Voss wrote:
Novels written by the rules designers they aren't paying to write rules anymore are not licensing income.
That's why I mentioned "Black Library novels" and "licensing income" separately. But hey strawman's all you've got? Bring it on junior.
Novels aren't even a great money maker, the return on books is not good. Its _easy_, since its just some random person's time and some cover art, but the margins are not high.
Black Library novels make the NYT bestseller list? Check. Black Library is actually
owned by GW so all its sales go directly to the revenue ledger? Check. Your average BL book is actually more expensive than your typical novel of the same size? Check.
So what the
fuck are you talking about with your insipid claim that their books don't make that much money?
They have high enough sales to make a best-seller list counting
all book sales. They actually make higher margins (because they price higher) and it all goes to GW's bottom line. And while books may not be all the rage these days, they're still a 28 billion dollar industry in the US and actually
grew last year.
But yeah, sure, GW is an innocent little minis company that doesn't publish books.
No one claimed they were a minis-only company. It is their focus
It's readily apparent you're a shit-for-brains who's too busy shifting goalposts because you can't see anything beyond your puny little minis world.
The main money-maker of Gundam is model kits. They make more off models than any of their other stuff combined - that includes the movies, TV series, books, and comics books.
Yet no one in the real business world would classify Bandai to be a "model" company or a "model kit-focused" company like your shitty attempts to spin GW's outright lies.
Bandai is an empire. And they're an empire because they're actually
good at mixing their media and their physical model kits business. When Bandai promotes a new Gundam show, the model kit line specifically for that show is already waiting in the wings because they have developed a simple technology called "scheduling". So when the new Gundam Barbatos does something cool in the show, the kid watching the show can run to the local Train Station Hobby store and buy a kit immediately.
By contrast it's obvious that you're completely unaware of GW's attempt to copy the Bandai-Namco Empire, given your constant denials of Black Library's existence.
For instance, do you even know that they tried to feature newly released 40K era model kits (specifically the Imperial Knights) into a Horus Heresy novel (
Vengeful Spirit)? Which was really stupid because Imperial Knights was a model kit for the 40K line, and Horus Heresy was supposed to be stories from the 30K era?
That you think that licensing is inherently bad is the problem. Licensing can be very profitable and add to the core business. Bandai wouldn't be a five billion dollar company if it didn't do TV shows and movies to help promote their little plastic Gundams.
The problem consistently is that GW is
shit at managing their IP, and people like you keep getting
duped by how this shit is acceptable because "they're not supposed to focus on other things! They are supposed to focus on minis!"
Here's the thing, junior.
GW's minis are shit. They are nowhere near the best in the world. And the idea that their minis technology is even
acceptable in 2017 is laughable.
In the 35 years since Gundam's inception we've had numerous improvements in kit technology. They introduced the "HG" line in the 90s which
no longer required paint or glue. This may be galling to old-timers but that meant that people in tiny Tokyo apartments no longer ran the risk of choking themselves to death on glue and paint fumes. They've since improved core frames that allow their model kits to not only be assembled, but
posed and played with. And then they added polycaps - which allow components to be switched around easily for customization (with the added benefit of multiple customization options in one box by simply adding spare components to the sprue)
By contrast what exactly has GW done to "improve" its minis in the same 35 years? Shift from fucking metal to plastic? Realize that they can make more money by selling giant models directly rather than outsourcing it to Forge World? Create giant terrain pieces that further add to the cost of entry?
The reality is that GW has invested
nothing in actually improving their models. Indeed, they've been incredibly
lazy at releasing even small updates to their sprues.
The Cadian sprue for instance doesn't even have provisions to give the squad melta guns (you have to buy a command squad or buy second market Space Marine ones), and this was from an "update" that was released
seven years ago. The Space Marine sprue did get an update back in 2013ish, but that was
ten fucking years in the making. How exactly is a company "focused" on miniatures when it can only be bothered to update its supposedly best-selling kit once a decade?
So fuck you and your "GW is a minis-focused company" bullshit. Saying that is just a combination of a monstrous lie and a cruel joke.
You do understand that putting bald face lies about their strategies and business practices in their investor statement and annual reports would be a criminal offense, right?
