Agreed- I would love to see some Pathfinder pre-painted minis! I have many older wizards DnD ones but I find that with 4th edition stiving to be as non OGL compata-friendly the new wizards minis are harder to use for my games.
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For a while there was talk of Reaper making them. Is that going to happen or has that now fallen thorugh?
Last we (read: I) heard, Paizo said that they were open to the idea, but ultimately its reaper who needs to decide if the line will make money after the license cost.
As the line is just reaching it's one year mark, I think Reaper may be able to decide on way or the other soon, But don't be surprised if they want to see how lasting the suckles of the line is before committing to the much more expensive (IIRC) plastic format.
Possible but I'd not hold my breath. Wizards, with huge market share can barely make any money on their miniatures so it seems difficult for a smaller company to make a go of it.
Part of the problem is probably that the golden age of plastic D&D mini's is likely long past. From a production stand point there are all sorts of issues. Oil and anything (like plastic) made from oil is about twice the price of what it was when Wizards first entered this market. Transportation of from a low cost supplier (China) is likewise significantly up in price. All of these things raise the cost of making the mini's and make each individual mini more expensive.
Meanwhile on the consumer side there is the problem that mini's are the kind of thing that the buying public is quite price conscious about. You'll like and pay X amount for a cheap plastic mini but if I double or triple that price chances are the vast majority of consumers goes 'no way - I ain't buying!'. No ones willing to pay top dollar for this sort of product.
Meanwhile there are already lots of mini's floating around which means that, again the number of buyers drops - some people already have a full collection of all the mini's they ever plan to use - hence less buyers. Reduce the number of potential sales and once again the price has to go up to compensate, all of this in a market thats fundamentally shaky. One of the easiest things to cut out of your game night budget is mini's. In good times you went out and got that specific Otyugh miniature so you could use it for the one encounter with the Otyugh thats likely to take place this campaign - but in tough times more people just drop an Ankeg down and say ' pretend thats an Otyugh'. New Miniatures are probably just about the first thing gamers on a budget cut.
Hence it all seems very improbable - though it'd certainly be nice if it was doable at a reasonable price.
