Gamespy has the release date as Q4 2006!!! Anyone hoping for a christmas release?

I think it's probably a typo (hope so anyway). Be surprising if it's ready that soon. I mean, if they pushed something out the door by Christmas of this year, I'd be worried. Better to wait a few more months if it means "getting it right."

I bet UBI goes for a Xbox360/PC hybred engine with awesome graphics and special effects with canned/ scriped missions and "Quake" style multiplay.

That way they get an "Action" game that looks great is extremely "Shallow" (no pun intended) and will sell tons of copies due to it being a PC to console port.

If you all think I"m that far off, just look what happened with the "Call of Duty" series.....

THe original COD was PC only then went to both platforms and now COD 3 is only going to be console.

These current game companies see more $$$ in action console ports than in PC only study sims these days. :down:


I really hope I"m wrong though. :damn:

Agree that the console market eats up a lot of good titles, but I think that, because sims in general are a niche market and are considerably more involved than your typical run 'n' gun shooter, it's unlikely this will happen to SH4. Not impossible, but unlikely. I can only imagine what the input commands would be like for a console SH4. Nightmarish. :nope:

Release date Q3 2007, what does that imply ?
 

SHIII had so many delays, partly caused by wishes and desires from the community, that the game was hussled into production without proper testing. There were some terrific features but a lot of loose ends as well.

In my opinion 3 Q 2007 means that the game will be ready as a beta at the end of the second quarter, beta testing will be done in the summer, correcting and gold in September/October so the game should be introduced long before the Christman season.

If the game is sceduled for 1 Q. 2007 it will probably mean that betatesting will start at the end of this year and the game will be in the shops around Eastern.

I think UBI thanks to SHIII realises that submarine games have commercial potential and that it is worthwhile to produce them the right way from day one. Also a pacific game may appeal to a wider US public than SHIII. And be sure UBI has seen how the Subsim community has grown since the introduction of SHIII.

Man, I'm soooo ready for this. Rarely do I wait for a release with such anticipation! :ping:

One word: Patches. With patching, the game may be a wreck come day one, and it won't matter as things will be fixed.

Without patches, it doesn't matter if the game's a jewel or a hulk.

So Ubisoft "Patch People", please dare to be different by caring about games post-release, not just pre-release. It sounds great on paper to "delay games to put in feature x", but if you don't follow up games afterwards, as the trend is right now for most games, it doesn't matter how finished or unfinished the title is when it's released.[/b]

Hi,

If the game engine works, why replace it?? There is plenty to be going at now in terms of game-play, immersion and realism. I wouldn't mind seeing a SH3 Version 2.00. Game devs are chasing technology all the time instead of producing something of quality.

SH3 is a great starting platform. Now IMPROVE it.

I'm not judging anything from the date given. It's out when it is out. I just hope it isn't rushed.

--TangoShadow

They wouldn't make a new engine because that is where the capital input is spent. SH3 being a niche product, cost a lot of money to develop but sold poorly in the grand scheme of things. It's no multi-million unit seller.

That being the case, UBI would want to maximize the return on their investment by simply repacking SH3 with a new title, new theater of operations, some new ships, new features, fix all the bugs, and presto, you have SH4.

And to be frank, that is what I hope for. SH3 has so many bugs and requires so many mods to make it nice, that buying it off the shelf is only the first step.

SH3 has a good engine already. What it lacks is features and mods. Create a paciific version of the game, fix all those bugs, add all those features, and you have a subsim that will truly be the ultimate - right out of the box.

What did the SH3 patches fix? They added ships in ports and gave me the ability to change storm conditions for the deck gun, but didn't seem to fix any bugs that I'm aware of. Crew management crash, sleeping flak gunners, torpedo tube stuck open, electric torpedo speed set wrong unless you click the speed setting switch (which should have no function for electrics), flickering torpedo loading screen in IXD2 with disappearing torpedoes (and 2 slots not even visible in base) and of course the wonderful random unrecoverable career corruption, all still there after what, 4 patches?

So I have absolutely no faith in Ubi fixing any bugs the game ships with, patches or no patches.

Remember that the SHIII engine has been used for various games already, including a flight game.

Really? Which game?

IIRC Blazing Angels

http://www.blazing-angels.com/