rises, yes. But 3D printing has lowered the cost for armies so much. When I built my drukhari army, I was able to buy 20 wracks for $45 dollars instead of $140 for GW wracks. When most people start armies now, I think they are thinking what can i get in 3D prints and what should I get from GW.
Price rises must matter because the larger the price gap between 3D/GW model and the more easy to find alternative GW sculpts, the less GW products people will buy. GW is being attacked on other fronts too, for example Pro-acryl paint has really surpassed GW as a higher quality and cheaper paint range. And army painter speed paints are cheaper and similar in quality to contrast paints.
I think 2024 is the year that GW profits decrease and that GW will feel the need to make some changes 4th quarter this year. For the reasons above and also because 10th edition 40k helped boost the numbers in 2023, and I feel that 4th edition AoS and it's skaven and stormcast box isn't going to put up huge numbers that meet the huge expectations.
It's amazing for the consumer though. And now is a great time to buy used lots and armies from ebay. I also love that the mini's are already built. I think a lot of people are slowly getting better at reducing their pile of shame and focusing more on their current projects.
Another little point, several of GW’s former employees were able to cash out the shares they were given as part of their compensation and start their own companies. So there’s that as well.
You mentioned the guy who comes in and says they just print everything but what your guys stance on printing? I personally like it for alternative sculpts, bit, and terrain. I've been finding some 3d sculpts rival or surpass GW plastics but there are also some that look like playdough.
Generally we don't mind but we remind players that the play space is for customers of the shop
Dividend payouts almost doubled fy22-23
Apparently the "inflation" is a great business model.
I don't buy there paints,tools,books ect just there, minis. It just means I buy a little less. I've stopped buying the phomo boxes & just waited for the exclusive mini/minis in the box. It sucks but I expect the same again next year, unfortunately.
I wouldn't mind if they hadn't stated politicising. One of their artists has been ranting about stringing up the wives and mothers of warhammer fans. I wish I was being hyperbolic.
Corvus Belli did do a press release when they increased their prices. They specifically mentioned the increase costs of metal, and that why they shifted to thermoplastic. Are you guys suggesting that CB does yearly increases that aren't passed onto the consumer?
I don't know if its yearly but for the 10 years we have carried their product price increases were never communicated to us (no emails to retailers etc). I would received new products or restocks from the local distributor and the cost would just be higher then the last time.
Maybe the press releases are a new thing, I dunno
Actually a small increase compared to other things. A loaf of store brand white bread is up 30% in the last 18 months.
Except they up their prices more frequently and more than inflation demands.
They also have lowered the model count for the same price.
They also made a ton of profit, so they mostly just want to maintain or expand the profit margin.
If average Joes like me stop buying their stuff brand new (as I have) or proxy more and more (as I have by using third party) they still will not feel it as long as they have enough fat whales to compensate for it.
GW wants profit to placate their shareholders and use any means necessary to gain it.
What i'm curious about is if they can keep up this insane price momentum for the coming decade as they never do any good deals or discounts. (portraying themselves as 'quality')
Given what gorgeous 3D printed figs I can get nowadays for less and how I can even get recasts not much lower in quality than GW stuff it'll come down to whether or not there will be enough brand addicts with large wallets.
They may succeed à la Apple.
Or they might start to trip à la Hasbro/WotC.
Frankly given that they've wrecked most goodwill i had for the corporation (not the IP) since before Corona. I'm hoping to see them eventually trip and fall on their faces.
Might be a wakeup call.
Or not. GW has been rather pigheaded for decades in the way they listen to their community. If at all.
In my LGS only about half the players actually by GW product. Everyone is buying 3D prints from guys in the group.
If GW hadn’t constantly brought in price rises when inflation was low, we’d probably be more amenable to them doing it when inflation is high….
I think eventually this will slowly price more and more people out of the hobby.
I am lucky i am mostly interested in imperialis and those boxes are not that bad price wise so hopefully it won;t be too bad.
Also if i had the money there is a bunch of stuff i would rush out and grab before the price increase.
The problem isn't the price increase, it's the condescending way that they do it. Inflation has caused everything to go up yes. But they were raising prices every year when things weren't going up in price. They raised prices when they went to cheaper materials. Yet every time they hide their hikes behind the wall of everyone else is going up so we are as well. Just put the price up say you are increasing the price be transparent about that and then don't elaborate. If they really wanted to show transparency tell us the price increase and then tell us your margins on your product.
I appreciate all the different takes, but I would like to share a story that happened a year ago. A regular customer came into my store and was telling me about her childs heart condition and how he was struggling to make friends as he couldn't do activities and sports.
