With Imperial Assault and then Destiny being axed, it makes me wonder about X-Wing.

Just how important is X-Wing to FFG? I know it's a money-maker, but that's also what I thought about Destiny. Does anyone have any idea, maybe numbers-wise, of how much of an impact on the bottom line or profit-wise X-Wing has for FFG?

Thanks.

You tell me:

It dropped off a little bit later in the year due to product delays, but I expect the new points and releases will see another uptick.

X-Wing is FFG's flagship game. I expect it represents more $$$ than any other single game system they ever have produced or ever will, unless Legion becomes even bigger than anyone expects.

They're not going to kill their golden goose any time soon.

Destiny was not as big as you may have thought. It had some hotspots, but that was a small game by any metric of FFG's warehouse. I wouldn't be worrying about X-wing for a long time yet.

20 minutes ago, NakedDex said:

Destiny was not as big as you may have thought. It had some hotspots, but that was a small game by any metric of FFG's warehouse. I wouldn't be worrying about X-wing for a long time yet.

With as much attention as they gave it, I would imagine they always wanted it to be bigger. The problem was that the demand never rose to meet the supply, so it was a constantly-mounting loss on FFG's part.

From everything I hear, cutting it was a very good business decision, as sad as it is to the players.

52 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

With as much attention as they gave it, I would imagine they always wanted it to be bigger. The problem was that the demand never rose to meet the supply, so it was a constantly-mounting loss on FFG's part.

From everything I hear, cutting it was a very good business decision, as sad as it is to the players.

I could be wrong, but it's also my understanding that it was always intended to be a collectible card game, not a living card game, so it makes sense that it would end eventually.

As for X-Wing (to address the OP), I think only Twilight Imperium is closer to FFG's heart (being that company founder Christian Petersen invented not just the game, but made an entire career out of it). But that's a relatively niche game. X-Wing is sold at Barnes & Noble, by comparison.

FFG was bought out and actually doesn't have a heart. Destiny was a dead game for about a year now. No surprises that it is gone. I would be far more worried bout Armada than X-wing right now.

24 minutes ago, Mep said:

I would be far more worried bout Armada than X-wing right now.

They have Clone Wars factions in the works for release this year. Typically that means the design is all but done and it’s going into production soon.

Seems unlikely they’d throw all that effort away, but what do I know?

1 hour ago, Rmcarrier1 said:

X-Wing is sold at Barnes & Noble,

This btw is an amazing fact.

X-wing. One of the few games you can find people who play even at scientific conferences, as happened this week. I love it!

I live in an isolated area. Only one game store in the town, and of course, MTG is the money maker. Only one other X-wi g player in town. We usually drive and hour for tournaments in a bigger city.

Destiny was on 50% clearance, and still wasnt moving. It did have pockets of popularity. I was never a fan of the game. Played it a bit, but never drew me in. I think it had to do with the dice mechanic and that it was "clunky" to transport.

Obviously it will be axed. Then IA will be relreased with a giant boxed set. 6-months later we will see a big Destiny rerelease. A year later X-Wing 3.0 comes out with repackaged ships that you must get to play. Codexes and army books will be interspersed throughout - rinse - repeat. It is known.

6 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

They have Clone Wars factions in the works for release this year. Typically that means the design is all but done and it’s going into production soon.

Seems unlikely they’d throw all that effort away, but what do I know?

And Destiny did have a 10th set that will only see the light of day in the handful of kits they decided to make. Netrunner just released its revised core before getting the axe. The game designers have one plan, the suits have another. We all hope Armada lives on but any announced plans don't have any real meaning.

Much more important than those, but declining rapidly in importance.

I think X-Wing is safe for the time being but 2020 needs to be a big sales year and turn the decline around. If FFG think they have something else as big and X-Wing is taking up space on the market it’ll be gone.

10 hours ago, Mep said:

FFG was bought out and actually doesn't have a heart. Destiny was a dead game for about a year now. No surprises that it is gone. I would be far more worried bout Armada than X-wing right now.

Armada is getting a second wind, they need it to pick up the slack that X-Wing is creating in sales revenue.

7 hours ago, Mep said:

We all hope Armada lives on but any announced plans don't have any real meaning.

We’ve already seen that to some degree in xwing cancellations.

Could it happen to us? Eventually.

