Games Workshop Reveals New Digital Products

Games Workshop have announced a new range of digital products for iPads releasing directly to Apple's iBookstore. The planned monthly releases include army books, painting tutorials, tactics articles and more.



List of features from GW's announcement:

- Interact with our digital books in a totally new and tactile manner.
- Take your library of digital products everywhere you enjoy your hobby.
- Reorder your purchases on your bookshelf or browse them in a list sorted by title, game system or any category of your choosing, and organise them into personal collections.
- Find a word, character or phrase anywhere in your book with the in-built search feature.
- Quickly find a specific page using the page navigator at the bottom of every page.
- Highlight your favourite passages and add notes with the built-in bookmarking features.
- Read a free sample of any digital product on the iBookstore before making it a part of your collection.

First wave of releases:

- Codex: Space Marines. Expanded, fully interactive and now totalling a staggering 324 pages. Comes with searchable glossaries, 360º miniatures galleries, and fully up-to-date rules including all the Space Marine weapons and wargear, such as the new Stormtalon Gunship.
- How to Paint Citadel Miniatures - Ultramarines. An in-depth painting guide from the Design Studio's professional army painters.
- Battlefield Challenge - Deathknell Watch. An exciting Warhammer scenario based around the eldritch Deathknell Watch tower. Accompanied by a comprehensive painting guide by the Design Studio's professional painters.
- Scrolls of Binding. Full rules for use in your Warhammer Storm of Magic battles. This month we present them for the Jabberslythe, Thundertusk, Stonehorn and Mournfang packs, as well as exclusive Scrolls of Binding for Terradons and the Great Cave Squig.

They've also uploaded a couple of demonstrative videos here and here.

I'll embed the Codex: Space Marines vid here, it looks pretty nifty:

Guess I need a damn iPad now.

Wow, that is just something that makes my pad something more than a surfing board.

Getting stuff ASAP!

I confess that I had a bit of sticker shock at the Codex price.  I wonder if they're thinking that the digital copy will end up in competition with the printed one.

It might be if FAQ updates are for free.
No more glueing parts of papers in your armybook

the exclusivity of it to the iPad is the only thing that's making me balk at it, otherwise, 'bout durn time!

Poorly done. Downloadable PDF with "watermark" of person's actual name would be much more format friendly across computers and notepads. I refuse to buy an iPad when I can buy Android pads that do more of what I want without being intrusive or limiting me.

Poorly done. Downloadable PDF with "watermark" of person's actual name would be much more format friendly across computers and notepads. I refuse to buy an iPad when I can buy Android pads that do more of what I want without being intrusive or limiting me.

Well, this option can be easily done for "free" by someone who owns the book, so GW wasn't going to make any money with your proposed solution.

I think it's nice to see that they actually took advantage of the technology that's available to them. If they tried to sell me a PDF, I would have laughed in their (digital) face.

Poorly done. Downloadable PDF with "watermark" of person's actual name would be much more format friendly across computers and notepads. I refuse to buy an iPad when I can buy Android pads that do more of what I want without being intrusive or limiting me.

Well, this option can be easily done for "free" by someone who owns the book, so GW wasn't going to make any money with your proposed solution.

I think it's nice to see that they actually took advantage of the technology that's available to them. If they tried to sell me a PDF, I would have laughed in their (digital) face.

"Easily"? Only if you disassemble the book. Check out https://www.drivethrustuff.com/ and http://paizo.com/ for viability of PDF products. They make money selling PDF copies of gaming books. GW would make money selling watermarked PDFs. For one thing the format would be more widely accessible than iPad only app. They chose to sell to a small portion of the market as only a portion of us own an iPad but everyone I know has access to something that can read a PDF... My TV can display PDFs from a USB stick.

Check out this site for the money-making prospects of PDF codices:

www.scribd.com

I'm sure a PDF version of codices and rule books would make a small amount of money (a relative pittance), while the few copies that are bought are traded an pirated across the interwebs. Using Apple helps them protect and control their content. As it stands now, they are selling something interactive that can't be downloaded for free via a 5 minute search on google. I certainly wouldn't buy a PDF, nor would anyone I know - because we all already have it. And I don't feel guilty about it, since I have purchased hard-copy versions of said books and no digital alternative was available (before this new product).

Hello,, if you're interested why GW haven;t launched an Android app I wrote up my thoughts on it here:

Why haven’t Games Workshop published their digital Codexes on Android as well as IOS/Ipad?

You might be far more interested in the follow up post:

What could Games Workshop produce if they fully embraced digital distribution of their rules?

Looking for as much constructive feedback posted on the articles as possible, they form part of a personal project to put together a project proposal for GW so they don't fall off a technology cliff.

Cheers

I just downloaded the scrolls for the three Ogre products. My thoughts? I can't WAIT for them to release the Ogre Book in digital format. It is about time!!! I mean this is amazing.

@ Tetsukagu: Your proposal to technologically update GW is fantastic, and something I have always wanted to do, but only seems to extend to their digitalsation of their existing product. But, they could also do with simple technological boons such as a GW app, much like a microsite app, for easy viewing/buying of products...

JJ