nah, they've already hit the limit of what they can do in their current headquarters (that they only relatively recently expanded into). I think there's some issues with size of businesses and determining corporate tax too. If they went bigger they have to pay more in overheads of staff pay and tax and thats a hell of a risk to take in a competitive market with a resurgent GW to deal with.
They can't even get a human dedicated full-time to PR and social media/forums. I'm sure they would if they could. And it's a shame that they can't since GW got their shit together and now Infinity looks like a dying game (while aristeia and defiance already dead).
I’m sorry but any post where you’ve linked “GW” and “got their shit together” is never going to be taken seriously. Don’t get me wrong, I love some of their newer minis but the break in to any GW game is an obscene price and their main game is still using rules from the 80’s. Edit: Though I suppose if you count how much money they’re making as @getting their shit together” then yes they’re doing very well. Shame about their games though.
I don't think CB cares too much about competing with GW, they are in different leagues. GW is the Coca-Cola of miniature games (in the number 1 sense) and there are other large companies competing (or more correctly fighting violently) to be Pepsi-Cola and even trying to be Coca-Cola. CB is a small winery that bottles its own wine without being concerned or even obsessed with measuring itself against the large companies in the sector. Many of us would like CB to be Coca-Cola; well, yes. But if that means that they have insensitivity towards the product they have created and begin to apply commercial practices like those of large companies... at least I prefer it to remain a small winery (or a jazz group making the music they like to make, if you prefer the musical simile). I've been hearing that Infinity is dying since the first game came out, forgive me, but every time I read a comment like that I can only smile.
I was mostly refering to their media coverage since now they tease something every week instead of complete silence for months.
Ah… then I stand corrected. There used to be silence for months with GW. You’d have to know a staffer to get any info. But yes, now they basically give info almost every few days.
I wouldn't call Infinity a "fine winery" unless you call GW "the COFCO of Wargaming". Completely different market segments and legislations, after all. Incidentally, calling GW the COFCO of wargaming makes for a better comparison as PepsiCo is merely a % behind Coca Cola Company in brand value and it's not like Warmahordes (which should still be the second biggest by player base I think) is even close to that, so COFCO with about 5x the value (or more) of the second place is more appropriate. Even then Infinity's small time vineyard no longer does actual bottling and mostly serves as a showroom for tourists and acquisition agents. They might not have a shot at second place with their current business model, but top 10 is realistic if they're not already there.
I suspect they do, from business POV youvebgot to justify the investment into new HQ, more staff, more machinery, more distribution, more storage etc with a sizeable growth in revenue and profit. That is a lot easier to do when the big dog of the industry is waning as it was some years back. Now GW is back with a bang and flooding the market with secondary games like bloodbowl, necromunda, WFB relaunch and rumoured bfg relaunch as well as constant releases for their main systems. CB would have to take market share from _someone_ to justify the expense to upscale production and staff. That's a lot harder to do when gw is clawing back lost customers that came to CB/PP/wyrd/etc
I am afraid that this is a too simple view of the market (and for the record that it is not the first time I have heard/read it) that focuses exclusively on: either play game 1 or play game 2 [….] or play game n (idea promoted mainly by GW: «you play one of my games or you are not playing») But it is not taken into account that the market, in general, is not mono-game (maybe at some point it was, but never more), many (I would not venture to say the majority): play game 1 and play game 2 [….] and play game n. So the idea that a company can only have more market share if the others lose that share does not seem correct to me.
There's a finite amount of money in my hobby budget. What I spend on necromunda cannot be spent on infinity. With bills going up, tax going up and stagnant wage growth, luxury spend is likely to go down. Cost of production are going up, cost of borrowing is going up and cost of distribution is going up. None of those are good factors for a manufacturer to be seeing when thinking of very expensive hq upgrades and staff hiring/training costs. Add to that, heightened competition from the market leader and its not a brilliant time to be in the market, let alone considering large scale expansion. You gotta remember that CB would need to sit down face to face with a bank manager and say "I want 5 million euros", bank is gonna say "right, and how you gonna spend that, how much revenue is it gonna generate and what return am I gonna get on my investment". The bank has to analyse that market and determine whether to loan that sum of cash to a business to finance new machines, tooling, new premises, downtime and disruption costs and assess whether that loan is going to make financial sense for the investor (bank). It might look simple on the face of it but expanding a business is hugely expensive and very risky. If you grow faster than your revenue you end up having to shelve projects, lay off staff, shut production lines etc until you can balance the books. That's usually a death knell for any company and banks won't lend where they've got a solid risk of losing their investment.
As far as I know, the hq change was made a few years ago and it does not seem that they are considering changing it again. And the increase in staff has not been a problem for them in the last decade. So unless you have internal information about the company that the rest of us don't know ... you're going to excuse me, but I don't understand what conclusion you want to reach.
I’m pretty certain that CB are doing just fine. If they weren’t then they’d be cutting back on production yet we’ve had an entire year of new sculpts and more are coming in the new year. Also, if you spend on infinity what you need to spend on necromunda to have a decent gang then you’ll have an infinity army. It’s far harder to break into any GW product than it is to break into any other Wargame. Edit: not that I don’t love GW’s minis, it’s just very hard to justify a new army for their games when that army may be obsolete in 6 months due to a new codex…
I was replying to others upthread that were talking about CB expanding further. I was highlighting reasons why that probably won't happen.
