Outside of hobbyists looking to
start at least one of the presented armies, the kind of people that GW will be making most of their money off of in these instances are usually those who are either
- Desperate for even a fraction of the newer models for their current collection;
- Stricken with a case of Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny; or
- WAAC players chasing meta trends.
I mean, that'll always be the case, even if GW were saints. These are simply the people that spend the most money, period.
As we both pointed out, GW likes to manufacture scarcity to drive up sales with jacked-up pricing (not to the extent of an oil or diamond mining company, mind you), which is of little surprise given the propensities of their accountants and other execs on their board of directors of wanting to make themselves look good in front of investors (even at the expense of their own employees and customers). Like Khorne's obsession with blood, they really care not from whom the money flows save for that it flows at all, and suffice to say that the easiest and most abundant source of coin for them are those who are easily manipulated into parting ways with it, usually either out of desperation or mental illness.
To be honest I never understood the artificial scarcity. It's their game, they don't really need to fear any competition anyway since those don't produce the same stuff. And outside of special limited-timed runs, like say an anniversary model or something it doesn't make much sense. Like something like cursed city. Given what I've seen online they would've sold significantly more boxes if they just, you know, offered more boxes for sale. It's a mystery why they bother with artificial scarcity for those.
Same with the Eldricht omens and such. It mostly just seems a fairly stupid attempt to appear as a high-class popular product, despite it just being mass-produced plastic toy soldiers and there being more than enough demand to warrant producing more boxes. So the artificial scarcity just seems pointless.
The price-hikes are kinda stupid, but imho, not inherently predatory. At least, not when it concerns a luxury good like toy soldiers (it's not like say landlords increasing continuously increasing rent knowing their tenants have no real choice but to accept it...). GW can ask whatever they want. If they push it too far, people will simply go elsewhere, buy less models, or just quit entirely. They'll burn goodwill of course, but ultimatly frequent price-increases are not inherently predatory (or well... not more predatory than late-stage capitalism inherently is, so you know still pretty predatory
.)
Warhammer Seasons and the adoption of many subscription models into their sterling portfolio comes to mind. Save for the fact that GW produces tangible assets that are capable of existing long after the company is dead, you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that they're not trying to make the tabletop version of "video games as a service".
O yeah, the XAAS business model needs to go die in a fire already.
As for GW's attempts at XAAS, the seasons are definitly questionable. Though I doubt it'll get off the ground to the same extend videogames (and some other industries) managed. The "serious" scene for tabletop wargames isn't big enough to sustain a XAAS model. If GW starts demanding you pay every year for a small update most people will just stick with whatever edition they happen to have the rulebooks for and ignore the GHB most years.
It's strange because since Warhammer Fantasy's death, 40K was always known to be GW's flagship game, but it makes you wonder if they've forgotten that sometimes the way they treat 40K fans and the way they're currently working with the setting. I certainly think 40K is fast becoming as stagnant as Warhammer Fantasy was, if not more so due to the army list bloat in most factions, certainly it will so long as GW refuse to add any more properly new factions to it. AoS by contrast has fared a lot better in that department as we have seen, and it has allowed the game to grow and develop its fanbase further and further. Say what you like about new factions, but they are what keeps a game evolving and grabbing more players as more people's aesthetic, lore and model-based preferences are satisfied. Fantasy didn't do this for two whole editions and GW killed it because it 'wasn't selling' (not knowing the reason why it didn't sell), and 40K has also done this now and may well head the same way if GW aren't careful.
Meh, AoS risks becoming a confusing mess that's impossible to keep up with at this rate. 2-3 new factions per year is a bit much.
Also, since they seem to forget to update certain factions, there is still plenty of stagnation. It's that there are some spin-off games like underworlds which allows them to occasionally introduce some new sculpts for everyone. But most factions have not had any major releases in a while. Hell, we have had what, 2 releases in entirety of AoS? Kroak, which turned out to be a fairly underwhelming unit even if it's a beautifull sculpt and a underworlds warband. That's not exactly a whole lot of updates.
So I wouldn't say it's a better long-term strategy.
