Here’s my own personal take on the larger discussion about GW’s stock dive: 4 years ago 100% of my hobby time was dedicated to GW products. No board games, no Infinity, no Deadzone, nothing. Just GW. Why? Because when I was young and interested in the hobby, they were the hobby. When I returned to it as an adult 4 years ago, that was still my gateway back in.
4 years on, my hobby life could hardly be more diverse. I have an outsized appreciation for boardgames now, which frankly I don’t comment on enough here. For example, I have a massive fully painted set of Descent figures, and I’m well on my way to completing my Level 7: Omega Protocol figures as well. I even have some Starks and Lanisters from Battles of Westeros. I play Pathfinder: ACG. In terms of tabletop, I’ve got a few sizable groups of Infinity. I’m super excited about Deadzone. I’m probably the only person in the U.S. that still cares about Alkemy. I could actually go on and on.
So where does GW factor into all of this? Well, I still have my Raptors, Blood Angels and about 5 other rotating projects, but I’m not really playing 40k at all at the moment, and frankly the thing I am most considering at the moment is getting into the Dakka Dakka 40k Deadzone conversion project.
In otherwords, if I had to make a pie chart (I’m not making a pie chart), I would say that realistically GW has about 20% of my hobby attention now, as opposed to 100% 4 years ago. Now, don’t jump to the wrong conclusions about that–I’m not blaming them for this decrease in my attention and money spent on them. Part of it is my personality, which is somewhat like a shark, always moving forward looking for my next hobby meal. Part of it is that the industry has frankly just grown up a lot and it didn’t take long for me to realize GW weren’t the only game in town anymore. In other words, there are a lot of complex factors for this one GW customer to have started giving them less attention.
That’s not to say that they have played their hand perfectly from my limited vantage point, just that even if they did do everything right, the odds just are stacked against them retaining such a dominating piece of the pie. They are probably realistically still around 90% of the tabletop market, maybe even more. But the way things are moving in this tiny industry, it seems only natural that their dominance will be measured in a less extreme measure. Probably more like 75% over the next 5 years, not 90%. That alone in my mind accounts for the course correction in their stock value.
What I’m not worried about is them disappearing. And frankly, I think they’ve been doing great things this past year, with faster releases, better (any!) contact with their customers, and forays into the digital world.
Anyways, my two cents.