What would be the reason(s) for this?
Do they think the Anniversary Edition is flawed now? Too complicated for the novice player?
I’m not sure that I want to get it now, if most people are going to go back to Revised. :-(
i don’t think most players are going back to revised. don’t get us wrong, this game is awesome. it’s just a shame that wizards didn’t take the time and effort to make it truely perfect (well, as close as could be reached anyway haha)
I’d like to see better treatment of the game in a PC version. They almost did it once, but as I recall the last Axis & Allies PC version had no multiplayer support, which made it useless.
For those looking for something similar, I find Gary Grigsby’s World at War to be an excellent A&A PC substitute.
OMG!!! I was about to have a ‘Rainman Fit’ as I was reading the posts.
Plastic is a petroleum product and I don’t need to go on one of my tirades about the pieces in the the latest A&A editions. That said, the crash in global economics combined with oil prices and the drop in Chinese manufaturing had resulted in:
1.This may be a Ltd. Ed due to profitability v.s. nieche product.
2.The poor quality in aspects of recent AA products.
3.A decline in interest in hobby poducts accross the board i.e. Paper/Pen RPGs, Tabletop Wargames, etc.
4.More focused production and marketing of CCGs combined with higher profit margins.
5.The popularity of console/computer gaming combined with the relative ease of production and, more rapid placement in the market. i.e. you can buy that crappy RTS A&A for ten bucks at Half Price Books or Walmart.
My last example is with AD&D miniatures the whole line will be cancelled sometime in the next 1-2 years.
The production in toys (AKA Hasbro), is one tenth the production is was last year due to us Yanks spending less.
Finally, while I admire alot of peoples passion for going out and buying copies of AA50 even if you bought ten each that wouldn’t stop the axw from falling. You wanna buy multiple copies, buy them for yourself, but don’t expect it to save the line. :cry:
I do not believe that making this game a computer/console game may increase the number of person that would play A&A.
I don’t know man, I have to question your belief on that one then. :D
AI is not the issue for a computer game. A “decent” AI is a given for the game to be successful with neophytes, but its the solid support for multiplayer online gaming that’s really important. The AI doesn’t need to be awesome, it just needs to be good enough to introduce players to the system.
Gametable and TripleA style games are not going to cut it if we’re serious about attracting new players, and want to really wow the players we already have. What we need is a real computer game, and a real game engine designed for the long haul. Once you have an online community established, and good game for people to organize around, then you can use them to gather feedback and test design concepts for the actual board. This is the main benefit of going digital, because you don’t have to order 1000 molds of unit X, or print an edition of board design Y before you know if the idea is even going to be popular among the core fans. With the computer you can do all this and playbalance the set up with a large group of testers, before committing to the final changes. You just can’t do that anywhere near as effectively with Face to Face tournaments, which take longer and require more overhead to set up. The way they do it right now makes no sense at all to me, given what’s possible.
Ehm… Black Elk maybe I have expressed my thought bad.
I do not believe that making this game a computer/console game may increase the number of person that would play A&A.
The principal problem of making A&A a computer game is the AI, having a good AI is difficult. So we should rely on human players.Personally I think that the best solution would be a browser game with more flexibility than GameTable Online to exploit online communities an forums that are one ofthe great interest in A&A.
What I had tried to say that we do not need a “Computer stand alone program for playing A&A” that is useless but we need a “Web Application Browser based with a supporting website, forum etc”.
For what I see we agree on the added value of the community and all the other multiplayer on line game features.
Moreover we do not need a RTS game (based on clicking abilities as Rakeman said), we need a virualization of the board game, maybe a 3D model of the table with the board and units or otherwise we should have a 3D environment with animated units. But the added value should be the players active participation.
Perhaps it was planned, BY THE MAKERS!!
if they keep like 100 copies, and waith a few years,…
they’ll count out even more money then if you buy like 3 or so and waith
I can’t help but feeling that Limited Edition does absolutely nothing to promote that game.
A silly ploy that hurts the product. Sad. :-(
I think this is a bad precedent for whatever other “special or revised release” they would think of in the future.
