Re: [Re: [HOE] Re: Product Updates ( I feel a rant coming on...)]

[Ogy Joe <OgyJoe@netscape.net>]

Excellent point, but if they don't get off their @$$es and print some stuff
soon, they are going to fail miserably when they finally do.

Just look at what happened when Alderac bought Doomtown after it was dropped
by Wizards.  (For those of you who do not know, Doomtown is the CCG set in
Deadlands.)  They took so long getting things together and evaluating
everything that when they finally printed new cards, interest was dwindling. 
As a result of this, they have to kill the product line after only printing
four sets.

Now I am not saying that Deadlands will completely die, but the longer they
wait, the more time players have to find games they like better.  Then they
start spending too much money on the new trend to buy any Deadlands.

There are always the diehard fans who buy up everything, but I am willing to
bet for each of them there is at least one other who is just in a phase.  And
the people in phases have no real emotion for the game and would easily be
converted to another system.

Of course, nothing is written in stone, and everything may be okay even if
they do wait a while.  I'm just ranting my thoughts.

Until next time, g'day.

Ogy Joe


Darrin Bright <darrin@neobright.net> wrote:
> At 12:43 AM 11/28/00 -0500, you wrote:
> >Just a Friendly Reminder to the POWERS THAT BE...
> >
> >Not getting any products out or not in time means company makes no money.
> >Retailers thjat have to explain why there is no product and does not know
> >when product will arrive get frustrated. Retailer get frustrated. no order
> >YOUR product.
> 
> It's a little more complicated than that. Okay, it's a LOT more complicated
> than that.
> 
> When an RPG company prints a particular product, they have to pay the
> printer, the writers/artists/etc., as well as their own monthly fixed
> costs... anyway, when they send a book to the printer it's something they
> have to pay for right away, and given the razor-thin profit margins they
> operate under, it usually means that unless they have cash in hand to
> spend, they go into the red credit-wise.
> 
> Once the book is printed, then they can sell it to distributors and try and
> get back in the black again. In order to have any hope of getting back into
> the black again, they generally have to sell the entire print run *really
> quickly*... RPG companies generally try to print less than they think will
> sell so that they aren't stuck holding unsold products in a warehouse,
> which they have to pay taxes on. Plus, if an RPG book doesn't sell within
> one week/month of when it was released, it generally doesn't get sold. 
> 
> Now a few years ago, it was a little simpler, the RPG companies shipped
> everything to the distributor, got paid, and then went back to writing more
> products. But this little thing called Magic: the Gathering came along and
> completely changed how games distribution works. Some of the bigger changes
> involved with how products are delivered and stored... due to the insane
> demand/speculation for CCGs, the distributors couldn't get products out to
> the retail stores fast enough. They were also ordering a LOT more CCGs than
> RPGs, and putting much more emphasis on CCGs for preorders/advertising,
> etc. Anyway, the distributors made changes so they could become leaner,
> meaner CCG-distributing machines.
> 
> Then interest in CCGs took a sharp dip, and the distributors were suddenly
> stuck with *warehouses* full of unsold product and absolutely no way to get
> rid of it... and they had to pay taxes on it, too, after it had been
> sitting around too long, as well as all those unsold RPG products that no
> one ever heard about because everyone was preordering CCGs. Some of them
> sent these unsold products back to the manufacturers, who then had to find
> some place to stick them and, of course, pay the taxes on them. 
> 
> Throw in a few mergers and the time it takes to integrate two businesses
> that used to operate separately, and you've got a lot of RPG companies that
> can't get products to their customers. Some of them start looking at taking
> orders online and shipping direct to customers... which causes the retail
> stores that haven't gone out of business by now to start SCREAMING foul at
> the top of their lungs. 
> 
> Anyway, back to PEG... Shane sold PEG to Cybergames so that they could keep
> an eye on the books. If PEG had gone into considerable debt to put out all
> those wonderful products we enjoyed so much, then they might indeed have
> told PEG to slow down their releases until they have the resources in place
> to bring in more revenue. If you're putting out $100 worth of gaming
> material a month and your target audience is only spending $50, then
> problems start to show up in a hurry. Game stores now have $50 in unsold
> products on their shelves, and they stop ordering PEG material from the
> distributors. The distributors in turn stop buying PEG's new releases
> because they've already got crates full of last month's that hasn't sold
> yet... and they are NOT going to dedicate their warehouse space to product
> that might not sell, they got way too burnt on that whole CCG thing.
> 
> This is all bad guesswork on my part, but the way game distribution works
> nowadays is just f***ed in the 'ead... and it could be even more
> complicated than that. Cybergames probably has an entirely different
> revenue structure than PEG, given their (supposed) online presence, and
> they did go on a bit of a buying spree. Getting all those corporate
> entities to work together may take a while.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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