How have Gw price rises affected your purchasing habits?

[JackStreicher]

@Panzer I am rather certain that their revenue would drastically increase if they charge less for their products since they‘d generate a lot of impulse purchases, kids just trying the game out etc. Money spent in cool though unnecessary conversion-wishes, dioramas, spontaneous gifts etc.

 Currently the price makes you think 6 and more times if you are really going to spend that much money on a few models. A consideration gw starts to lose more and more.

Edited October 28, 2019 by JackStreicher

[Panzer]

3 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

@Panzer I am rather certain that their revenue would drastically increase if they charge less for their products since they‘d generate a lot of impulse purchases, kids just trying the game out etc. Money spent in cool though unnecessary conversion-wishes, dioramas, spontaneous gifts etc.

 Currently the price makes you think 6 and more times if you are really going to spend that much money on a few models. A consideration gw starts to lose more and more.

I'm very sure if that were the case they'd do that. There's literally no point in increasing prices if it doesn't end up generating more money for them.

[chord]

I really wish they hadn't increased the prices of the Start Collecting boxes,  I was looking to pick up a few .  And like some people have mentioned, the price increases with the rule changing causing units to get power creep.  To see my units get left behind by newer armies is a bummer

[JackStreicher]

7 minutes ago, Panzer said:

I'm very sure if that were the case they'd do that. There's literally no point in increasing prices if it doesn't end up generating more money for them.

Their reasoning is probably the same of Small Miniature producers: I know my customer will only buy 2x boxes of these so I have to generate enough revenue that I can Continue producing new products.

GW is pretty huge though, they don’t need to act like they have to struggle every month to not go bankrupt.

Edited October 28, 2019 by JackStreicher

[Panzer]

5 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

Their reasoning is probably the same of Small Miniature producers: I know my customer will only buy 2x boxes of these so I have to generate enough revenue that I can Continue producing new products.

GW is pretty huge though, they don’t need to act like they have to struggle every month to not go bankrupt.

And they don't. They openly admit and report regularly that they make big cash ever since their restructure. Financially GW is doing better than ever and the fact that their sales keep rising despite increasing prices speaks a very clear language. One that very much disagrees with you.

[Ggom]

This might be slightly off topic, but I figured it might be interesting to take an analytical approach to this:

Maintaing a lower price is mainly beneficial for attracting new players. However, due to the nature of the hobby I don’t expect this to have a very strong positive impact (ie. dropping the price from $85 to $79 isn’t going to make everyone and their grandma buy a start collecting set.) Because of this, there’s little incentive to maintain the price or (crazy idea) decrease the price.

For players already engaged in the hobby, as long as GW stays within a threshold of increase, players will grumble but generally not quit the hobby, especially because of sunk cost fallacy. Really GW’s goal is to optimize the trade off between decreased purchases (which should scale slowly and operate like a step function because of how people generally view expenses, ie. $89 is easy to justify when you are used to $85) and increased profit per unit sold (which is obviously the linear component.)

The trap this leads into is that eventually you can get caught in a spiral where the game goes into decline because the rate of new blood entering the game drops below the rate of attrition but it is still possible to maintain profits by optimizing the price towards a local maximum. This is unsustainable because games like this operate on a network effect where, if the player base drops sufficiently, the whole thing collapses - so eventually the model doesn’t work.

Given that GW is a large business interested in staying in business though, we can have confidence that they keep track of metrics around long term sustainability/avoiding the local maxima traps. Certainly they must hire some real business analysts and model this more than the average armchair analyst (yours truly.)

[Saxon]

I've built about a 1500pt Nighthaunt army just from purchases on buy-sell-swap groups and ebay.

In Australia our prices are much higher (even allowing for exchange rates). A branchwyche is 15 pounds which is 28 AUD.  We pay 39 AUD or almost 21 pounds for the same thing. Another example is kurnoth hunters. They're 35 pounds in the UK and $100AUD (65 pounds). 

I think i've said it on here before but the GW cost rises push players to alternative markets and threaten the local stores which are becominng smaller and smaller. 

[Cerlin]

I have been buying most the book releases.

The model prices did not hit me since it is already so overpriced, it is fine. Inflation is real so I'd like them to stay in business.

Mostly I am a year or 2 behind in building in painting, so I am keeping up with that for now.

[Clan's Cynic]

9 hours ago, Panzer said:

And they don't. They openly admit and report regularly that they make big cash ever since their restructure. Financially GW is doing better than ever and the fact that their sales keep rising despite increasing prices speaks a very clear language. One that very much disagrees with you.

Except as the previous 'era' of GW showed, customers do have camel backs that straws can break. Even during their low point, they were turning a profit - albeit one that was decreasing every year.

A lot of those recent sales were driven by the, quite effective, campaign of 'change', however it's only been... what, three years ago since the Dark Times? In a hobby age bracket that's getting older, that's not long at all . Hell, this thread is overwhelming full of people saying it's impacted how much they're buying. Can you imagine such a thing on TGA of all places a year ago?

We've also not had financials since the price rise. They'll still turn a huge profit, no doubt, but I don't doubt there will be a slowdown.

