Games Workshop Gossip: Release Schedule Trends Part 2 (Mystery Boxes)

I was originally going to talk about Mystery Boxes and more on release trends, but this has turned into rather a monster of a post, so I’ll leave the rest of the release trends for another post.

Okay so let us talk about the mystery box that never materialized. To do so however we need to go back to the first mystery box, Space Hulk, back in September 2009.

So the first thing to look at is that the previous year’s September release was Assault on Black Reach, which was a HUGE seller, people were over the moon with the number of models you got in the box and their quality. It was an ‘easy win’ month for GW Retail, which meant that whatever came out in 2009 would have to have the potential to outsell or match AoBR.

When Space Hulk was released, it was released with 2 weeks of pre orders and stores received demo copies to show people how the game worked. This had several effects, firstly the Staff were CRAZY excited, we were given a $10 budget to go and buy Pizza so that we could all have a Pizza & Space Hulk game night. That sounds like nothing, but it was pretty damn fun actually and really endeared us to the game and the company. On top of that it was fucking Space Hulk, we could have just released it on the quiet and still sold out, you think I exaggerate, but for a year after it was released we’d get people still coming in asking if we had any copies.

So when September 2011 rolled around, we all knew there would be a mystery box. A lot of us thought it would be Blood Bowl because one of the managers we knew was good friends with some of the design team and had let slip about seeing a plastic pitch and new teams (he had told us about the Arachnarok Spider 2 years before it came out). This time it was released with the new release schedule plan, 1 week of pre orders, no store copy. This is why the game tanked. It wasn’t because people were upset it wasn’t Man o War, it was because we didn’t have the time to drum up the anticipation and energy needed in ourselves and our customers to sell it. Additionally they over stocked it, they saw Space Hulk sell out so quick and thought “yeah let’s make more this time” not thinking that the release schedule might affect things, not thinking that 40k out sells WHFB almost 3 to 1, not thinking that unlike Space Hulk the miniatures couldn’t be used outside of the game.

It was a fiasco, we were told that we were to sell out by the release weekend. We didn’t, we were told we were to sell out by the following week. We didn’t, we were told we were to sell out by the end of the month. Nope, wrong again. We were finally told that we would sell out by Christmas. Nu uh. In the end we were told to send any copies left to Head Office where they were to be destroyed. I’m not sure if that happened, I sent back 5 or 6 I believe. The sad thing is, it was a good game, lots of fun, interesting rules and had real potential, but it was shot in the foot by poor marketing and terrible stock purchasing foresight.

You might say, well whatever it probably didn’t cost the much to produce, and you’d be mostly right. But it didn’t endear the company to their customers and it makes the “Hey it’s a limited edition box game, buy it now before it sells out” much much harder to push on people when the next Mystery Box arrives.

So what happened with Mystery Box 2013 edition? Obviously this is speculation, but I’d say that they didn’t want to risk it up against Dark Vengeance. Ogres had gone up against Island of Blood in 2011 and had been a difficult slog for retail and Dreadfleet went up against the Skaven second release, which mostly worked as the Skaven Release was a tad weak. I get the impression that GW never had a Mystery Box planned for the September/October release period, I think they saw Space Marines as the greatest way to go up against it and I’m sure they were right.

As I said in my previous post, next September should be WHFB 9^th edition box game, but what about September 2015? I think the magic of the Mystery Box has been broken and I’m not sure if they’ll try it every again or try it in a different release slot. My gut feeling is we won’t see a Mystery Box for a long while, not until the pendulum of fear swings back towards Mystery Boxes when Head Office’s short term memory fades.