I told her about Warhammer and how much fun I had as a child playing it. I showed her the website and her face went from excitement to sheer horror when she saw the prices. I felt very out of touch in that moment.
Although I'm cool, these prices are completely out of touch to poorer families and children. The value box sets that were a great starting point have been obliterated, and the new combat patrols are not value for money. The start collecting boxes should be reintroduced as a good will gesture, i dont think any sane/fair person can argue against that. There are things GW can do to mitigate the rising costs and many of these comments aren't being fair to people that are not in our demographic.
I hear that and feel that.
But that was no different in 1996 when I first walked into a Games Workshop.
Ultimately your issue is with an economy that provides some people with the ability to afford luxury products, and many without. I have to agree with you there.
I get that mini wargaming is an expensive hobby. I get why GW prices things the way they do.
But it remains difficult to get into the hobby or get others into the hobby when products are so expensive and the starting point is so high. It's $150.00 CAD for the rules and a codex. That's before any plastic or paints are bought.
I get it. But I don't get why, for example, Kill Team isn't a cool $100 for mini's, rules etc as an entry point to the hobby.
GW is making money, they're still in business so I guess they know what they're doing. but I don't get it.
Yea I have to agree, the entry point has especially gotten much higher in these past few years.
Kill team is pretty much what you describe though with their starter set, just over 100 bucks for a pretty good entry experience.
I love how measured your approach is. You guys approach this whole thing from a multi picture view. How do you deal with people convinced you are simping for GW?
That said, great video, I like hearing about the business side of all of this and your insider understanding/knowledge.
As for the price hike? I dont really care. To me the hike is like any other hobby, the prices will go up. They dont stay stagnant. And even then, with all that said, its a relatively cheap hobby to be in, in comparison to so many other hobbies.
thanks for the kind words, people also forget their existing collections all go up in value. You can now command more for your existing models on the secondary market
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905 plastic toys are not an investment
Remove the emperor from the throne
I paint about 2-3 boxes in a whole year so i dont mind, everything goes up over time
That's not true though? Many things go down in price. Many prices don't go up due to inflation.
@@scepteredisle what goes down in price over time?
@@DaXiS1987i know some technic stuff (like night and thermal vision) that goes down but thats mostly because they are better at manufacturing those aswell as an increase in competition and a steady advance in the field.
Other than that i dont know. Gasoline is in my reagion like 70% more expensive than it was 4 years ago.
Boycott.
Price increases make me angry. I feel like it's lazy, unimaginative, and entitled. When is this supposed increase in popularity going to translate into greater availability? It never has. It's still a small group of devoted people, paying through the nose to support a company that doesn't respect them.
So this price rise among other moves (sigmar/warcry range pruning) has made me resolve to stop buying GW products. Will it hurt their sales though? Absolutely not. GW knows what they're doing; as you said in the video, they're shifting their consumer market, pricing out people like me in favour of those who buy 2 or 3 Leviathan box sets. GW is shifitng to a whale hunting model, where they want a small percent of players to make up the majority of sales. I find this business model exploitative. Yes they're a public company and legally can't do otherwise, but that just means I'll never buy from them. They know what they're doing, recreation industries across the board have been copying the whale hunting model for years now because it works. I find it quite abhorrent honestly (since usually these whales aren't oil princes, but are being taken advantage of) but with mobile gambling made legal in Canada and around the world, I don't see these awful business practices changing anytime soon. I'll just try to buy models in systems like Relicblade since I can actually afford those games, but I do hope some people who are eating shit under GW decide to do the same
Different topic: How do you folks feel about an LGS increasing product costs to match secondary market? If an item is sold out online, should an LGS double the charge price over MRSP to match secondary market prices ?
The price hikes at GW is unique to Games Workshop
Since the 1990s GW have raised their prices every year (with a few years exception 2015) since 1990s.
Other miniature companies have raised their prices since the pandemic and invasion of Ukraine (causing a supply chain meltdown and an energy price crisis, respectfully). But those companies, be in Warlord, Mantic, Victrix, never raised their prices every single year without fail prior to that. GW do. GW can eat the cost of inflation but never do, often the increase % they give is 66% lower than the real price increase. It's always well above inflation. Other miniature companies eat that inflation as do many other companies: inflation is not something you HAVE to do, depending on your circumstances. GW are rich enough to eat these costs. Mantic etc. who are tiny companies in comparison, always ate the cost of inflation until the pandemic.
This is entirely unique to Games Workshop.
I have to disagree with you general statement. I work at a shop and we sell a lot of optics (binoculars) and clothes and we get every year an updated pricelist from every distributer. Quite often they increase the price without telling us and send the current pricelist a month or two later. We also have some company who increase prices twice a year.