I ne Ver said they weren't doing fine, I was replying to other folk upthread that were saying cb should expand and stop doing one shots. My point is , it ain't that easy. Re:gw doesn't matter what our individual opinions are (I sold all my stuff) but people don't have unlimited budgets and a euro spent on gw is a euro not spent on CB, PP, atomic mass, warlord games etc. They're the dominant guy in the market and can't be ignored now they're flooding the market with releases. I have no personal stake here, just highlighting the business POV around the market and reasons why expansion isn't easy
Oh, OK. Sorry, I assumed that when you replied to a message quoting one of mine, you were replying to me, thank you for explaining that you were actually replying to another (undetermined) user. As a curious fact and (apparently) unrelated to that (unknown) message from that other (mysterious) user, no one has said that CB is planning to expand (except, perhaps, that other user you were replying to), what I have said is that now that it has expanded perhaps they have the option of producing and maintaining a second main game.
Isn’t the core issue Corvus Belli still being 90% tied to a game that should be complete by now, and in fact should have been complete 10 years ago? Not everyone can be GW and nuke their entire rules sets and army lists every 4 years or so and still expect their player base to return for another encore. 20 years after its inception, Infinity should be done. I mean, it should still be played and produced, you could still have new sculpts, yearly ITS should still be a thing… But you really shouldn’t get new profiles on a regular basis, as that can’t happen without power creep and/or duplication. So when CB goes on the twin path of expanding their player base for Infinity and getting into new games, they’re really doing something they should have done 10 years ago. Except they’re not only late, they’re not where they should be reputation-wise. They’re mostly unknown, a niche within a niche, but doing surprisingly well thanks to a dedicated base of Infinity fans. So they’re stuck. Everything new they try to make must be strongly linked to Infinity to ensure they’re tapping into that dedicated base. And that base wants minis that are compatible with Infinity, and profiles to play those minis in Infinity, etc. Which is not great for Infinity, with a bunch of profiles being developed haphazardly, and not necessarily great for promoting the games to a wider world, as it looks too much like Infinity products rather than standalones (think of it this way: the “Infinity profiles included” tagline in a KS has a better chance of pushing away prospective buyers who would see no value in it and potentially confusion). I don’t really know if CB NEEDS to grow. Who knows, maybe they could produce Infinity for another 20 years and the older guys can all retire having made a living based on a single game. But if they feel they have to expand, well, I don’t think C1 was much of a success in terms of expanding the player base (might be a personal feeling, but having tried to bring in new people based on that rulebook, I would definitely say they screwed up an opportunity to get things right). On the new games front, I think it’s safe to say Defiance was a flop, more than 5,000 backers and very, very little noise. And TAG Raid was a step down, with half the backers and a third of the money raised compared to Defiance. Thing is, I’m not sure CB has what it takes to reach a larger public. Not being able to write a decent rulebook and the lack of native - or even decent - English speakers/writers on their staff will be a hard limit no matter what. Bostria’s videos might be great for those already invested in the system, but they’re really not great advertising for anyone else. And CB remains this company that has great ideas but lacks the will or ability to really polish up their products beyond their minis, and that’s never gonna fly with the larger public. Anyways, sorry for the wall of text, but to get back to the OP, whatever negative impact those profiles might have on Infinity, I think we will see more. These new games are the only way they have of really boosting their sales, but as things stand, they can’t really sell them doing that without doing the very thing you dislike.
Regarding this part of your message, I will not be the one to tell you that you are wrong when you are right :) I'm not going to comment on the rest of the message, because, although I suppose you are sincere and with good intention, I have the suspicion that the statements are based more on personal opinion than on real data ... and not commenting on the opinions of others is one of my new year's resolutions :)
I can understand CB coming to a "finish" on some parts of the game. Speaking from my own experience, my main Force is Yu Jing, I'm at a point now there's not much left to get. I didn't get Jujak yet because of budget and they are not great. After the Long Ya comes out, unless they do new sculpts or all new troops, there's nothing they can make a box of a single troop. Now there's just a few blisters to get. A new monk coming out and I'm not sure of anything else. I'm hoping they come out with different profiles of some troops already out.
But there is always room for new designs, replacing old ones. Take ISS for example, you could do new Bao, new Pheasants, Hsien MMR, SunTze in both versions and a Crane Hacker. Maybe even an alternate Su Jian for the Shotgun loadout if you want to be wild about it. Adjust existing profiles to make them usable in the context of newer, power-crept stuff and there you go. That's at least one new starter set and a couple of blisters for YJ alone I'd pounce on without thinking twice. Then you have Morats desperately waiting for attention, MRRF, Acon, Bakunin etc. CB can just keep up the rotation of sectorial updates as it is doing now without compromising the base game and people would still buy new miniatures if the designs are good. Miniature wargaming is still mostly about miniatures, so as long as you deliver on that front, you can't really mess up too much. That being said, Infinity the game is a large draw as well, as opposed to say GW games, which are mostly window dressing. So CB has to make sure to keep that facet intact as well, and that's where all this influx of Kickstarter profiles becomes an issue. Maybe they should just separate the two altogether or just have some fancy Infinity proxies in their side games for those who need an incentive to combine the two. Admittedly, it's not an easy task to accomplish but I'd probably prioritise the core product.
Your suspicion is 100% correct, I have no data whatsoever, and base my thoughts on entirely anecdotal observations. I’ll respect your resolutions, but frankly, it would not have bothered me in the least you happened to have and voice contrary opinions yourself.
