so from what is being reported, our favorite World War 2 and Weird War 2 games will soon be under one roof.....
interesting. playing both Flames of War AND DUST Warfare? from the same company?
here's the press release:
BATTLEFRONT MINIATURES TO TAKE OVER DISTRIBUTION OF DUST TACTICS
Posted in May 2nd, 2013
May 2nd, 2013
Dust Studio today announced that Battlefront Miniatures will become its publishing and distribution partner for the Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare miniatures game lines. Fantasy Flight Games, Dust Studio’s current publishing partner for those games, will transition sales and marketing activity to Battlefront Miniatures on June 1st, 2013.
“Dust has had a wonderful few years, during which we have seen the game’s community grow exponentially,” said Dust creator Paolo Parente. “Both Dust Studio and Fantasy Flight Games have evolved
significantly during our relationship, and we now mutually feel that we are both better served by moving in new directions. Christian (CEO of Fantasy Flight Games) and I have known each other for many years, and I can say that this decision is a truly amicable one.”
Added John-Paul Brisigotti, CEO of Battlefront Group, “we are very excited by the Dust universe, and although it is a first for us to be distributing a product other than our own, the fit with our business model made this partnership something we could not resist. During the last few years, we have been moving into new avenues to expand the breadth of products the group offers, and we see DUST as another one of these ranges.”
“We’ve been fortunate to distribute Dust Tactics since its debut at GEN CON 2010, and we’re very proud of our development work on Dust Warfare,” said Christian T. Petersen, CEO of Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). “The last year, however, as FFG experienced phenomenal growth across many of our publishing categories, it became clear that Paolo and the Dust games would be better served by a partner who specializes in the unique business of miniature games. We’re confident that Paolo’s partner choice in Battlefront Miniatures is a
strong one, and we wish nothing but the best to them, to Paolo, and to the fantastic Dust fan community.”
Starting June 1st, Battlefront Miniatures will begin soliciting and distributing all new products for Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare. FFG will ship all of its previously solicited new products prior to that date, and FFG will continue to exclusively sell all current Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare items while its inventories last. While FFG will support the Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare regionals events in May and June 2013, all future marketing and organized play for the games will be handled by Battlefront Miniatures, including the scheduled GEN CON 2013 tournaments.
About Dust Studio:
Dust Studio Limited is a Hong Kong–based company that creates and manufactures the Dust Tactics miniatures line, as well as model kits and scenery together with various books and comic books about the Dust universe. For more information, visit www.dust-models.com
About Battlefront Miniatures:
Battlefront Miniatures Limited is a New Zealand–based company that created Flames of War, the WWII miniature game. Battlefront publishes the world’s premier tabletop gaming magazine Wargames Illustrated, and owns Gale Force Nine, the leading manufacturer of game accessories. For more information, visit Battlefront’s website at www.flamesofwar.com.
About Fantasy Flight Games:
Roseville, Minnesota’s Fantasy Flight Games is a publisher of board, card, miniatures, and roleplaying games. Founded in 1995 by Christian T. Petersen, Fantasy Flight Games has published hundreds of successful titles, including licensed products based on A Game of Thrones, The Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars, as well as many original board games such as Twilight Imperium, Arkham Horror, and Descent: Journeys in the Dark. For more information, contact FFG’s Anton Torres at atorres@fantasyflightgames.com.
interesting. I know BF's been working on expanding it's horizons out of 15mm WW2 by venturing into Boardgames. Venturing into 28mm Weird War 2... I'm intrigued.
I'm curious to see what direction the BF design studios will take DUST Warfare. Look out GW, the competition's getting a bit beefier.
I'm floored. This is so exciting. Farmpunk made a post! Oh yeah, and the Dust thing.
ReplyDeletehey. I actually had something nice/interesting to say.
DeleteWow. Caught me off guard with that one!
ReplyDeleteBe interesting to see how the product develops now.
Well, this is certainly a more interesting development for our community than 'GW and Google conspire to shut down a few blogs.'
ReplyDeleteCan BF promote Dust better? Is that the reason behind the move? Seems likely.
Well, let's see what BF can do with 'weird WWII.'
By all accounts, Fantasy Flight was making money on Dust:Tactics, but not Dust:Warfare. When it comes down to it, FF is a board game company, not a miniatures company. So I'm betting that FF wanted to drop D:W, but Dust Studios didn't want the games (for very good reasons) to be split between two different publishers. So they shopped around and found Battlefront.
DeleteI'd also bet that GW wasn't real happy about FF distributing a competing sci-fi(ish) wargame. So there may well have been some pressure from GW to drop D:W, or lose some GW licenses. Which, if the game wasn't performing for FF, would be a no-brainer.
I think that non-compete issue is a real problem for FF.
DeleteThat being said, although the X-Wing Miniatures sales are BOOMING, you would be hard-pressed to find a store that supports actual play. I will have to travel 90 minutes into NYC (where their last tournament only had 2 players) or drive 2 hours in another direction. I live in Central NJ, which has 10 stores with Friday Night Magic withing an hour of me.
I just joined the only gaming group for X-Wing in my area and we hope to host regionals next year if the game still exists.
I guess my point here is FF isn't good at supporting in-store events. They make a token prize-pack effort, but barely any other actual attempts at penetration.
I've never seen Dust in any store, even for sale, except for a few boxes at a store in NYC that literally stocks at least one of everything. So maybe this move is a good thing.
They need to do a better job than F/F. Dust has no market penetration in the UK. It is in no shops, gets no coverage and the stock levels in the retailers is woeful.
ReplyDeleteAnd remember they are distributors and have no say in the game at all, so the direction the game will go in is exactly the same.
The game itself is good they just need to let people know about it, get it into the game stores and run some games. There is only so long I can try to badger people into playing it before I give up on it too.
I should say online retailers have woeful stock levels as I have yet to see it in a bricks and mortar shop.
DeleteDon't think that publishers don't have a LOT of say in what a studio does or doesn't do with their game. Coming from the video game industry, I can tell you that the guys with the money (publishers) call almost all of the shots.
DeleteI've seen some D:W products on shelves here in Indy. I've even bought a few.
DeleteIt's a local issue if you're not seeing it in stores. My store here stocks the entire product line, and every store in town stocks at least some of it. I have worked in a couple game stores, and from what I have experienced, most owners are just apprehensive about buying into it since it doesn't have as much of a following as 40k or other games do.
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DeleteIgnore the 2 deletions above I answered my own questions! Damn the Valley you live in the US, I am in the UK. I have only ever seen it here in one non-gaming shop with a few random boxes. There is no support of it. I really wish there was, I like it and have a sizeable collectionbought whenever I can find some in stock.
DeleteAlso this is their second change of publishers. Maybe Dust are a little difficult to work with themselves, although they more likely want more miniature support and F/F seem to have trouble keeping the product flowing.
I think that miniature games, by their very nature, simply require more love and attention from publishers to do well. They need regional reps, ranger programs, tournament/prize support, etc.
DeleteBattlefront has that network set up already for Flames. Adding another game to that network isn't a huge deal. Fantasy Flight, being a board game and gaming book company, would have to roll that network from scratch to properly support Dust. As it is, I've only seen their ipad-in-a-box shelf video displays. Which are cool, and good for selling board games to a casual audience. But war games require more TLC than that.