Would you buy an “Axis & Allies Europe (or Pacific) Revised Edition” with such precedent ?
I wouldn’t.
I personally expect to see the A&A franchise to dissappear altogether in a year or two. I’m stocking up on as much AA stuff asI can get.
I personally expect to see the A&A franchise to dissappear altogether in a year or two. I’m stocking up on as much AA stuff asI can get.
I don’t think so. Money is there to be made. Look at the number of Axis and Allies board games and the few computer games that have been made in the past decade vs the 1980’s.
They could make a computer game version of every game and introduce it to new crowds who have never visited a forum. I realize that the AI is a problem, but Classic and Iron Blitz brought new people to game. Computer games offer a synergy to the product that would enhance other sales.
The fact that Hasbro is a toy company and makes Its’ money on toys is a big reason.
In thier big picture A&A is just another toy. I’ve stated before that the AD&D minis game is going to the chopping block sometime in the next year or two.
The plastic components made for the A&A series are more than likely made in the same place in China if not the same factory. Toy production in China is a fraction this year of what it was in previous years due to consumers not buying.
Toys for Tots has also had a significantly lower donation rate as ro previous years. Last but not least is the cost of foriegn patrolleum which adds to Hasbro and it’s subsidiary Avalon Hill’s production cost.
I love A&A but walk into any major retailer and look for A&A products, you won’t find alot if any. That right there should tell you that the A&A line is a minor part of Hasbro.
Any parent looking for games for thier kids is most likely going to pull Risk or Battleship of the shelf at $20.00 before A&A at $40.00 (AAR) let alone $75.00-$100.00 (AA50). They’re going to say, “A hundred bucks for that ?” even if they understand what the game is.
Yeah, but it still sucks about the limited run. Now I might have to rush into picking up a second copy as a backup if my first gets rundown.
Dammit. I hate being a poor Grad Student. :(
This was in response to the same thread on the Avlone hill boards and I copied and pasted it here for this discussion too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nexus73
What I am curious about is the true production number for AA50. The War Game: World War II was a 2000 unit production run and it still has yet to sell out.
You can’t compare “The War Game” to AA50. The war game is a self published product with little or no distribution chain. AA50 has the backing of Wotc, it’s distribution chain, the Axis & Allies brand name and Larry Harris. Yes the marketing for AA50 has been horrid but let’s look at some numbers:
In publishing, publishers price an item at 5 to 8 times the cost of the item. So if AA50 retails for $100.00 then it costs Wotc $12.50 to manufacture (100/8=12.50). They sell it to a wholesalers for 50% of retail, $50.00 and they make $37.50 (12.50-50=37.50) They give Larry his royalty say 10% of net or $5.00 taking their profit down to $32.50.
Now, I know that for the Minis they like to produce about 50,000 units. This is boxes of minis. So if we guess that they did half that for the AA50 game, which would be 25,000 then we take their profit $32.50 x 25,000 =$812,500. That’s a tidy sum. Now out of that has to come all the expenses of design, game testing etc. but these people are all full time and working on games any way so production of AA50 doesn’t effect the overall cost of running Wotc. After all they are in the business of making and selling games.
You’ll never get a real answer. In publishing, knowing how much to print is a very hard thing to judge and the information is closely kept.
This is my best guess.
This was in response to the same thread on the Avlone hill boards and I copied and pasted it here for this discussion too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nexus73
What I am curious about is the true production number for AA50. The War Game: World War II was a 2000 unit production run and it still has yet to sell out.You can’t compare “The War Game” to AA50. The war game is a self published product with little or no distribution chain. AA50 has the backing of Wotc, it’s distribution chain, the Axis & Allies brand name and Larry Harris. Yes the marketing for AA50 has been horrid but let’s look at some numbers:
In publishing, publishers price an item at 5 to 8 times the cost of the item. So if AA50 retails for $100.00 then it costs Wotc $12.50 to manufacture (100/8=12.50). They sell it to a wholesalers for 50% of retail, $50.00 and they make $37.50 (12.50-50=37.50) They give Larry his royalty say 10% of net or $5.00 taking their profit down to $32.50.
