AGPO:
I can’t check the cost as I don’t have an iPad but I thought this was a pretty interesting announcement. A few thoughts:
- It’s dissapointing they haven’t released these for Android or other digital formats.
- Including extra content and updating the FAQ is a savvy move, and the 360 degree views and improved navigation are good ways to take advantage of the format.
- I’m most interested to see the price. The cynic in me thinks that they’ll charge the same price as for a paper codex, which would be an incredibly foolish move IMHO. A paper codex can’t run out of battery, can be lent to a friend and is less risky to take about to games.
Thoughts?
Thommy H:
£25 for Codex: Space Marines, apparently. Physical book is currently £18, I think #facepalm
zobo1942:
I think the reason it is only in the iBookstore is probably because it (arguably) has the best copy protection/DRM (ie. who bothers jailbreaking their iPad, and potentially voiding the warranty?).
‘Jailbreaking’ or modding an Android device is kind of a given - I bought an android tablet and after about a week, it had been rooted, new OS installed, etc…
The pricing is a joke. Codex space marines: $49.99?! That’s really, really stupid. Prices like that actually ENCOURAGE piracy.
AGPO:
£20, but even so… Sadly publishers seem to be following the same direction as the music industry. The massive cost saving and convinience brought about by the internet isn’t an excuse to simply gouge extra profit. It gives consumers a lot of extra options and if they feel they’re being exploited or that prices aren’t justified they’ll look elsewhere. Looks like yet another oportunity turned into a farce by GW.
zobo1942:
In defense, it looks like a LOT of work when into creating this - it’s not just a pdf which they uploaded and expect people to pay top dollar for.
IanC:
While the Codex is expensive, like zobo said, it isn’t just a PDF file, its a full on multimedia thing.
I won’t buy Codex Space Marines (SICK to the back teeth of Space Marines) but I have bought two of the fair priced Scrolls of Bindings (49p a pop), and will buy, say, Warhammer Armies Warriors of Chaos if it came out 
beefcake:
It does look quite full on. Search tools, 360 degree painted mini images etc. Used to be into space marines but not anymore otherwise I’d be quite tempted. I’d think the pricing should be the same as the normal codex though.
zobo1942:
I’m still trying to figure this out because, if you play space marines, you’ve already got a codex. So… is this a test to see if people will buy a second copy (with some ‘sexifying’, of course) - purely for the convenience?
I can understand a digital reference version - like the Warhammer Rulebook which came in the boxed set versus the gigantic stand-alone tome - but no amount of added ‘fancy’ could justify that price (to me).
This must be the ‘test’ for every future army book being released as a digital version, because it doesn’t make sense to put that much work into something without it being a template for future books. That, I can understand.
I’ve often thought that ‘the future’ of small/short/‘specialty’ publishing resides in the digital domain not in hard copy, physical books. I think it makes more sense for (eventually) printed ‘collector’s’ versions to be the more expensive version, and standard/digital versions to be cheaper. But, because this is ‘the new hotness’ right now, it’s pricing is a reversal of this.
I still think it’s dramatically overpriced… But I would be very curious to know how many copies they sell.
AGPO:
I’m not denying a lot of work has gone into it (although I’d argue it’s no more than the work that goes into producing a hard copy book) but the savings in terms of warehousing, printing, international distribution etc are considerable, so for it to cost more is agrivating.
I think people are generally fair minded about this sort of thing, and if stuff is reasonably priced they’ll buy it instead of pirating. I keep digital copies of rule books I’ve bought both as a back up and as an easy way to make lists or look stuff up on the go rather than lugging all my books around with me.
More and more companies are using their rules as a loss leader, or even distributing them for free via the internet. GW is normally good at this type of thing with all the free activities it runs at it’s hobby centre, but if I’m now looking at paying £70 for just the rules (army book and BRB) before I’ve even got a single mini I’m going to look at other systems. A friend and I have already tried playing Ambush Ally Games’s ‘Tomorrow’s War’ using Space Marines and Chaos and it’s the most fun I’ve had with a game in ages.
zobo1942:
I would think that it is probably initially a little more expensive than producing a hard copy book (I’ve worked in the print industry - and short-run book production - for more than 15 years), but the costs over time decrease dramatically because… well, you don’t need to print more books. Or ship them. Or give the retailer enough of a margin to make using the shelf space worthwhile.
I like Warhammer, and GW stuff… but, I just can’t justify purchasing anything other than the very occasional ‘centerpiece model’ at the present prices. I’d rather spend a third of the money on something similar and bank the rest.
I’ve been thinking about checking out Dave King’s ‘Skulldred’ rules:
http://www.skulldred.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=freerules&action=display&thread=13
brotsorrow:
I am shocked that the digital copy is more expensive than the hard copy… Sure the initial cost is more expensive, but so is everything else that is produced. Can someone verify that in the long run digital copies will be more expensive than hard copies? You don’t need people setting, printing, shipping, etc…
I think this was GW’s big chance to prove they are not gouging it’s customers. Another fail .Yes, i know some will say “just don’t buy the digital copy” but im sure im not the only person that likes to read the other codexes/army books, and what better medium to have all these resources on an Ipad…
Thommy H:
Price discussions aside, the bottom line for me is that I don’t own an iPad and never intend to. I get the thing about DRM, but I still wish there was some way to get hold of the new Scrolls of Binding on my PC or smartphone or any non-Apple tablet I may choose to buy in the future. They couldn’t just sell it as a password protected PDF or something? Yes, it’s easy to get around that, but they’re selling them for less than £1, so is it going to hurt them that much if a few people get hold of it without paying? If just a thousand people pay, they’ve made back more than it cost to produce it.