Any time soon? No, the game is still one of their bigger profit engines.

Stats are self reported but FFG board games show up on this list quite a bit: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/267667/bgg-top-50-statistics-01-jan-19-01-jan-20-2019-ove

I'm willing to bet they see most product sales from an IP perspective and use different ideas to push multiple uses (i.e. products) of a single IP (LoTR vs. 5Rings vs. Star Wars, etc.).

X Wing does well because it has repeat transactions, which would put it as a golden goose in the product world. Keep in mind they pay royalties and have high logistics cost so probably make less per transaction than other games, made up for in sheer volume.

Looking back at the games they have ended in the past few years you can see a few reasons why a game ended.

Games like Warhammer 40k Conquest, Warhammer Quest ended because FFG and GW did not renew the license. Why this happened we don't really know and can only speculate.
Perhaps GW saw FFG as too big of a competitor to their core market with X-Wing and Armada and the newly released Runebound Miniatures Game. Perhaps the license was just too expensive for FFG to renew. Conquest and Quest feel like they ended before their time had come. So i doubt it was purely FFGs choice to end the licensing deal with GW.

And to mention Runewars real quick it seems that game was more of a trial run for Legion. At least it feels like a complete game.

Same can be said for Android Netrunner. The game just started a resurgence when the licensing agreement with WoTC ended. Again we don't know why.
Same possible reasons as with GW apply.

Lets take a look at two games that have not been ended but we might as well call them that. Lord of the Rings The Card Game and A Game of Thrones The Card Game 2nd Edition.
Both of these games have reached the end some kind of natural conclusion and will only produce an expansion here or there. AGoT2nd got a few more cards from the 1st edition to bring over but after that the game will most likely end unless GRRM will finish his books. Both games got effectively replaced by another Coop LCG in Marvel Champions and another competitive card game Keyforge.

The axing of both the RPG and the Video Game Departments (not the boardgame apps department) seems like a pure business descision to cut not so profitable products.

Now lets come to the Star Wars games because they ended differently. Both Imperial Assault and The Card Game had rather long production runs and at least IA felt complete with a few exceptions like Yoda or the RO cast.
Both of these games ended to be replaced by new games that would target a similar market.
And now we get to Destiny. The game had problems from the start as it was severly underproduced at the start. The game was so well recieved that FFG could not keep up with demand. That let to an initial bubble of hype that soon after popped and the game never recovered from it. If the game had enough product at launch available i do believe the game would have fared much better. In the end it seems like Destiny was just too expensive to produce anymore.

The one game i could see at jepordy at the moment would be Armada if the suits decide that the revenue/profit is just not enough anymore. Especially with the recent cuts at FFG. I could see FFG shed some of the not so profitable product lines to focus on its mayor money makers. X-Wing- Legion, Keyforge, Marvel Champions and the Arkham games seem to do really well at the moment. L5R is pretty safe right now i would gues since it is an IP that is owned by FFG and i doubt they want to tarnish it right now. Unless they sell the IP the game should be safe.

15 hours ago, Pewpewpew BOOM said:

Obviously it will be axed. Then IA will be relreased with a giant boxed set. 6-months later we will see a big Destiny rerelease. A year later X-Wing 3.0 comes out with repackaged ships that you must get to play. Codexes and army books will be interspersed throughout - rinse - repeat. It is known.

Will they add a third faction for Armada: the Vong-Gungan Coalition?

10 hours ago, Mep said:

And Destiny did have a 10th set that will only see the light of day in the handful of kits they decided to make. Netrunner just released its revised core before getting the axe. The game designers have one plan, the suits have another. We all hope Armada lives on but any announced plans don't have any real meaning.

I think Armada is having sort of the opposite problems X-Wing is having at the moment. In X-Wing, it appears they've just saturated the market so much that new products are competing amongst themselves and players aren't buying everything. In Armada, the problem is that new products simply aren't coming out fast enough, so most players have already bought everything they want. Later this month, Wave XIII releases two new ships, which will likely be snapped up very quickly as soon as they release. Before that, we had a campaign release in September 2019 (no new ships) and the Super Star Destroyer in August 2019 (expensive and only applies to one faction). Prior to that, Wave VII released in February 2018, meaning it has been nearly two years since Armada last had a full wave release. Armada players want to spend more money on the game, but we need some content to justify the purchases.

