While the urban populations of China (you have to ignore than 800-900 million rural farmers and villagers as they don’t have access to international markets or have the funds to invest in gaming) do represent a rather large market, ~ 300 million peoples, or roughly a tad bit larger than the US, selling miniatures games there represents something of a problem.

First, the average income there is akin to Y750 to Y1000, that is only roughly equal to $90US to $125. While housing, food, etc may be relatively cheaper and the economy is definitely growing at a good pace, it would be a very small portion of the overall populace that could afford much gaming. And as gaming goes, GW represents some of the most expensive to get into and collect.

Further, intellectual property rights protections of small, non Chinese companies is next to nil at present. So if GW did invest a lot of money to build an interest in their figs and games among the more affluent populace (the ones that could afford GW), a local chinese company would just duplicate the molds and sell cheaper local knock offs. GW would have very little legal recourse.

I do think that China represents an absolutely HUGE potential gaming market and its a market game manufacturers will ultimately have to open up. The Guild of Blades has a few freelancers in China presently working on translations of some of our board games and other gaming products with plans to open a small chain of game stores in a single city in China by 2010 and will expand from there. But….the only way this works is if we produce China language specific products that have much cheaper packaging and production quality standards in order to bring the price down to a level that the local populace can actually afford what we are selling. While we’ll still sell some “premium” editions (ala, regular editions) there, we expect those sales to be limited. In China, with cities of extreme population density and low per capita income, profit generally must come in doing business volume.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com

I do believe the non-french releases for Confrontation are an extra buck for Rackham and not something that is part of a steady growing plan… otherwise they’ll probably would have hired by now someone to do C3 english translations right, prevented the german crash and so on. My guess AT-43 is the first try to do something really global, and I don’t know how it will do, due to my own personal feelings about the game, since I’m not on the target group for it.

I do hope Privateer stays independent, I still recall TSR days and were much better than now, but I guess it’s my old age. GW should buy itself again, and I really hope, as a fan, they return producing a new smaller scale game every few years, producing some spikes on GW sales.

FLGS are doomed, even down here where you need an international credit card, my local game store is charging for use of the tables… the dumbest tactic of all, specially if the other store, that mainly carries tank kits and radiocontrolled cars has no gaming space but is cheaper. But no one listens to me and I’ve been working in a store since ‘97.

I believe Mongoose will not be able to become truly massive, something is missing and I don’t know if it’s the marketing, the minis or what, but I strongly doubt they will strike gold. Hopefully they will not fumble it badly, or the RPGs will provide enough financial backup, since, at least, they are trying to do something different, and I hope they will keep around.

A few years ago a friend and I were talking about what game introduce and support in here, he wanted Confrontation and my preferences were on the Warmachine side. Since he was the one with the money he introduced Confrontation and now we have a bunch of old gamers that tried the system and about two new gamers that play only Confrontation. Rackham charges you for everything, even promotional material, and eventually you will get what you need for your warband and stop buying, returning with the eventual release for your warband.

GW profit continues to slide. Kids and teenagers are going into video games. They don’t want to spend so much time in painting. Some GW retailer stors will close down.

Privateer Press will continue to do well with their warmachine and hordes. I do not realize that the company is starting a CCG. That will be a hugh mistake.

The market for pre-painted minis is potentially hugh. Any veteran Mechwarrior and Mage Knight players will tell you that they have spent hundred of dollars and some over a thousand on these figures. This does not include those for DDM, Star War and A&A. Any gaming companies who do not acknowlege this market are simply ignorant. While Wizkids is going downhill, Rackham will enjoy their success with AT-43. I won’t be surprised if WK has only heroclix left by the end of this year.

Regarding Wotc, Magic gathering and DDM will continue to be strong. A&A is sliding down. It is a matter of time before it is terminated. The Star War battleship is looking more like a one time production only. The company has put out a lot of products but I don’t think that it is making any headway.

Mongoose Publishing is wise to start a pre-painted miniature line but their administrative decision is sub-par. Besides tje painting quality, a system based on a modern/near future warfare has so many potential problems that they are simply trying to wear a hat too big for themselves. I am looking foward to SST:EVO instead. I hope that MGP will eventually do well.

Unles there is gaming area available, the FLGS will not survive. Even if an area is present, they will still struggle very hard with internet pricing.

Apparently, Europe isn’t worth considering. Very American mindset. :p

PP’s going along fine, so starting a CCG would be a major mistake. CCG market’s already flooded and a great number of wargamers (especially in my area) despise CCGs. I would like to see them bring more factions into the fold of their existing games though.

And most local gaming stores do good sales in boardgames (especially with non-gamers or casual wargamers or the younger crowd who can’t afford $300+ for a new army).

Also, if you’ve kept track of Ryan Dancey’s predictions over the past years, you’d see that he always predicts more doom and gloom than actually occurs. According to him, gaming stores shouldn’t even exist by now.