Edited October 29, 2019 by Clan's Cynic

[AaronWilson]

It's funny how I have been aclimaized to GW prices over the time I've been playing there games. I recently bought a FEC army for £225, it was a good deal and I got aboout £400 worth of product, didn't think twice about buying it.

Then when I sat and down and thought about my self say 10 years ago (being 17) I would of worked 2 weeks to even get that money, and would really think a long time before spening that amount

[JackStreicher]

9 hours ago, Panzer said:

One that very much disagrees with you.

It actually agrees with me

 quote „GW customers have always been known to react inelastic to price increases“.

What also proves that I might be right is the time they sold Lord of the rings miniature via hasbro magazines. The ministers were cheap and the magazines constantly sold out. (Though if I remember correctly there were other issues, they went beyond the cournotscher point )

Edited October 29, 2019 by JackStreicher

[Kasper]

This might be skewed due to the armies that I play, but I also feel you field less models on the board, so even though prices increase the overall cost of an army is roughly the same.

[RuneBrush]

+++ MOD HAT +++

Nudging this back onto the topic of "GW prices and your hobby" rather than supposition on why GW is raising prices and if you're happy with it.

[XReN]

I'll probably buy the bulk of OBR units I want from second hands once a bunch of people lose interest and start selling everything in about 6 month.

The same applies to Cities of Sigmar, I'm not prepared to spend that much money buying from GW since I already have 2 vast armies I can play with whille collecting other that I'm interested in.

[zilberfrid]

8 hours ago, Ggom said:

This might be slightly off topic, but I figured it might be interesting to take an analytical approach to this:

Maintaing a lower price is mainly beneficial for attracting new players. However, due to the nature of the hobby I don’t expect this to have a very strong positive impact (ie. dropping the price from $85 to $79 isn’t going to make everyone and their grandma buy a start collecting set.) Because of this, there’s little incentive to maintain the price or (crazy idea) decrease the price.

For players already engaged in the hobby, as long as GW stays within a threshold of increase, players will grumble but generally not quit the hobby, especially because of sunk cost fallacy. Really GW’s goal is to optimize the trade off between decreased purchases (which should scale slowly and operate like a step function because of how people generally view expenses, ie. $89 is easy to justify when you are used to $85) and increased profit per unit sold (which is obviously the linear component.)

The trap this leads into is that eventually you can get caught in a spiral where the game goes into decline because the rate of new blood entering the game drops below the rate of attrition but it is still possible to maintain profits by optimizing the price towards a local maximum. This is unsustainable because games like this operate on a network effect where, if the player base drops sufficiently, the whole thing collapses - so eventually the model doesn’t work.

Given that GW is a large business interested in staying in business though, we can have confidence that they keep track of metrics around long term sustainability/avoiding the local maxima traps. Certainly they must hire some real business analysts and model this more than the average armchair analyst (yours truly.)

I thought a high barrier of entry was one of the main reasons Fantasy died? It is the reason I never started.

It is also the reason I do not think I'll get a second faction*, at least, not in AoS. It's too expensive to start it.

 

*Anytime soon that is, though I may expand Gloomspite into a Warcy warband if Cities isn't going to get one.

Edited October 29, 2019 by zilberfrid

[CeleFAZE]

Price increases have definitely impacted my spending to some degree, but the bigger factor is discontinuation uncertainty. I've been a Slaanesh daemon player for years, and have really wanted to dive into the mortal options to branch out, but after the CoS purge my buying is frozen until we know for certain what's staying.  I'm kicking myself over having picked up the S2D start collecting set, since after the whole Greenskins thing we can't even trust that anything in there is going to stick around, especially with the rumored new releases including a different start collecting set.

I just want to be able to dive in, buy some stuff and have fun, but GW has thrown a huge wrench in that with the possibility I might be wasting a significant investment by doing so.

Edited October 29, 2019 by CeleFAZE

[Moldek]

Personnally the most recent price hike has not impacted me since I already « froze » my hobby spending for the year. Also I mainly play skirmish and warcry. What’s that about the warband price going up?

I’ll say more generally that I never buy unit boxes that are over 40€ or characters over 20. I might get one after a lot of thought if I really want it but I won’t ever impulse buy. Whereas a cheap box of chaos hounds or a 12€ lord of plagues are the type of stuff I’ll have trouble resisting. 

It’s not too bad for my hobby but I do miss a bit of the thrill of going into the store and picking a cool model or 2. I suspect I might base a lot of my future projects around underworlds warbands since that’s kind of a price sweetspot for me...

[Charleston]

The recent rises made me reconcider where I buy. It switched from my local gw and lgs to 100% online for models and books. Meanwhile I also started playing more with friends and less in the gw (and I´ve never played in the lgs). The local gw had a switch in management and somehow, althrough the guy is really cool, the community shifted away.

I also started to "freeze" some army projects and sold some armies and a part of my backlog. My armies are big enough to have variation in list building. Starting a new army is stricktly tied to getting rid of an old one.

[Spears]

Without being facetious what price rises? Is this comparing the cost of new kits to old or was there a global price rise of models. 

