In case you haven't heard, the new edition of Flames Of War is now upon us. Giving Battlefront a chance to show GW how to properly release a new game edition. Let's list some of the ways they rock...
1) Nobody Saw It Coming
GW may be trying to lock down on it's rumor leaks, but when Battlefront announced the new edition just before Christmas, it took the community totally by surprise.
Note though, that they announced before Christmas for a release in March and free goodies in early February. So everyone has had plenty of time to get excited about the new edition. That's much better than some dodgy rumors for 6-12 months, and only a week of warning before the product is on the shelves.
2) They're Giving Away Free Rulebooks To Existing Players
That's right, A free rulebook! If you take your 2nd Edition book to your local game store, they'll put a sticker on the cover and hand you a brand new 3rd Edition mini-rulebook. It's the same size as the mini-rulebook from the 40K Assault On Black Reach starter set, but about twice as thick.
3) Battlefront Released A "What's Different" Guide To The New Edition.
This is, by itself, almost as good as the free rulebook. Instead of having to carefully go through each page of the rules looking for changes, you can just download this PDF. In it, you'll see a quick summary of every changed rule and it's page number in the rulebook.
Taken in total, this is an amazing way to release a new edition. You reward the existing players with free stuff (quelling any grousing over the changes), while you move everyone to the new edition much faster than if your player base trickled into it by themselves. That builds excitement and gets the new model sales going far sooner than they otherwise would.
yeah. Battlefront made me have to get new socks. They knocked my old ones off.
ReplyDeleteThey also fixed most of the major problems I had with the game system. Now if only more people played FOW.
ReplyDeleteMy 3rd edition rulebook is on it's way, right now.
ReplyDeleteGW is lost...they probably still have phones with rotary dials in their offices.
Bit unfair - GW couldn't afford to give every player a free rulebook.
ReplyDeleteAlso, GW's playerbase is such that it simply stops buying anything when it knows what new stuff is coming, or at least, sales DO drop.
With a new edition, I can only imagine this is magnified, as people are loath to buy stuff that won't be any use by the time it's painted.
So, while Battlefront seems to have approached this very well, working on a different scale to GW means they avoid most of the challenges, and can make themselves look better in comparison when they're not as much better as they might want you to think.