So in the overall business GW is not a standout.
For the Miniature stuff in particular there may be other cpmpetitor who dont do that. But all of them are small in comparisson to gw and have fewer employees and fewer shops. All of these things frive the price because you dont finance the plastik of the mini you also pay for the gamestores, warehouses etc. And those prices rise as well.
Christ, some people really don’t understand inflation eh?
So here’s what happens to mini companies that don’t…. They end up raising prices really high all at once.
I recall x-wing doing exactly two price increases (once at edition change and once later for inflation) and both times it was well over what GW does.
@@uwesca6263 I appreciate your experience but when it comes to the miniature wargaming industry we have a number of producers in the UK, who while not massive like GW are not small either, and have never raised their prices unless entirely necessary - such as post-pandemic/Russian attack on Ukraine. Victrix, for example, produce plastics that are now on the same level as GW yet price them as £1 per model, they're also GW scale so they're bigger than you average historical: they have only really raised their prices since 2021.
It is entirely true and you are super right to point out that GW's price factors in the cost of running the physical GW stores, but that doesn't and probably shouldn't be the case. A GW store should survive on its own imo and the customer shouldn't have to shelter the cost. At any rate, that cost is easily covered by GW's massive profits.
@@ccgear4367 I know, it's embarrassing seeing people think inflation is some sort of magical law where whatever "inflation is" all companies raise costs. They don't - and many choose not to. Some people and some parts of your business may not be affected by inflation of other materials at all, whilst others simply choose to take the hit and NOT pass it on to customers. It's weird how people don't understand inflation, isn't it eh?
It is a luxury and hobby item, and they actually invest their margins into more stuff, they’re not just sitting on top of their money doing nothing. Sure, the price increases suck, but I understand them. And I’m saying this as a Swede, so the price increase is going to be 10+ percent at my FLGS for sure.
In simplest terms, if you can't afford the extra $6 - $10, you couldn't afford the original $200 either. I know it's rough, but come on folks; you will not ever be ten bucks over the poverty line because of the model kits that you realistically should only buy maybe 1 - 2 of a month.
Also folks, if all of the stuff you buy went up, all of the stuff that your favorite companies buy went up as well.
Making this an official announcement along with the great Stormcast "squatting" is just stupid. Sometimes, you just gotta hop out of the second floor window and take your sneaky win; you don't get bonus points by knocking on the front door and telling her dad.
GW is doing a lot of *knock knock "Guess what I just did sir!" statements when literally saying nothing would have been better.
In 1975 gasoline was 34 cents a gallon in the USA, and a Big Mac was 40 cents. Fuel and food. Necessities. If you want to get upset about something, maybe look at that. Oh, and minimum wage was $2.10/hour. Now it’s $7.25/hour. So the necessities have increased tenfold while wages have only roughly tripled. Put a different way, if you’re making $21.00/hour in 2024, you’re making the equivalent of minimum wage compared to 1975.
Get a new CPI calc. Your math is wrong on that claim.
Absolutely not. I’m 66 years old. I can remember paying those prices. I had a motorcycle with a 3.5 gallon tank and I had to get pretty close to empty to put $1.00 in the tank. And I know what my first minimum wage fast food job paid. $2.10 an hour. Yes, perhaps other items haven’t increased quite as much but two more prices. In 1970 a four bedroom bi-level house in a upper middle class suburban neighborhood sold for $40,000 - my parents bought that house when we moved to New Jersey. In 1975 my father bought a brand new Chevy Nova for $3600, so that through a series of intrafamilial trades, I could get my grandfather’s 1964 Chevell to commute to work and college. Those same items would be at least 10 times more expensive today.
@@earnestwanderer2471 There is a formula tot calculate "CPI" (consumer price index) that way you can use the actual number.
CPI_t=\frac{C_t}{C_0} * 100CPI_t=\frac{C_t}{C_0} * 100
Out of touch boomer.
Honestly, to me it feels like they're withholding Old World restocks till the price hike hits. I've been watching restocks for weeks in the hopes my stuff restocks and they had 2-3 kits restock daily for Tomb Kings/Bretonnia until they announced the price hike. After that we've had 0 restocks of anything so even if I wanted to 'rush buy' the kits I want before the hike I can't because the kits are being held in the GULAG till the hike so I'll prolly end up paying 55 bucks per 3 Grail/Questing Knights, 35-40 for the Tomb Scorpion and like 55 for the Screaming Skull Catapult.... and it's got me worked up to the point where I may just get STL files for scanned versions of the models and have them printed. If GW doesn't want to sell me the mini's I've wanted since I was a teenager... then I'll have to acquire them via other means while giving a certain hand gesture to GW.