Pigs have flown, the second coming is on the horizon and somewhere someone has divided by zero. Yes, this is apparently genuine,yesterday evening prices for certain models on Games Workshop's website dropped by a considerable amount. Even more surprising is that this seems to have happened for not only prices outside of Europe, but also those in the United Kingdom. The price drop occurred largely with HQ choices, something which the current edition has been pushing for greater and greater importance in army lists in the sixth edition, but also a number of other products.
While it varies considerably from model to model, price drops seem to be considerable with the likes of Belial dropping by 26% in Canada. Going from $30 to $22 overnight, with similar results in the UK and other countries. Others such as the Eldar Dire Avengers sets have also been noted to have dropped in price, something especially interesting given the fan reaction to changes with that specific boxed set of late.
To make this clear for those who do not know: Games Workshop is best known among its customers for relentless price hikes and high costs. Over the last five years multiple sets such as the Land Raider have seen an additional 50% price increase, while others such as starter sets have doubled in that time.
Further leaps have been seen with other models such as the Dark Elf Executioners which increased from £10-13.00 to above £20.00 following a shift from lead models to resin versions. A move which was met with severely negative PR among a large number of fans as Games Workshop attempted to justify the change with lower production costs. This isn't mentioning the disaster which was the first waves of resin (finecast) models. These were warped and deformed thanks to Games Workshop allegedly still using the lead molds as a cost cutting measure, and isn't entirely uncommon now.Just to make this clear: This sort of thing is completely unheard of. Games Workshop's sales are non-existent, its bundles seem to barely lower any costs and discounts of any kind are something joked about within the community rather than something to be occasionally seen. As such this is a major change, one which could bode good or ill for the future. Either a sign of the company opting to become more customer friendly, or potential financial trouble. As of yet no statements have been made and there is not enough recent financial information to truly speculate upon the reasons for this. Admittedly however it's unfortunately more likely the latter than the former.
More on this as information becomes available.
Update 04/08/2013 - Prices have apparently returned to normal in Canada for units such as the aforementioned Belial, as have a number of those in the UK. That did not last long. Quite why they bothered with such a drop without notification only to correct it less than a week later is a matter of confusion at best.
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Image Source: http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/301266-Finecast.html
I think you switched it to US prices. belial is still $30
ReplyDeleteIt's unfortunately likely they moved the prices back up. A few of the sets which I noted had dropped in price rose back up to their normal level within a day or two for the UK, I wasn't able to confirm if this was the case for other countries.
DeleteMost of my friends are interested in starting up 40k, but back off once they see the prices. In Canada, some of my Blood Angels troops (nonHQ)work out to $9 per model, with some even higher! That is just ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteLowering the prices is a great move, but more needs to be done. Dire Avengers went from 10 models a box to 5 models, for nearly the same price! We will have to see how the prices really match up... sure they might lower some, but might reduce the numbers in boxes too. Never know with GW, hopefully they realise by lowering the prices, more of us will want to build bigger armies and more than 1 army!
After twenty years of love hate I finally boxed up all my GW items and said goodbye. I have grown tired of the wasted opportunities and abuse from this company. The fluff will always have a special place in my heart but GW's greed is too much.
ReplyDeleteI'm a returning customer from 2003 (when I played Necrons) and was initially very interested in buying an Imperial Guard army, but upon seeing the price hikes over the last few years, I've quickly changed my mind. The prices for these models is now criminally insane. How can they be charging these outrageous prices when their target market is supposedly younger kids? I'm an adult with two jobs and I can't even afford to enter into this hobby.
ReplyDeleteIt is only getting worse unfortunately. Along with rulebook prices increasing 50% with every new addition, there is seemingly no quality control and then you have things like this which they are trying to sell to people:
Deletehttp://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?prodId=prod2160196a
Unfortunately they're clever enough to know that a lot of the kids collecting are manic enough about the hobby that they will pay whatever the price is, even if one box of figures is 2 months pocket money. But it's bad business strategy in the long run , if they consider how many more buyers they'd have if it were affordable.
Delete420 bucks for 3 models (knights errant)? No thanks...can't wait till they bankrupt and are divvied up by companies with a better sense of the price-to-sales curve.
ReplyDeleteI'm returning to the hobby collecting wolves after a15 year absence, wasn't surprised to see the prices were immorally high. I've been buying from discount stores and getting used models from ebay, paint stripping and refurbishing them. Its hard work (and its questionable whether it's worth it) but out of principle, I won't buy a single model from GW stores until those prices drop by a good 20 or 25%. I've read claims that GW only earn a profit of 10% on each box sold, but that's clearly BS, because independant retailers commonly sell GW products at 15% discounts...and still make a profit on that. On the upside, a lot of companies are forging (only slightly inferior) knock-offs of space marines eg.Scibor miniatures, and that's a good thing, because a bit of healthy competition is one thing which might actually force GW to charge semi-reasonable prices...
ReplyDelete