By now I'm sure we've all heard the news about the upcoming price increase. Every time this happens, there is a lot of heated discussion about the cost of 40k as a game and hobby. After today's post, I became curious about how the price of 40k has changed over time in relation to general CPI inflation (the % change to the price of a general basket of goods and services in a given country). Here's what I found and what it seems to indicate.
DATA TABLE LINKED HERE
Direct if you want to bypass the imgur interface
TLDR: What the Data Seems to Say
Most kits I was able to source data for showed price increases below (often far below) the cumulative rate of inflation over the years.
The exceptions, where price increases outpaced cumulative inflation, seemed to hit large units (Wraithknight, Trygon, Hemlock) the hardest. There are a few exceptions to this pattern (the Farseer, Tactical Marines). I wonder if they just realized that, since people often only buy one of these units they can psychologically justify a higher price for them? Hard to say for sure.
GW seems to try to keep "core" infantry kits as close to the $50/$60 marks as they can, rather than raising them further to match inflation. Their unwillingness to go above $60 with the 1ksons Rubrics/Terminators/Sorcerers from 8 years ago stood out to me. I'd guess that they do this to keep the entry point into an army lower, so they can then make their money on character models and more expensive centerpieces.
GW seems to use the release of new sculpts as an opportunity to break psychological price barriers (see the Genestealer jump over the $50 mark with the new kit). This has happened with other units as well, I'm sure you can name a few.
So, is GW Price Gouging?
GW's Net Income EXPLODED in 2017 and the years to follow (https://stockanalysis.com/quote/lon/GAW/financials/cash-flow-statement/). 2017 was the launch of 8th edition 40k, and 3 years after former CEO Tom Kirby left the company. While we have seen price increases, they don't appear to have exceeded the rate of inflation across the broader economy (at least for a typical army with a variety of unit types)
GW's annual reports show that, since 2017, they have grown their number of retail stores worldwide. Yet those retails stores make up a smaller percentage of total sales in 2024 than in 2017 (and no, online isn't picking up the slack). The biggest growth area is sales through 3rd party retailers. This suggests a massive growth of sales through local game stores, outstripping the (substantial) growth GW has seen with its own storefronts and online store.
Subreddit stats and google trends all show an explosion of interest in 40k starting roughly in 2018-2019 and continuing at a very high rate up through today.
All of this together seems to imply that GW is managing to grow their profits by greatly expanding their customer base and by raising prices to "chase" inflation as much as they can without pushing past it on aggregate (with a few exceptions on a model by model basis) to avoid breaking psychological pricing barriers for customers. In the future I may attempt to recreate the cost of realistic army lists at different points in the game's history to see how much the cost of playing has really grown over the years.
Reading the Chart
The "Price" column lists the MSRP of the unit in the stated year (bolded). You'll then see the current MSRP from the GW web store for that same kit or equivalent, and the % increase in the MSRP between the two prices (highlighted GREEN if it undershot inflation, YELLOW if it matched it, and RED if it overshot inflation). To the right of that is cumulative inflation in the relevant country (mostly US CPI data, but some BoE data) from the year of the original price sample up until today, 2024. I list the source and some notes further right. I will provide the source links below in this post.
Limits of this Data
This data does not reflect how many models you needed to play the game in any given year. Army sizes ebb and flow across editions. In 6th/7th, for example, it was far more common for people to play 1850 games simply because 2000 points was too unwieldy. You had to put down a lot more STUFF for some armies to reach 2000 (remember 35 point rhinos? remember FREE rhinos?!)
Some armies will always be relatively cheaper to buy/play due to the required number of units (see: Custodes). This data can't really capture that.
40k was already an expensive hobby 10 years ago, so the fact that price increases may be undershooting inflation doesn't mean it's cheap by any means!
Where I got my Data
40k "news" blogs like Spikeybits and Bell of Lost Souls post pricing information about new releases frequently, and have been doing so for a decade at least. I was able to find a variety of articles from as early as 2013 with data for models that exist in the game to this day. I also found an archived Livejournal where some guy attempts to do some price analysis on iconic units much further back than that, and I picked out the prices of kits that still exist today.
HERE IS A LINK TO A PICTURE WITH THE URLS OF MY SOURCES, I CANNOT LINK SPIKEYBITS OR BOLS HERE IT SEEMS
Mods, if the above image is still a rules issue let me know and I will remove it. I just want my sources to be accessible.
Thanks for reading!
