Thursday 29 September 2011

Denying GW

I don't know which annoys me more; the fact that Games Workshop's new piracy game isn't the Battlefleet Gothic for the high seas I was so desperately hoping for (which isn't their fault, I suppose), or that they've decided in their wisdom that seventy pounds is a reasonable price to charge (which very much is their fault).

Obviously, it's hardly news that GW's general pricing strategy is best described as "Gouge Everyone At All Times" (I still remember being thirteen years old and going to the January sales at my local GW shop - those were the days, huh?), but even by their standards this makes my head hurt.  When the new edition of Space Hulk came out - a game, remember, that was both massively successful and unquestionably adored in its earlier iterations - it wasn't just absolutely, outstandingly gorgeous, it was my only real chance to own a game I'd been hearing about in the most glowing terms since I'd been old enough to lift a paintbrush.  But I still didn't buy it, because sixty quid seemed excessive (a choice justified entirely when Cocklick, Jamie, lyndgb and Pause gave it to me for my thirtieth birthday, but I digress).

In comparison, Dread Fleet is nothing.  No-one's played it before, no-one remembers it; if it has any similarity to any previous game it will be to Man O' War, which was generally agreed to be something of a flop for the company.  Clearly, then, what needs to happen is fot another tenner to be slapped on the price.

Bah.  Get off my lawn, and such.

(I'm also, like Frontline Gamer, more than a little suspicous of the combination of high price, limited print run, and complete dearth of information.  Presumably information will be forthcoming in the new White Dwarf (which didn't see, to be available as of this Saturday), but even so, the implication seems to be that we will have a vanishingly small window opportunity to buy an incredibly expensive game about which we'll have almost no opportunity to consider or experience in any detail.)

No comments: