I hate to break it to you guys but console shooters are not "casual games".

Like Strike Fighters is a AAA sim! :nope:

We'll all have our own opinions, one man's rock is another man's roll, etc..

It's not down to opinions. Casual games mean Popcap, Zynga, King.com - simple tower defense, puzzle games etc. Everything else like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Asscreed, HAWX etc is referred to as hardcore games. And that's common usage in the game industry. Not just my opinion.

But I hear everything that isn't simhard is automatically "casual" or "arcade" which is just kneejerk for saying "I don't like it".

I don't think the "what is hardcore" debate is what this thread is about.

It is pure symantics I am afraid.

Ubisoft wants to go more the F2P way on the PC games market
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-boxed-product

I'd like to know which behind he pulled out that 93-95% piracy rate from.

Here is a very interesting paper published in the Indian Journal of Law and Technology, Vol 5 (2009) about how they make up those statistics and all the errors and intentional disinformation involved in their creation by (well paid, ofc) consultant firms.

Great read if you're interested in the issue, it's about 20 pages. :up:

I have read another shorter essay about the same issue with those piracy stats here in Spain, where they are bloated and exaggerated too, but it's in spanish only.

Let me quote their CEO:

"It's a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue"

I think he meant to say:

"It's a way to distance ourselves from our customers, to make sure we constantly give you the middle finger"

I should've been a translator or transcriptionist...I missed my calling :har:

I swear those people 'upstairs' have absolutely no freakin clue...applies to the company I'm employed with also :shifty:

I think usually when a firm grows big it's no longer directed by geeks, or anyone with knowledge on whatever their trade is. When firms grow, "money people" take charge, and then it's no longer about the trade, it's just about the money. Every single decision they take! :down:

+1

I think you're pretty close to the mark right there.Faceless beancounters with no passion about what they produce,just what return can we expect for as little outlay as possible and quality be-damned.
Plus of course they've got the dev's as a buffer between them and the paying customer so when the bullets start flying guess who gets hit.

Unless you're an officer of the corp or in the upper echelon of the corporation's management then you are a sacrificial anode, nothing but cannon fodder :shifty:

Of course, the F2P and server-based games are great idea: pay if you wish, no cheats, no piracy issues but...

Did you see that periscope view of SHO looks like stock SH3?

The greatest power of Silent Hunter series were and are modders: better graphics, better music, new improvements, more ships, more campaigns...

But what do we have now?
Warships playing? No.
Playing against evil uboats? No.
Maybe US, Brtish, Japanese or Italian subs? No.
Generally it is single/multi stock SH3 online only with "pay to play" mechanics...
and without possibility of fans impact.

Sorry boys. Silent Hunter (Online) is dead.

Now look for alternatives...
:Kaleun_Binocular:

No it will be fine, they will run the beta, listen to the feedback and do something about it. :D

Like Ubisoft did it during the SH4-closed-beta:shifty:

Not a fair comparison.

The SH4 closed beta was unofficial and suffered from the fact that the project head would not allow any current builds to be released to us. We were always looking at half-arsed builds that were full of bugs the developer was already aware of (and in a lot of cases, had already fixed). We couldn't find anything new to fix because we were swamped with older, already squashed bugs.

This will obviously be different.

JCC