Hey, look at someone who obviously hasn't worked for a Sarbanes-Oxley compliant company and deigns to pretend he knows about corporate honesty.
What you're describing are not "strategies and business practices". That you think they are tells me that you've never worked for an actual corporation or have a fucking clue how they work.
Companies like publishing general mission statements - but for the purpose of gaining press or customer mileage only. They often have very little to do with their actual strategy. Because only a fucking idiot declares their business plans to the public - which by definition
includes your competitors.
What's you can't lie about are your financial performance numbers - e.g. revenue, sources of revenue, expenses, EBITDA, etc. And these numbers are actually audited.
Why? Simple twofold reason: The government wants to know how much you really earned for purpose of taxation, and for listed companies your real performance is public knowledge in order to prevent ENRONs.
Auditors are
not required to audit general motherhood statements for the consumption of brainless people like you. There would be no point to begin with, because GW can just argue that changing sprues once every ten years represents them being "minis-focused" whereas Bandai doesn't count as a model kit company because they have TV shows and video games despite having a 35 year record of actually improving their model kits in real ways.
I'm impressed and proud you were able to rip off some children. That clearly demonstrates the scope of the entire industry.
Personally talked 8 and 9 years olds into spending money, impressive skills indeed. Did you throw in some candy?
Actually, I just demo'd the game, stepped back and let them play, and
they found it so fun that they bugged their mom to buy a copy. From their excitement level, she ended up buying two.
I wasn't selling it myself (it was a gaming con, people are supposed to have fun and not buy stuff) - but yeah sure I ripped off some kids instead of the kids
realizing the game was fun on their own; because again your design thinking is stuck in the 80s. Because nine year olds aren't allowed to choose what they find fun, only you can dictate it for them.
Uh... no. Actually Privateer was absurdly popular after its initial wave, to the point that they had to completely restructure production because they couldn't keep up with demand. 5 or 6 years after release they were scrambling to keep up with orders after their second edition because it was doing really damn well.
They crashed it by rising prices, doing big expensive stuff that warped the metagame to the breaking point, and pulling GW levels of nonsense by dictating sales terms to retailers and licensing digital products to incompetent partners. 3rd edition didn't help either, as they admitted to completely fucking an entire faction, convincing people to rebuy the card decks for everyone then 'suddenly' changing their stat card strategy and voiding large chunks of the model-specific rules for buckets of errata to fix all the shit they buggered trying to rush out the new edition.
You're really fucking clueless how companies really work.
A company in the minis business unable to keep up with demand is one of two things: They are either incompetent, or they are lying.
These are not fucking hand-crafted models. They're
molds and all you need to create another batch is to pour molten metal or plastic into them. If they can't do this simple shit then they just need to close shop. Hell, it's so simple that there are suppliers in China that can produce stuff like this by the millions already and even paint them for you! That's why FFG already sells pre-painted minis for X-wing. And if you dare bring up the bullshit "but GW models are better quality line!" I will point out Disney's QA for merchandise is far more draconian than anything GW could dream of.
The much harsher reality is this: They lied. Yes, there was a Warmachine phase. No, it was
never that fucking big. It just got players mainly from 40K, and in any case they were getting far fewer models than 40K.
So at some point either enough people keep buying for Privateer to be profitable, or they finally had to confront reality and realize they had to go with higher pricing. The latter, not the former, is what happened.
In short, you're still in denial that you can't scale up minis to a $250+ dollar per person hobby without becoming GW because you're stuck with 70s era stupid rules; and you instead want to create a fantasy about this golden moment where Privateer nearly snatched the market from GW... when in all likelihood they just pumped the perception of demand by creating a false shortage.
So far, you've only impressed me with your depth of ignorance. What you think is wrong with the games industry seems to be founded on shit and mushrooms, and lacking any sort of knowledge and especially history of the companies you presume to yammer on about.
Says the guy who quoted GW's bullshit and then act all hurt and indignant that their corporate statement is full of lies. And then you ridiculously pretend that laws on corporate disclosures should protect you from being an idiot.
Your hobby's dying and you never really liked playing it. That's the real reason why you're so busy pulling your strawman and goalpost crap instead of confronting how shit tabletop wargames like 40K really are from a playability perspective. It's always easier to blame somebody else than admit that to yourself that you've wasted your time on shit.