Now, I know that for the Minis they like to produce about 50,000 units. This is boxes of minis. So if we guess that they did half that for the AA50 game, which would be 25,000 then we take their profit $32.50 x 25,000 =$812,500. That’s a tidy sum. Now out of that has to come all the expenses of design, game testing etc. but these people are all full time and working on games any way so production of AA50 doesn’t effect the overall cost of running Wotc. After all they are in the business of making and selling games.
You’ll never get a real answer. In publishing, knowing how much to print is a very hard thing to judge and the information is closely kept.
This is my best guess.
I gladly paid $100.00 plus tax for the game.
What I’m saying is: Compared to EVERYTHING ELSE Hasbro makes; Avalon Hill, WotC, etc., is ‘chump change’.
In corporate market, in times of trouble, executives count how many forks are being used in the staff lounge. When retailers like Walmart buy cargo loads of and stocks pallets of other stuff Hasbro makes, A&A is like a minnow in an ocean.
I’m just trying to point out that buying a thousand copies of a game doesn’t save it from extinction and that it would be a good idea to buy an extra copy.
WotC used to have a chain of stores if we all remember, and now they’re gone, to save money. I’m not saying they shouldn’t. Just because most people on this site love the game doesn’t mean that A&A is profitable. Just because the license has changed hands several times doesn’t mean it’s amoney maker.
If Hasbro makes a billion dollars on GI Joe, and makes 800,000 on A&A50 and needs to cut costs, where do you think they’ll cut?
As popular as WotC was the stores were losing money and they cut them.
WotC has the Star Wars RPG license, (A big license) and product from that has been cut recently. All I’m saying is if you like A&A you should buy any A&A products while they’re around because in my opinion and observation they are likley to not be her in a cuople years.
I’m thinking the game will still be in print. They may not drop massive quantities on the shelf. So “limited edition” might just refer to it being available on shelves for a limited time, not your inability to get a copy.
Don’t forget, China loves to produce counterfits. Hell, I can usually buy movies that have not even been released to the theaters yet from China if I ever had the inclination to sit in one place and be spoonfed a story. (AA is different, you have to think…movies…they think for you, IMHO. No offense, you can like what you want, I like strategy and books and math, not movies…TV is starting to piss me off too lately…)
@Cmdr:
I’m thinking the game will still be in print. They may not drop massive quantities on the shelf. So “limited edition” might just refer to it being available on shelves for a limited time, not your inability to get a copy.
Don’t forget, China loves to produce counterfits. Hell, I can usually buy movies that have not even been released to the theaters yet from China if I ever had the inclination to sit in one place and be spoonfed a story. (AA is different, you have to think…movies…they think for you, IMHO. No offense, you can like what you want, I like strategy and books and math, not movies…TV is starting to piss me off too lately…)
TV is much worse than movies IMO, I can at least get a bit of enjoyment out of a deeper movie.
I agree, Movies at least have writers and scripts. TV is now just a bunch of children from meth-head/crack using families with little or no education being dropped off on a deserted island or sent to a fat farm and letting them cry moan and back stab each other.
Marquis,
Thank you for your numbers. They seem quite accurate.
toblerone77,
If Hasbro makes a billion dollars on GI Joe, and makes 800,000 on A&A50 and needs to cut costs, where do you think they’ll cut?
Neither. Whether you have a product that makes $100 or $1000, why would you afford to cut either? They’re still making you a profit? I never saw a company cut costs by slashing something that already made them money. Normally you cut the deadweight, the lines that put your company at a financial handicap (where people simply aren’t buying). I guarantee if even the Wizards stories were making corporate even $1 in overall profit, they would still be open today.
About the mini’s. I’ve think they’ve had their time and I wouldn’t be afraid to see them go. They did what they were suppose to do, and I see no sense trying to prolong them after all’s said and done.
