FFG Asmodee Discussion

Ken B. wrote:

Not Sure wrote: And much like Sax, if I have to drive to a game store, pry the employee away from their game just to ring me up, and pay MSRP at the end, it's not going to happen.

The only one that stings is Star Wars: Rebellion. I've been waiting for a game like this for quite some time. I don't think it's any small coincidence that it will likely be their first major release *AFTER* all their new bullshit policies go into effect.

I'm in this same boat. If it winds up coming in at around 80% of MSRP, I'll still probably jump in, because this is the kind of game I really like and want to see more of. At MSRP, it'll be a trickier sell.

The high MSRP of Armada is probably 60% of why I stayed away. The other 40% was that it was an expandable minis game. For something that's way more up my alley than X-Wing is, I might have gotten in if the overall price was lower. At a $100 buy it (at MSRP), plus more purchases down the line, it was too much. Even at $50 on steep discount, I couldn't justify it, because the price of adding enough ships to make it a more complete game was still too high.

SuperflyTNT wrote: I think that they are grossly misunderstanding the market, myself. I get the business reasons they're doing it for, but someone up the food chain believes that their products command a premium price (Kickstarter is the culprit here, I'd be hard-pressed not to believe) but the market has shown that conclusion is wrong.

Nobody bought Armada, hardly, because it's very expensive. The market has spoken. When it was discounted, it flew off the shelves, sort of. This tells me that the real market value of the product is 40% off of MSRP, meaning MSRP is set too high.

I'm betting that their estimation was "Star Wars! With Star Destroyers!" and they set the price based on actual costs (material, development, production, license, etc.) and their assumption of its inherent popularity like they do with most SW stuff. But then it gets tricky. Did it not sell because it was actually priced too high or because people knew that they could get it at a steep discount online? Asmodee's argument would be that the "actual" value of the game was distorted by practices at the retail end. If those discounters didn't exist, they might have been able to get $100 for it and the value would have been closer to their estimate. I think that's the perspective that's leading to this change.

I've seen a couple people suggest that they're following the path laid down by GW, but there's a difference here. At the start of the century, GW decided they were going to compete with MTG as an actual widespread, money-burning hobby and that their games were going to move past the "niche" label, especially since they had the LotR license. So they put serious money into retail outlets and a distribution chain in the US and Asia. Part of that was their (extremely late) acknowledgment of online sellers as an element of that distribution chain. Needless to say, the widespread acceptance of 40K/WHFB/LotR didn't occur for a variety of reasons and GW also didn't realize the windfall they were hoping for, at least in part because people largely bought from the discount sellers because GW's games are really expensive. GW retracted, closing most of the retail stores, and confined all of their online sales to their own site or dealers who agreed to not discount. 28mm models remained as a "niche" level pastime for collectors, which is the vision that some in the company have always had for the game, anyway ("We're a model company that just happens to have some game rules."; the latest version of WHFB is a pristine example of just that attitude.)

Asmodee, in fact, has been following a similar path, as they've seriously invested in two of the biggest producers of higher-end boardgames in the American market and are now attempting to control prices in the same way that GW did. But they've invested in producers with a varied product line, not distributors of their own product, so they're more shielded from market reaction than GW was. The question is whether their perception of value of product and the hobby overall is accurate or whether they'll suffer the same fate as GW did because it's simply too expensive to be a truly widespread, growing business at the level of their perception.

I don't get all of this Armada didn't sell talk. For sure it's not as popular as X-Wing, but I recall talk at Gen Con that it was said in a press release or at the FFG in flight report that Armada outsold X-Wing when comparing their launch periods (Armadas first 6 months of sales were greater than X-Wings first 6 months).

But... we're past 6 months, which is why the deep price cuts prompted people to wonder just how quickly these units have been moving past the initial honeymoon period.

Frohike wrote: But... we're past 6 months, which is why the deep price cuts prompted people to wonder just how quickly these units have been moving past the initial honeymoon period.

That's true, but the Force Awakens X-Wing set has been deeply discounted at times (daily deal, winter sale) and I don't see any talk of X-Wing all of the sudden floundering.

Pretty much everything goes on sale/deep discount at some point. CMON games, FFG games, Z-Man, etc.

Even Dead of Winter was a daily deal at one point. I don't think we can use end of the year sales or daily deals as an indicator. Star Wars Armada is at full price right now at MM (regular discount). It's slightly cheaper at CSI. They're clearly not dumping the product completely, just issuing spot sales. It makes sense for the core in particular to lure people into the expansion train.

They may have just printed too much. Deep discount doesn't necessarily mean it didn't sell well.