[zilberfrid]

37 minutes ago, Spears said:

Without being facetious what price rises? Is this comparing the cost of new kits to old or was there a global price rise of models. 

Well, the answer is "Yes".

A lot of models went up in price in june or july, and new boxes are more expensive than older ones. Also, battleboxes/start collecting seem not as good a deal as they did before, or plainly more expensive.

[Charleston]

34 minutes ago, Spears said:

Without being facetious what price rises? Is this comparing the cost of new kits to old or was there a global price rise of models. 

Sorry, should have specified this a bit. Hard prices rises may not have occured directly. I´ve meant the rise on the SC!-Boxes and the general high price for newer kits. The current SM Release f.e. with 40€ for 3 Snipers just looks horrifying to me. For myself it feels like the hobby is getting more expensive.

[Zanzou]

1 hour ago, Charleston said:

Hard prices rises may not have occured directly.

They did hard price rises across a very wide range of the older models too. It was bad timing for the culling.

[Icegoat]

I will never buy from them again. They are going to squat all of the cities of sigmar within the next few years for sure. They have lost any trust I had in them. Without a grounded human army AOS is not worth the money too me. Least for now I have one of the cheaper army's. As its all stuff I already had. 

[Rodiger]

I do wonder how this will affect teenagers. I think teenagers are the lifeblood of this hobby, anecdotally I think most of us start as teenagers, there was a poll on here that seemed to back that up too. Warhammer isn’t a cool thing to do, it is easier as a teenager to get into as a lot of us aren’t that cool then anyway, you can meet other likeminded people, form social groups.

Anyway the typical pattern from what I can tell seems to be, start as a teenager, have a break over uni/first employment or whatever, then get into the hobby again in your late 20’s when you have more cash. The point being is that when we are older we will spend more because we can, but if we didn’t start as teenagers, many of us wouldn’t take it up when we are older.

GW are competing with other things like computer games and other war/boardgames, with the current prices of models and the extra costs of paints, tools, as well as scenery and rule books, you are already approaching the cost of a games console. Games consoles are more cool, there are lot’s of people all over the world to play with at the push of a button, buying a game is now the same or cheaper than buying a unit for your army, you don’t have to do anything, like you don’t have to build and paint a computer game to use it.

So, if you are a teenager, you are completely dependant on parents for this hobby, you mainly always were, but I can see it being a hard sell to parents who did/do not play Warhammer themselves. Not even a part time job is going to really be enough anymore. If the prices normalise at a point where it stops teenagers taking up the hobby, then it’s the start of a slow death.

Sorry if that is a bit hyperbole, but thinking back to when I was a teenager, it was expensive then, and not coming from the richest of families it was hard enough for my dad to really get me anything, I was limited to birthdays and Christmas. I think if they were the current prices (inflation adjusted), he may have just said, sorry son, no. 

Edited October 29, 2019 by Rodiger

[Panzer]

28 minutes ago, Rodiger said:

I do wonder how this will affect teenagers. I think teenagers are the lifeblood of this hobby, anecdotally I think most of us start as teenagers, there was a poll on here that seemed to back that up too. Warhammer isn’t a cool thing to do, it is easier as a teenager to get into as a lot of us aren’t that cool then anyway, you can meet other likeminded people, form social groups. Anyway the typical pattern from what I can tell seems to be, start as a teenager, have a break over uni/first employment or whatever, then get into the hobby again in your late 20’s when you have more cash. The point being is that when we are older we will spend more because we can, but if we didn’t start as teenagers, many of us wouldn’t take it up when we are older. GW are competing with other things like computer games and other war/boardgames, with the current prices of models and the extra costs of paints, tools, as well as scenery and rule books, you are already approaching the cost of a games console. Games consoles are more cool, there are lot’s of people all over the world to play with at the push of a button, buying a game is now the same or cheaper than buying a unit for your army, you don’t have to do anything, like you don’t have to build and paint a computer game to use it. So, if you are a teenager, you are completely dependant on parents for this hobby, you mainly always were, but I can see it being a hard sell to parents who did/do not play Warhammer themselves. Not even a part time job is going to really be enough anymore. If the prices normalise at a point where it stops teenagers taking up the hobby, then it’s the start of a slow death. Sorry if that is a bit hyperbole, but thinking back to when I was a teenager, it was expensive then, and not coming from the richest of families it was hard enough for my dad to really get me anything, I was limited to birthdays and Christmas. I think if they were the current prices (inflation adjusted), he may have just said, sorry son, no. 

Teenagers have a very different value for money than what we used to have back then. Not all of them but the average for sure. Technology is a fix part of their life and technology is expensive. While getting a Playstation1 or a Gameboy or whatever was a big thing for us in the past you barely get two games for the newest console for the same kind of money today, not to mention the newest console itself. Or a smartphone. Or friggin cloths.

So while we see the increased price for a box of Warhammer models and know that it's way more expensive than it used to be ... teenagers probably don't think much more about it than what we were thinking about the boxes when we were teenagers.

 

P.S. please hit enter every once in a while. A wall of text is very tedious to read.