@TG:
Marquis,
Thank you for your numbers. They seem quite accurate.
toblerone77,
If Hasbro makes a billion dollars on GI Joe, and makes 800,000 on A&A50 and needs to cut costs, where do you think they’ll cut?
Neither. Whether you have a product that makes $100 or $1000, why would you afford to cut either? They’re still making you a profit? I never saw a company cut costs by slashing something that already made them money. Normally you cut the deadweight, the lines that put your company at a financial handicap (where people simply aren’t buying). I guarantee if even the Wizards stories were making corporate even $1 in overall profit, they would still be open today.
About the mini’s. I’ve think they’ve had their time and I wouldn’t be afraid to see them go. They did what they were suppose to do, and I see no sense trying to prolong them after all’s said and done.
That’s a good point also, I’m just trying to point out that no franchise is invinceble or as huge as we may percieve. I used some of those examples to show that if you like something enough you should get it while you can.
A prime example for me is I collect RPG books. Some of them were very easy to find in the 90’s but by 2000 they were pretty much gone. Just WEG was announcing more SWRPG for the Phantom Menace WEG lost the license.
If your familiar with it, look up an e-bay a copy of Pirates and Privateers. Cha-ching!
What I had tried to say was that we do not need a “Computer stand alone program for playing A&A”, that is useless, but we need a “Web Application Browser based with a supporting website, forum etc”.
I understood you, I just disagree. :-D
See I think we do need a computer stand alone program for playing A&A, and I think it should be designed to play on consoles as well (like Xbox or Playstation.) It should have a supporting website/forums for the online community, but its should go well beyond a Web application browser based set up. ‘Play by forums’ and ‘Play by Email’ exclusive is not the solution. There are programs which do that already, and they don’t cater to the casual player, because they require too much overhead to operate. In any case, a real computer game could easily support something along those lines. I’m not talking about catering to people who are willing to study the game manual like its the bible, and exchange their email address with perfect strangers just to play the game. We all know about that group of players, because that’s the group we all belong to. But we are not the casual players, and we’re not the ones who need an introduction to this game.
Everything Toblerone77 has said in this thread, only convinces me of this even more. The difference between a PC game and a board game is that, with the PC, your initial investment makes future investments cheaper. You can interpret the word ‘investment’ however you want, whether that be financial, or in terms of networking/marketing, even down to something as simple as enforcing the official rules. For example, a Larry Harris Tournament Ruleset would be 100 times easier to implement in a PC game, then it would be to publish and disseminate new rules through the tradition method.
In fact, the way things are set up right now, I don’t consider any of the board games “official” until they’ve been out for a year. This is because the designer, or someone on this website, will invariably have to come up with a way to fix the set up 6-12 months out. Now that could be a bid, or it could be a rules/set up adjustment, but the point is that, when the game first ships, everything is still basically in the Beta testing phase and subject to alteration. The board games almost always require further testing and re-balancing, and we’ve come to just accept this as part of the way the game is built. Its stupid to do it that way though. Maybe it was a good idea in the 1980s, when nobody had personal computers, and the likelihood of someone developing a game breaking strategy 6 months after release was more remote, but it makes zero sense to me in 2008/9.
They should design the new games by using their online community to conduct the playtesting and to provide feedback. The game should be thoroughly reviewed and tested for overall balance/popularity, before the first order for Chinese plastic is ever even placed. And yes, it would be more profitable too, for that same reason. Standard PC games can fetch between $50-65, with expansions ranging from $30-40. And once you have the groundwork laid down, they become progressively cheaper to produce with each iteration (since for the most part, you’re just building on top of the same core game engine.) Everything that WotC has failed to do to promote A&A, since they got rid of their storefronts all across America, could be recreated with their online community. In fact that’s the only way its ever going to get recreated, because you sure as sh*t know that they’re not going to open another chain of physical stores for players to congregate at, and where they can hold live tournaments and the like.
We don’t have anything like that right now, (not in California anyway, which is the ‘Coast’ in Wizards of the Coast) and if we don’t go digital and start attracting new players soon, then, chances are, our hobby is just going to disappear on us one day, because they’ll be nobody left who knows how to play.
