D'oh! I should've known better. Consider me flogged. :arrgh!:

Here is my prediction . SH4 will dissapoint some people before it is released .
SH4 will dissapoint less people after it is released .

If SHIV will be released unfinished or with major bugs don't blame the devs for it, it's in 98% not a decision by the devs when a software should be released. This decision is made mainly by people who really don't have an idea how devs should work but have the force to make this decision.

I work since 15 years as a software developer and know this proceeding very exactly :arrgh!:

We might be a small community but we're important enough that the German reatil box of Dangerous Waters had recommendations of subsim on the front and the rear. Again, we might be a small community but many of the users are in the know, which IMHO preponderates.

Beware of strangers baring eye candy. :88)


http://www.subsim.com/almanac/index_subsim.htm

"Silent Hunter III Captain’s Log by Florin Boitor, Executive Producer

I made a trip to San Francisco in November 2002 for some meetings about SH3. The meetings were not exactly what I expected. I soon realized that our excitement about the project was really not matched by the guys from the Ubi SF office. But, were we talking about a pure simulation? Not at that meeting. What was discussed was mainly how to develop an action simulation game with submarines. Well, "Gran Turismo on the sea" was the closest match. Their idea was to attract as many gamers as possible from outside the traditional sim fans pool because the conclusion was that "they (sim fans) will buy it anyway".

http://www.subsim.com/ssr/sh4/sh4_interview1.php

"Producer Florin Boitor has struck out on his own now."

:hmm:

Don't forget that for every registered member that is currently on this forum, there are many many more who haven't registered and come here frequently.

I am not sure how you come to the conclusion that for "every registered member that is currently on this forum, there are many many more who haven't registered and come here frequently " as that would be an impossible stat to prove, but that's why I counted every registered member as a buyer. Clearly this is not the case.

It is also probable that the guests come here after purchasing the sim looking for tips and not because they are among the "hardcore" (gawd how I hate that term) enthusiasts.

JCC

The big thing for me I think will be the "crew shifts" feature. I know moving those lil guys around the uboats was a pain in SH3. It'll be nice to be able to assign shifts to crewmen and not have to worry about manually changing out 40+ sailors every few minutes.

I'm so-so about the Pacific theater though. SHIII was the first game I've played seriously from this series and I'm a huge u-boat fan so it was darn near perfect for me. I'm simply not familar with the US side of things really.

I'm also just tickled that my list of "what I want in the box" was fulfilled almost perfectly! Well done to Ubi for that, even if it's costing me an arm and a leg for it.

Whenever I visit this site there are about 150+ members and about 600 stowaways/visitors online. I guess it's quite safe to assume that many of them visit the site regularly because I doubt that everyday 600 new people discover this site. I also assume that some of these visitors will eventually buy SH4. So there's a kind of dark figure how many people who visit subsim will buy SH4.;)

And there's nothing wrong with this. I'm 180 degrees from you; I enjoy US subs in the Pacific, but have very little interest in the Battle of Atlantic. That being said, I went ahead and purchased SH3 when it came out to show my support for the sub-sim genre, yet have played no more than 10 minutes of the game. Yet I'll be playing SH4 for many hours to come. Strange how that works, huh?

Yes it's all about lacking management support for the devs. However I wonder what the output (better documentation, less bugs in initial release -> less bugfixes afterwards, more functions?) would be even if the developers would get more time to develop.

Damn I think this thread already got me so far to buy SHIV straight away.
I doubt that there will be a demo?

Ubi has stated there is no time for a demo within the development schedule.

Just remember... we are the most VOCAL of any sub group out there.

STILL... if Ubisoft decides to take SH like they did with Rainbow 6 and make it a dumbed-down eye candy we have a problem.

I didn't start this thread to bash SH4 or the developers. We'll just have to wait and see what happens. I am still trying to be hopeful, but I am just going by what I have seen all too much in the past with other sims... focus on pretty graphics, overlook or skip major gameplay/ realism features, rush game, fix some of the bugs later with a patch or two, then start developing the next sim. It's a pattern that's all too common. And yes, Ubisoft is in business to make money, and the best way to do that is to focus on pretty graphics. These days, flashy graphics sell games... period. Good, realistic gameplay be damned. Sadly, hard core, realism nut simmers are only a small precentage of their customer base. Most players who buy and play SH4 won't even know the difference between what is realistic and what isn't. I am still hoping they release the sdk for SH3 and make SH4 less hard-coded. Here's hoping. :sunny:

Related to this Rainbow 6 disaster, some weeks ago we had here in Germany a big protest campaign against Ubisoft and the leaders of this protest were invited to the German head office of Ubisoft for a clarifying discussion.

At this discussion it turned out (among other things) that for the Ubisoft's main office in Paris, the PC gaming sector is only a subordinated role, an evil which brings not much money. Ubisoft makes the large business for the past few years in the consoles games market and it applies for this sector to develop further.

From Ubisoft third-quarter 2006-07 sales report:
http://www.ubisoftgroup.com/gallery_.../1042/1297.pdf

Breakdown of sale by plattform
- 9% DS
- 4% GBA
- 1% GameCube
- 14% PC/DVD Rom
- 15% PS2
- 5% PSP
- 21% Wii
- 2% XBox
- 28% XBox360
- 1% other

The PC gamers are only quite an insignificant customer group for Ubisoft and much more the subsimmer's of this group :shifty: