“After 30+ years, we have concluded that our products can best be sold directly. To improve product output and customer service, all Columbia Games products will henceforth be sold ONLY by mail order, telephone, or via www.columbiagames.com.” This is the kind of shakeup I was talking about when Games Workshop announced their policy change. For those who have other things to do with their brains than remember what everyone publishes (I envy you), this means that Wizard Kings, several other block-system wargames and historical games like the recent Hammer of the Scots, and the Harn line of roleplaying/D20 stuff will be off store shelves, effective pretty much immediately. If you’re serving a niche within a niche such as wargamers, maybe it just doesn’t make sense to sacrifice any margin to distribution anymore. Maybe it’s distributors, not retailers, who should be sweating over a possible trend here.
Oh, and uh, they’re having a celebratory 20%-off sale till the end of the weekend. Yay for spending money!