Bitterman:
In defense, it looks like a LOT of work when into creating this - it's not just a pdf which they uploaded and expect people to pay top dollar for.
zobo1942
Depends how you define "a lot". Computer games take teams of 100+ programmers, artists and designers two years to make, and they sell for £25 on Steam.
GW already had the Space Marine Codex readily available in a convenient format, and all they did was add a few hyperlinks, a few more photos and a few 360 degree views (ie. more photos!)... I don't know how long it took, and I do accept that it's very slick, but it can't have been that much work! And they're
also asking £25 for it.
I don't think "a lot of work" justifies the expense, personally. Wouldn't pay that money even if I had an iPad.
Kera foehunter:
Never had an ipod , laptop or any black box of mystic wizardly…
Water always beats electronics and cell phones
AGPO:
A lot of the smaller companies actually send a free digital copy of their rules with the hardback version. A digital and paper copy of the current marine codex costs £45.
zobo1942:
Depends how you define "a lot". Computer games take teams of 100+ programmers, artists and designers two years to make, and they sell for £25 on Steam.
...
I don't think "a lot of work" justifies the expense, personally. Wouldn't pay that money even if I had an iPad.
Bitterman
I completely agree with you. What I meant was 'a lot more work than just uploading a pdf'.
I also agree that the price is totally out to lunch. My wife has an iPad, but there is still no way I'd pay $49.99 for this... Maybe they'll integrate an army list builder into it and allow 'live' errata updates, but who knows. Would functionality like that justify the cost? Not to me.
However, I think that 'going iPad' with it only made sense, given how the iPad is the most popular tablet and has the horsepower to do it justice. Sadly, Android devices which all over the place with screen size, processor speed, etc... Creating it for the iPad would just be easier.
Anyway - this is an interesting development. I'm curious to see where it goes.
GRNDL:
I also agree that the price is totally out to lunch. My wife has an iPad, but there is still no way I'd pay $49.99 for this... Maybe they'll integrate an army list builder into it and allow 'live' errata updates, but who knows. Would functionality like that justify the cost? Not to me.
zobo1942
You have to remember that GW has consistently underperformed in the digital medium. They have (unrealistically) high hopes for their brand, but don't want to commit to it financially. Their home brew army builders have failed with limited features and high prices compared to smaller companies. Their licences to video game developers have been mostly cheap devs (like Cyanide, for e.g). Even their most prestigious titles (Space Marine, Dawn of War) are limited feature titles. Space Marine, for example, was undercut by how little was in it. I know of several game projects that essentially failed because GW and by proxy, its licensees, were afraid to commit and just wanted to cut corners, leaving those games on the negotiating table in favour of "destined for mediocrity" titles. They'll commit to B+ or A+ games, when they really think they'll AAA+++ games.
GW's biggest problem is that everything they try to do is really to tie things back to the tabletop game, which makes sense, but when they think that, the ego strikes and they charge and arm and a limb and that tenuous connection is broken.
Thommy H:
I’ve always felt they were, paradoxically, a bit embarrassed by their own brand. GW is such a nerd thing that even the guys who make it don’t want to draw too much attention to it by, say, advertising it somewhere relevant. They act like it’s some sort of boutique brand that can survive by word of mouth alone - what other international, publicly-trded company in the world operates like that? They don’t like to dabble in anything that’s outside their own little bubble of control.
I like to imagine that even Jervis Johnson has a few friends who don’t actually know what he does for a living. Like how we (probably) all have a couple of mates who don’t know about the little toys we keep in our spare bedrooms because they never asked and we don’t mention it otherwise.
cornixt:
I think GW are too scared to commit to doing something that isn’t a tabletop game because then if it becomes successful they will no longer be a miniatures company. Imagine if Apple didn’t create the iPod.
They don’t even want to create much outside of the core games. They could package up a simple and cheap version of Blood Bowl and sell it to jocks alongside games like Monopoly, but they don’t want to. Even their newest contained-games have been “limited edition” and pretty inaccessable for anyone who isn’t already a hardcore GW fan.
They have willingly decided to box themselves in and say “This is what we do and nothing else” and it will be the death of the company as the miniatures cash pool slowly shrinks and their share of it shrinks even more.
Bitterman:
Interestingly it was a TV advert that got me into GW games - via Heroquest, circa 1988 or so I guess. And I’m pretty sure that thousands of other people got into it in the same way; or for Space Crusade or Battle Masters, which both had TV adverts.
Then, nothing. No more TV adverts for GW ever again. The closest they came was the Warriors Of Middle Earth magazine (or whatever it was called), for which the publishers put out TV adverts… and it was a massive success, and brought more people into the hobby as part of the LOTR bubble.
But GW otherwise flatly refuse to do TV adverts, or any other kind of advertising. It’s somewhat bizarre. I can understand the computer game thing to an extent - GW can’t afford to spend £20M+ making their own computer games, so they license them out, but are so precious with their IP that the licensee has their hands tied - and also why they don’t do movies; again they just can’t afford it. (The closest they’ve ever come to that, Ultramarines, was absolutely terrible so I doubt they’ll do any more). But still - you’d think advertising would not just be acceptable, but surely very sensible?
I’m not sure GW are necessarily embarrassed by their own IP (though hey, maybe!), but I think they’ve got so used to insisting that the way they have always done things is the best way, that either the thought of doing it differently doesn’t occur to them - or they’re afraid of losing face if they change…