Sunday 23 November 2014

Saddened and surprised in equal measure by games companies!

Time for a moan and a slap on the back!



I'm sure every one has seen that all the new books by GW are selling out so quickly you can't even take the time to contemplate the purchase or you could miss out. I've been hugely disappointed by this as once I decided to buy a copy of Shield of Baal: Leviathan it had sold out at all the stores I could get to, leaving me the option of lining up to pay full price at a GW store with no guarantee they would even have a copy and no way to reserve one. So I didn't bother. Now there is no way to get a copy of the printed book (I really dislike the interactive books as the pages are too small and jumping between pages is a bit clunky) so I'm feeling frustrated by GW. Then again model wise all the unit rules are free on the Black Library so other than the Cities of Death/Fighter expansion and weird data slates/formations why do I need the book? Am I just buying into those Jedi-mind tricks of GW that by making it hard to get I feel a pressure to make a snap decision to by a product that I may just borrow from a friend if it was commonly available?

And what is up with releasing soft back editions? Are they a smaller like the mini rule book? They are only £5 cheaper so assuming this isn't cynical money grab on a popular product by increasing profit through a lower quality/cost product why the switch?
For this reason I'm going to give GW 1.5/5 Daves for this week - frustrating your customers will generate internet traffic but won't make you many friends.

On the other hand I found this today:
http://uk.battlefoam.com/pages/Trade-Bags.html
I'm beginning to wonder if I might be able to trade up some of the old cases in the loft for a few more foams!
I've no doubt that it won't to an amazing return on the original cost but it's nice to see a company offering a solution to it's customers problems that don't cost them extra money! Plus I really like their new website design!
Battle Foam get 4/5 Daves this week for restoring my faith in premium brand gaming companies!

1 comment:

  1. with regards to the end times books, i genuinely believe that originally, they didnt anticipate it doing all that well.
    And with the release dates being quite close, certainly for glotkin at least, i dont imagine they couldve upped the order easily once nagash had sold out.
    With the new one however, im pretty sure they had enough time to up the numbers and yet its still sold out in no time.
    Maybe we're wrong and they did up the numbers but more people bought it ASAP to avoid missing out? could be. but maybe not...
    my hunch is once they realised it was a big hit they twigged it would make more sense to re-release them in softbacks which im guessing have a considerably cheaper production cost, and due to intense demand they wouldnt have to shave too much off the £50 price tag.
    i think theres even less excuse for these other books, though. its starting to feel like another artificial sales stimulus gimmick which they seem to be indulging in a lot of of late. These things may well look good when the numbers come in due to temporary boosts, but the numbers dont show how many folks get turned off by that sort of stuff and lose interest.

    ho hum.

    that battlefoam trade in seems like a tip top idea though. kudos to them.

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