Now, I know there was probably a lot of development work in that time, since the SSD, Wave 8, and the upcoming Clone Wars stuff is introducing a lot of new stuff to the game that needed to be fully tested; so I completely get the long wait time. I'm just saying that I hope FFG realizes that a game's sales don't necessarily reflect its popularity when there are no new products being released for it. If FFG does what they intend and increase wave frequency a little after the prequel stuff comes out, Armada's numbers should come up at least a bit.

FFG needs to get their act together with X-wing re-releases.
There are lots of unreleased First Edition ships that people are craving for, and instead we got Jumpmasters, Ghosts, Hound's Tooths, Decimators... Ships that neither are especially great in the current game, or were especially in low stocks.

Also, other years we have had concurrent launches of ship from a movie, with the movie being on the big screens. TFA, RO, TLJ...
In comparison, there is nothing even announced from RoS, and it'll be soon one month after the premiere of the movie. The Mandalorian has been a huge success everywhere, and there are no news of anything of it coming to X-wing.

For the players that decided not to buy anything from the two new factions, there is little reason to spend any money at all.
I collect Rebels and Empire, and there has not been anything I would want to buy for them in 1 year, other than Epic Battles and the Huge Ship CK. If they were knowing that they weren't going to release anything new for Rebels or Imperials for an entire year, you could have thought they would have decided to bring out the pilot card packs much earlier than they did.

Unless they lose the contract they’re not ending X-wing anytime soon.

8 hours ago, Azrapse said:

Also, other years we have had concurrent launches of ship from a movie, with the movie being on the big screens. TFA, RO, TLJ...
In comparison, there is nothing even announced from RoS, and it'll be soon one month after the premiere of the movie. The Mandalorian has been a huge success everywhere, and there are no news of anything of it coming to X-wing.

This is a very good thing. Every time before that there were concurrent releases, they went terribly.

• The Force Awakens core set

• Tie Striker

• U-Wing

• TIE Silencer

• Resistance Bomber

All were missing crucial details. Poe was PS8, Strikers didn’t have bomb/gunner slots, Silencer didn’t have Missiles and the sculpt was awful, basically no named pilots on any...

It’s a VERY GOOD thing they’re not doing simultaneous releases. The production process takes time so they have to work months ahead of the release from next-to-no info: they hardly get any info we don’t.

They’ve said the full production cycle is around a year. Expect TROS announcements around summer for release near the end of the year.

9 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

This is a very good thing. Every time before that there were concurrent releases, they went terribly.

• The Force Awakens core set

• Tie Striker

• U-Wing

• TIE Silencer

• Resistance Bomber

All were missing crucial details. Poe was PS8, Strikers didn’t have bomb/gunner slots, Silencer didn’t have Missiles and the sculpt was awful, basically no named pilots on any...

It’s a VERY GOOD thing they’re not doing simultaneous releases. The production process takes time so they have to work months ahead of the release from next-to-no info: they hardly get any info we don’t.

They’ve said the full production cycle is around a year. Expect TROS announcements around summer for release near the end of the year.

I agree so much! I would be happier to have the product announcement coincide with the home release of the movie then have a flawed product release coincide with the theater debut.

2 hours ago, Parakitor said:

I agree so much! I would be happier to have the product announcement coincide with the home release of the movie then have a flawed product release coincide with the theater debut.

This is brilliant... however, now that they're doing pilot card packs and other upgrades, it's not AS sketchy.

Now, as to the op's question of how important X-Wing is? I'd say it falls somewhere between "not at all" and "more important than breathable air".

13 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

It’s a VERY GOOD thing they’re not doing simultaneous releases. The production process takes time so they have to work months ahead of the release from next-to-no info: they hardly get any info we don’t.

They’ve said the full production cycle is around a year. Expect TROS announcements around summer for release near the end of the year.

This.

I am hoping for: Razor Crest, Knights of Ren transport, Tie daggers, Resistance Y, and a “heroes of the resistance” card pack. The yt1300 resistance expansion reprint can ship with some pilots like Lando or a gunner like Wedge, and we can get them in this card pack (also including resistance T65 with a single pilot, Rey).

On 1/18/2020 at 11:22 AM, Stay OT Leader said:

Armada is getting a second wind, they need it to pick up the slack that X-Wing is creating in sales revenue.

...THREE accounts?!