GW will price rise in april, this will have one of two effects:

a) GW continue, less sales are ignored due to no dropped profits

b) GW profits drop sharp, hasbro buy them out cheap, what hasbro do with them (im thinking prepaints) is anyones guess (btw: i say hasbro due to the fact that a domination of the industry is something they could do, WotC and GW? if they salvage GW theyd be rakeing it in)

mongoose have had an intresting start to 2007, after the frankly disasterous release of battlefield: evolution, theyve got to work hard to keep thier place, SST was set to be the big thing in 2005, but they diddnt push it enough, the rerelease in april should bring some life back, and could well turn around thier luck, due to the emphasis on movie designs this time round, something which they should have pushed first off, prepainted figures also mean they can push into the mainstream.

rackham? i never know with them, AT-43 is theyre big thing this year, i dont see it getting quite as reknowned as confrontation, but should make a good first push into the sci fi games market, i dont think the pre painted part of the game will afect it either way

im expecting something big from privateer this year, most likely a new format game announced at gen con, should be intresting, im expecting announcment of a ccg from them this year as well.

corvus bell will be the success of the year, theyre going to look PP look slow into thier rise to prominance if they play thier cards right

Not to mention I’d be very surprised to see GW revert to a private company (how could they afford to?) and who’d be interested in purchasing them really at this point?

trying to decide whether I could expand sales in the current core markets by bringing out another setting

GW does own Warhammer Historical which not only sells a lot of Warhammer Ancient Battles books but also sells the Legends of the Old West books based on the LotR ruleset.

My understanding is that they do this because they don’t want to sell miniatures in those other markets. I don’t think that enough of their core market is interested in the periods and the people that are won’t pay GWs prices for the minis. So they have a fairly successful niche business providing rules and supplements for two other periods.

I think GWs best bet is to privatise itself and then use the lack of shareholder pressure to try to rebuild as a company that was closer to their original goals. Not sure if the current management team is interested in that though.

Local gaming shops do face extinction, however, if they continue to try and plod along and murky small shops with no gaming areas.

Those shops are indeed in trouble but I know of places that offer gaming areas that are still losing sales to online stores. Mind you, some of the most successful store I know of in the US and Canada have huge gaming areas.

I do think it’s likely that GW could well go private though. Assuming they can’t grow their miniatures revenue, the value is the IPR - a fair number of toy and children’s properties have been bought up by banks and investment funds for that purpose. But then it’s a bit mysterious that they’re not looking to expand the IPR significantly (as opposed to increase miniatures prices and bring down miniature mass production costs) through establishment of new lines, rather than focusing everything into 40k, WHFB and LotR. Maybe they think they couldn’t do it quickly enough.

If I were in their position I’d be (in ascending order of difficulty and descending order of obviousness):

- trying to work out how to sell stuff (as opposed to make stuff) in China and India, and more stuff in contintental Europe, including the new EU states

- thinking about mechanisms to license other corners of the IPR - eg BFG, Necromunda

- maybe thinking about whether I could exploit the Warhammer Historicals line by buying another figure manufacturer (Foundry? GB?) for their figures library (someone told me this is difficult with Foundry due to the way rights are balanced between them and the sculptors). Another possible target would be Battlefront (which might actually make an impact in the UK market, where junior and high schools have their own warhammer clubs, and the school curriculum is obsessed with WWII, but that in turn depends on whether that market is saturated, in which case GW would just be cannibalising its own sales).

But ultimately the difficulty of any of this is that the core UK market is very much constrained by how much stock you can put on the shelves of the (not very big) GW stores.

- trying to decide whether I could expand sales in the current core markets by bringing out another setting (Warhammer Bronze Age? Warhammer Modern?). Or maybe a new setting tied to the above (Warhammer Cathay?).

Anyway, all the above assumes they behave rationally, and that’s not a given.

On the comments on White Wolf, I guess there must be plans to make a WoD MMOG given the acquisition (which I’d not noticed) but those things take a lot of time and money to do properly. I don’t know how the new company is for cash - maybe acquiring a big range of IPR on the cheap helps it for fundraising or to increase value for acquisition by someone else.

He virtually ignored the European market and a number of expanding gaming companies.

Local gaming shops do face extinction, however, if they continue to try and plod along and murky small shops with no gaming areas. Those that do well (in the UK) are gaming focused such as Fan Boy Three, ID Gaming, Wargames Emporium and Wargames Workshop.

He predicts some failures, but doesn’t offer solutions. Also, why is Europe (and Asia) just something on the periphery in his blog post?

Anyway, best he continue his Apple worship, iPod collecting and predictions of doom.

That said, I don’t know that either of those games is aimed at wargamers. The rules and models all look as if they were aimed at a 10-13 market and the scale of the War at Sea ships makes sense only if you view them as being aimed more as toys that gaming miniatures.

Which is odd since, as you said, there were people salivating at the idea of buying Axis and Allies boosters to build FoW armies.

I think that part of the perceived problem from out perspective is that we, as a market, aren’t as large as the number of people that might buy the game online or at stores like Toys R’ Us