All distribution channel and retail market versus online discount sales mumbo jumbo aside, I honestly don't see why this is such a huge deal for people like us. FFG has been putting out well received quality titles for years. They routinely put out quality products based on the hottest licenses available. The same people that are up in arms about this routinely dump WAY more cash into kickstarter projects sight unseen with wildly mixed results. At least with FFG or ANA or DOW or whatever you know you're getting a fully baked quality product. Nobody had a problem paying $120 for the last version of Space Hulk, I don't see why these big box Star Wars titles should be any different.

www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/49101?com...16631#comment6016631

Looks like CSI took the price on Star Wars Rebellion from 35% off to 25% off. Whether this is an actual reaction to new pricing from Asmodee or if they are just testing the waters, remains to be seen. Of course, some are already throwing their arms up and saying "fuck that, I'm out". We'll see how long their resolve lasts. Personally, if the component load is similar to Forbidden Stars, I think $75 is still pretty reasonable.

I haven't checked to see if the ragers have started dinging all the popular FFG titles with "1" ratings yet. That can't be far off I am sure.

I'm not totally opposed to an inherent price floor for completely selfish reasons. It's kind of annoying when I do a bunch of research on a game that I know nobody I game with will buy and I make the decision to buy it, then two weeks later it's half price as part of a daily deal somewhere. I also sell quite a few games and it seems the resale of anything that's currently in print is absolute shit because somebody somewhere deep-discounted it once. Lastly, if I know a game is going to be generally the same price anywhere I go online then I can save myself some hassle and get it from Amazon, shipped free, and here in two days.

If I'm reading all this correctly CSI and Miniature Market and their ilk are getting screwed by this far more than your average consumer.

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Msample wrote: Personally, if the component load is similar to Forbidden Stars, I think $75 is still pretty reasonable.

I haven't checked to see if the ragers have started dinging all the popular FFG titles with "1" ratings yet.

That's what I'm talking about. A few months back people where throwing $170 for the entry level package of a game un-inspiringly titled Sword and Sorcery. Sword and Sorcery! It doesn't get less original than that. Makes Terrinoth look like genius world building. And what about Cthulhu Wars for chrissakes? Or Shadows of Brimstone? But $100 for Star Wars Rebellion is just too much to fork over? Actual Star Wars mind you, not some generic horseshit, and from a tried and true company no less. I just don't get it...

Tried and true, huh? I was thinking more, "they can be great but they also could fuck up a free lunch (TM/Sauer)" personally.

So I thought about this some more (and read some LGS blogs), and I think Asmodee is probably making the right choices. For them. The LGS guys are just in the right place at the right time.

Like I said above, FFG and I have been growing apart in terms of my interest in what they publish.

They're definitely all-in on collectible game lines these days, and honestly that stuff thrives on organized play. For that to work well, having a solid physical retailer network with playspace is critical. No game store out there can possibly be happy hosting X-Wing nights where the only thing they sell is Mountain Dew and Doritos, because everyone bought all the ships online at 40% off.

So they're willing to make the one-box boardgamers upset because we're not the gravy train anyway. They're even willing to lose some volume on the online sellers, with the hope of making it back in local stores. I'm not going to play along, only because I don't care about that product or service. Now the funny part to me is when someone takes this personally, like I see a lot of on BGG. It's a business proposition and always has been. They produce a game, I measure my interest against the going rate. My relationship there hasn't changed at all. They adjust their terms, I adjust my interest level.

Someone else who really loves to play X-Wing tournaments is probably pretty stoked about having a steady stream of players. Maybe even enough to cover the difference in spending money. If there are more of that player than of me (very likely), then ANA/FFG are doing the right thing.

And if not, I'm still in the market for interesting boardgames at a reasonable price point. I'll be around.

My only question is if that were true, that LCG and Cxx games are their gravy train, why fuck with making new games at all? Why not be more like Wizkids?

I suspect that board games are just as large a part of their overall business as the LCG stuff, or why do it? Why not spend every development penny making Terrinoth Tactics or something now that they have experience making preprinted models? Why not make a sea of card games that have a subscription model?

I think "vertically integrated" is a key goal. It's the only explanation I can see for it. Making Descent and Runebound and Dungeonquest models that work with each other is the future for them

Good points. My answer to that would be "diversity of their portfolio".

FFG have a lot of investment in standalone boardgames, and a lot of history there. But looking at their releases over the last few years, most of them have been Collectible or at least heavily expandable (even by FFG standards!)

I don't think that shift is an accident. I think they're putting more time and resources into that because they're seeing better returns, and scaling down efforts on one-box games. I doubt one-box (or single-digit SKUs in a line) will ever totally disappear, but I don't see it growing. Do you?

As for the sea of card games, they have nine LCGs listed on their site. That's somewhere around medium lake, I think.

If "Terrinoth Tactics" somehow turned out to be their Munchkin or Magic, I think they would go that way. At the moment, it seems their product lines are pretty well understood, except that single-box board games keep getting blown out in the holiday sales each year. (sometimes year after year)