SH5 is great marketing for SH3/SH4?
 

I have noticed that there are many new players appearing on these forums lately, and in a number of cases these new players have been sold on the idea by SH5, then after doing their research have ended up buying SH3 or SH4. I myself fit into this category. So to some extent, Ubisoft have profited from SH5 via SH3/4.

Do you think when they make up the sales figures for SH5 that they take this into account? Perhaps they are more interested in bringing in new players to the franchise than they are selling any particular version of the game.

I haven't been around long enough to know, but have any of you long-timers noticed an increase in the number of new players to SH3/4 coming in since the release of SH5? Just wondering....

I can't answer that one definitively, but SH3 does seem to benefit from a recent influx of new players. I've mainly been a member of the Ubi SH3 forum and noticed a big influx of new members some time ago. I surmise that it was due to Ubi both removing StarForce and marketing "bin" versions of the game. I was really looking forward to SH5 putting everything right that was missing from SH3, only to read from others that the game was released in a version that wouldn't even justify the beta title. It's too bad; they had so much material to incorporate from the modder community. If only they'd release the SDK's from previous versions, at least those could be fixed up.