It’s an illegal move.
This is a Limited Edition Game
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. :(
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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.
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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.
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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…)
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@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.
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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.
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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.
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@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!
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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.
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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.
Uh huh. Where exactly from California are you from?
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I split my time equally between the San Fransisco Bay Area (Mtn. View, where the microchips get made), San Diego (SDSU, Classics and Humanities dept.), and Sacramento (Folsom, now a suburb as well as a prison). :-D
Right now I’m in San Diego, and yes, almost all of the hobby shops and traditional game stores that used to be in the Westfield Malls are no longer in existence. :(
To be perfectly honest, I’m not as disappointed about that as I might otherwise be, simply because I’m not the kind of person who enjoys playing in that type of environment. For me those stores were always just the place I went to buy things, not to play them. The point is though, that the “local gameshop tournament” is not going to be around to bring this franchise into the next decade.
If we want to have any chance at hooking a new generation of players and keeping them active, then we need to start planning for the Internet + major chain retailers (ala Target and Toys R US), and in that sort of environment I’d put my money on the Internet.
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Funny. I split my time between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Sacramento? There’s nothing but cows there.Unfortunately the drive from San Diego to LA is 2 hours, though from San Fransisco to Mountainview is like 40 minutes.
I wouldn’t mind supporting my local game shop, except I don’t have one here.
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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.
Black Elk, maybe I am not able to explain myself. I will try with other words.
For doing what you are saying, the better way is using an MMOG like game, a browser based game or something similar.Are you familiar with Warcraft? Blizzard have made Warcraft I, II, III and other spin off, and thay are (togheter with Starcraft) the better RTS I have ever played. Now they have moved to World of Warcraft, having servers computer running the game 24 by 7. The players use a simple client application, with no stand alone game capability, to connect to the server and playing with other players (WoW has more than 9.000.000 of players and is reaching 10 million). It cost a slight amount of money to pay monthly.
Adavantages of a online-game:- you have no need to develop AI, players are supposed to play with other humans, the game has originality and unpredictability built in with this feature;
- user provides feedback continuolusly;
- the update of the game do not need to be sold and delivered to the customers, they are simply uploaded on the servers, continuously improving the application;
- there is no risk of software piracy, what you sell is the subscriptions for playing the game on the servers.
All this reason are well known new trends in the computer game industry. If we want to do a step in the future we have to di it in the better way.
The problem is: may such approach have success?
Look at initiative like Gleemax (now closed) or the Gametable online, they offered or offer the possibility to play Revised on line (and it is qiute good at Gametable online) with other players. Look at TripleA Lobby and all the players that are there to play on line. This initiative are only catching a share of the A&A fans, which prefer to roll the dice on the table (because the dice roller is no dependable according to more of them as their hand was a Gaussian dice roller) moving the miniatures on the physical board or that play by forum or by email using Abattlemap. A&A players have no need of PS3 or X-BOX or PC with nVidia GE Force to play A&A. What they need is a map representation, and a way to talk with the opponents for organizing games. Web 2.0 is arrived and we, the users, are now reay to create the content and the community on the internet. Forget the stand-alone game for PC or for console. The only games sold for them are the FPS or racing simulations or sport games. Trying to enter in such market is pratically the same that we have now: selling of A&A compared to GI-JOE or to Settlers of Cataan. -
Taking advantage of Web 2.0 is a genius idea. What this equates to having embedded applications inside popular social networking sites. For example, several entrepreneurs came up with “Scrabble” and “Risk” clones for Facebook, where users could play gratis as long as they installed the plug-in. Not difficult at all to do.
Anyways both games were HUGE HUGE HUGE hits with over 1 Million Subscribers and relied on little to no advertising whatsoever. It simply spread by word of mouth. Eventually the games got so popular that Hasbro had to issue a cease-and-desist order and forced the entrepreneurs to shut the games down.
If Hasbro had any brain at all they should implement this idea again, only with their license. Axis and Allies could work the same way; it would be less popular because it’s less recognizable, but word to mouth will spread the game. And people will learn how to play the game when it’s free.
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Moses that is the idea! We already form communities on the web! We have to go forward! :-D
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