Games Workshop RUMORS: Corporate Expansion & Reorganization
There’s talk out there of GW’s plans for remaking themselves in the coming year. Take a look.
We’re all been seeing GW taking off with more growth, revenue and profit year after year. Here’s the latest set of rumors of their plans for 2020 to handle their ever growing range of games:
via rumormongers over at Faeit
“Apparently GWHQ is buying and creating more design studio space, manufacturing space and machines and more warehouse/logistics space.
The reason for this is they’re changing the whole process from design to manufacture to shipping.
The design studio is apparently being split into 40K/HH, Warhammer Fantasy/AoS and Specialist Games/merchandising/media (films, cartoons, games etc).
HH is set to become a staple gaming system alongside Warhammer Fantasy. So we will have ‘historical 30K’ (Great Crusade, Heresy era and The Scouring) alongside the ever changing narrative of the ‘current’ 40K storyline. HH will still be based on modified 7th Ed rules where as 40K will be based on the new 8th and onwards rules.
The same will happen with Warhammer Fantasy and AoS. Warhammer Fantasy will be the old style rules, slightly modified, just like current HH. With AoS being the ongoing narrative we’ve seen so far.
AdvertisementIt will be like a historical-current affairs type of deal. One to cater to the old guard and one to the new guard. If that makes sense. We’ll be able to play ‘historical’ (HH/WFB) and ‘current-future’ (40K/AoS).
Specialist Games will cover Titanicus, Inquisitor28, Necromunda, BloodBowl, GorkaMorka, BFG, Aeronautica, Warhammer Quest etc.
They will also cover the new media fronts. Such as the new films, TV series, kids cartoons, comics and computer games etc.
And there will apparently be extended merchandising.”
Thoughts
We’ve seen GW’s ever expanding product line for the past couple of years and with the extra revenue the company is bringing in, reorganization is natural. To me this looks like Nottingham is studying the entire industry intently with a goal of having a GW-IP product offering for every sub-genre, from grand tabletop miniature games, to skirmish, to air-combat, to giant robo, to deck builders, to boardgames, to RPGs and video games (licensed) split across both sci-fi and fantasy categories.
The new one in here is the inclusion of both 30K and WFB as “historical games” to appeal to the old guard, and secondarily to prevent customer leakage to competing offerings in the industry. Overall this looks like GW expanding their footprint to be a one stop shop for both new and old customers – with something for every popular product category in the industry.
The industry is growing, competition is fierce, potent licenses are out in the market, and GW appears to be planning on fighting for every customer. The inclusion of new media/merchandising to me looks like an extended marketing play to being to push GW’s IP into the main stream, which if successful will drive ever more customers to their products.
~What do you think?
