The Lord of the Rings example you gave shows exactly why FFG will prioritize movie ships: The Lord of the Rings line was a massive success for GW. That they didn't hold their audience has more to do with GW's customer-alienating policies than anything else.

Oh no the bubble burst long before the current wave of displeasure with GW.

They were still highly popular then the rot didn't set in until after 2004-2005 when they cancelled specialist games started to withdraw support for lotr because sales dropped and they started to push ever bigger armies onto customers while delivering worse rules.

All that happened while they swapped focus from vets to kids because vet's don't spend money according to GW.

Yes for a short time TFA stuff will be popular but will it stay that way? you know OT stuff will still sell in 10 years you can't know the same will be true of the new films.

Unless the new Star Wars movies are consistently worse than the prequels, merchandise based on those recent blockbusters will be massively more profitable than merchandise based on decades old literature and games of varying quality.

Yeah no the OT has kept it's popularity for 3 decades for a reason, lucas pushed the prequels onto people and it never gained the popularity of the originals.

Most people on here fondly remember the x-wing series of games but who here even remembers a clone wars game?

I remember alot of bad ones i can't think of one i'd consider a classic.

but plenty of Star Wars fans do like the prequels

Out of over a hundred forum members maybe five are real fans of the prequels, a few more don't mind them but overwhelmingly the majority hate those films you can see that every time a prequel thread pops up.

FFG is fully aware of where it's core player base lies and it's not with the prequels.

The Pod Racer PC game is easily a classic and the first two Battlefront games and Republic Commando are fun.

But this isn't about the prequels, it's about the movies releasing now with forces that FFG has already decided to integrate into its game. We are guaranteed at least five straight years of these movies, probably more. If people don't like The Force Awakens, we'll still see four more movies and tons of supplemental media building upon the foundation the Force Awakens builds. And yes, they might not turn out to be as popular or stand the test of time as much as the OT ships, but we're not comparing them to the OT ships, we're comparing them to old EU ships that have nowhere near the same fanbase.