For me personally I paint so slowly so painting 6-7 models over a month is all I can do. Therefore Malifaux is great for me. However I wish Wyrd every success with a larger game and I'm sure I'd buy some of these just because the sculpts will be nice. I'm interested where they will go with mechanics, I was just thinking about having elements of poker, like making particular hands triggers effects or their strength, how well bluffs would affect tactics I have no idea.
Although the games won't be cross compatible, I would hope that for the major characters there would be rules for fielding them in either game. So a leader in the Other Side, would have a stat card as an enforcer in Malifaux and that a master in Malifaux could be fielded in The Other Side. I guess even if that was just in the context of a story encounter.
I'm going to begin the wild speculation - Kickstarter? A safe way to get a feel the popularity of your product and very popular with companies. But can be a rep killer if things go wrong or delays happen.
Maybe lead with a boxed set near the start and not several years in? I know that when I started getting in to Malifaux I would have loved a starter set and it actually took over a year for me to play a game because it was "okay I need two crew boxes, two fate decks, the rule book and terrain". For me at the time it was a bit like "I need to pay at least £50+ on top of the £50 on crew boxes just to start this.
Around £60 - £75 seems to be the range for starter sets in the UK. The Malifaux starter set is around £45 so if a set that had 8-10 models per side and essential rules - I guess I would expect to pay around £65 - I guess that's like the warmachine starter boxes. If it was like operation Icestorm where you had less models but a play mat and card terrain and 16 models in the box where there is a big model on either side then I would pay around £75-80 I guess.
Bit of a brain dump, apologies, hope it's interesting to someone!