Reply To: GW (bless ’em)

GW’s financials are a matter of public record.

And they are pretty woeful.

They also cancelled the best selling roleplaying release of the year – two days after releasing it. The theory goes that they are either going to re-focus on their own properties (WH and WH40K) or trying to make themselves attractive to a buyer. Or even both.

All this looks to me that we might not see a renewed LOTR license (because that sucker costs lotsofmoney), or at least not a 10 year renewal. I also think that the Hobbit will be a big movie event, but nothing of the scale of Lord of the Rings. (The second movie will be more interesting from a licensing perspective).

So, the long and the short of it is – I’d stake money on someone other than GW carrying their SBG forward (probably paying a license fee to re-cast GW miniatures and using a different ruleset). GW will still be around, licensing its IP and probably reduced to a small number of shops.

Gavin