Dave Salisbury of Fan Boy Three in Manchester, England read about the upcoming changes to Games Workshop's White Dwarf magazine (see "Rolling for Initiative--Games Workshop Changes a Comin'") and had this to say.
 
Well, it takes bravery or insanity to do something this extreme in the world of magazine publishing.  When we heard venerable industry institution White Dwarf was for the chop, we naturally assumed it was going to return in digital format like Dragon & Dungeon.  Boy were we wrong!
 
Currently in the UK, Games Workshop produces one single magazine every month for £5.50.  Now, if you want to keep up with the GW hobby there will be a New Release focused weekly magazine for £2.80 and a monthly magazine for around £8.  So, just your *magazine* spend has increased-- as a consumer--from £66 a year to £241.  Games Workshop freely admit they do not expect every player to buy every issue of the weekly-- just the issues that focus on the New Releases for armies that they currently buy, which would reduce the spend a bit for all but the most rabid fanboys.
 
But still, those rabid fanboys are about to be stung by a price increase of 365%.
 
Now, it is possible that Games Workshop can fly in the face of the closing doors and mothballing printers endemic in the current magazine industry.  But in doing so they would have single handedly proven every other magazine publisher in the world to be wrong.
 
Games Workshop has made an entire industry out of treading the fine line between the devotion of their dedicated player base and the maximum price the market can bear.  Lets hope they can tread the fine line between genius and madness as adroitly.
 
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.