im drink mainly spirits vodka rum scotch and whiskey but not that often even down the pub i rarely drink it just doesnt take to me yeah i can handle my drink but i dont drink often infact the last time i had a drink of any sort was 3 weeks ago (alcahol) so im doing good

now i fancy a vodka dam you bellman :stare: :D

:ping: Now if I had a bottle or two I'd make a sale yes ? :lol:

Good luck to you.

Cheers.

no you wouldnt make a sale i got enough thanks and plus i can get a litre bottle for less than a pound

:up: Thats a fountain I need to plug into. :up: :lol:

Contacts count - pound a litre sounds good. :huh:

I agree with you. I never intended that that post be taken too seriously, but it does demonstrate the kind of thoughts one has when they put WAY too much effort into figuring something out that doens't need to be figured out. :lol: :-j

Amen.

TG

My 2 cents if anyone is interested in them:

I am not what one would call a compulsive player of modern warfare sims, but I did buy 688i and Fleet Command from Jane's, and also Sub Command from EA. I liked all them and I loved specially SC with SCU/SCX, but I recognize that I have played little time with them. Only SC has received some more attention from me in my spare time, which was already very busy with Silent Hunter 2. I buyed SH3, but did not like it, so it lays on the shelve collecting dust....

Now DW has come out and I have not yet bought it, the only reason being I do not like internet shopping, due to security reasons (My VISA is not enabled for electronic commerce voluntarily), but I would sure buy it if it were on stores near me.

I suppose there is also a share of potential customers who have same reasons as me, even if a small one. Sonalysts will sure know better than us what is more profitable for them, and I understand that few, high benefit sales can do the same as many low benefit ones, so I do not complaint. I applaude their effort, and praise DW in the hope it will be sooner or later available directly here, be it alon or in a pack of various sims.

As for patching DW, 3rd party add-ons, etc., I reckon that when I played SC first time I never noticed it could be even better. This I learned only with SCX, and mainly thanks to the comments here (I myself probably can't notice that).... :88), so I suppose I would enjoy DW a lot (I'm also a wannabee Perry commander :lol: ).

those are the two cents :arrgh!:

It costs money to publish a game. It costs money to get a publisher to package your nice sim, put it in a box. It costs money to get retailers to take that box and put it on their shelves.

That money comes from the split of the profits.

I reckon that eventually we may see DW on the shelves of a local retailer.

The sales model that was chosen was due to the fact that at the time it was the best one for SCS, given the reasons ive mentioned above.

As for the marketing of the game......well, as someone who works in marketing, I think i could of done better.

After all, you produce a great product, that is subject to rave reviews, 99% of its users love and............................................... .................................................. .....................................nothing, A missed oppourtunity here.

I base this on conversations with other simmers. After all our precious sub community is only so big, however their are others who may play flight or tank sims that like a techno thriller sim experiance. And to my mind DW offers that in bucket loads.

It costs bugger all to market effectively because if its effective you get the return in sales.

I guess they had bigger fish to fry.

Tank and flight sims appeal to a similar target bunch to DW purchasers.

But their perception is of naval sims being laboriously slow. So you have to sell the features
which will appeal to these target game purchasers.

There are common characteristics:-
You are in the 'hot-seat'
The excitement of the 'duel'
The tactical manouvering.
Creating and evolving a plan of action.
Reacting flexibly to threats.
Selecting and using appropriate weapons.
Finding the target and making the kill.

and so on.............

You emphasise the 'sizzle' of the experience - thats what will draw the punters in.

Feature enthusiastic 'after-action' reports from players that convey what it means to be in DWs 'hot seats'.
Tankers and airheads wiil feel the buzz !
I did and I wont go back. :|\

same here i used to play flight sims but now its sub simd all the way

Sometimes you get no sales, no matter what your marketing is. People do know Dw is around. And it got reviews in major print magazines in Germany. There simply is not so much interest in it.

In no way I can see DW community rival the size of flightsim community. I described that especially the complexity of the sim (no critizism of mine, to be clear on that!) drives away people that I know, people that usually love to have complexity - in flightsims, strategy games. That is a different ballgame, as Bellman described. And for people that may live on small financial basis, have families, or are still kids, the higher price tag is an argument, too, not a major one as for example the price tag for Steel Beasts Pro will be (currently nagotiated due to the discusiion about copy protection they have), but it is a concern. I assume SCS was wise in the method it choosed. I don'T think this sim will see big sale numbers if it ís to be found on the shelves inside stores. the potential audience simply is not big enough in size. don't base your assumptions on community size on counting here at subsim.com - that people here love naval sim is no wonder. But we are only a small fraction of simmers and gamers out there. Also, amongst the yolung ones, the haunting of the console culture picks away at the basis of future PC audience with interest in simulations in the classical understanding.

I wonder how it will be with SBP when it comes out this late fall. it is even more expensive and maybe even will raise, if they should implement a dongle. The release is targetted at an audience that is probably even smaller in size than naval simmer's community, due to the price. The more game-like SB2 in one or two years will adress more people. I think one will know relateivel early if they made the correct decisions (small sale numbers, balanced by higher price). Then one could ask if SA maybe would have been better off to calculate with smaller sale numbers from the beginning, and raise the prize of the product to counter that.

What would have been the maximum price tag you would have been willing to pay for DW? Would you have bought it for double the money?

BTW :D, my timetable seems to get screwed up :lol: . Probably I buy DW end of next week from a guy coming around then, who bought it but but has little interest in it. It's the manual-version and looks like new, he said. He is in little troubles privately and financially, so we agreed to the price for a new product. Sorry that I do not help to increase SA's sale numbers that way, but he is an unhappy customer - and he is the brother of a friend of mine, so who would have rejected this offer.

I apologize for not sticking to my announcement that way :lol: :-j

No i dont think that DW will ever get any near the size of the flight sim community. What I ment was that given the complexity of some flight sims, and the fact that many are attracted by realism, and something takes time, skill and study to master, their must be some that would be intrested in DW.

A case in point is the SB story, the games been out for 5+ years, I only discovered it a month ago, due to another DW player mentioning it. I was intrested in it due to its complexity and realism. Now if i can be intrested in buying a very out of date and forgotten sim surely given the right targeting other members of the wider sim community would give DW a go.

:up: Exactly my thinking also, SquidB. :up:

Squid,

I am not sure if yo were aware that I spoke about the to-be-released SB Pro PE, not the old SB1 (SB Gold). SB Gold, where available, comes at around 10-15 bucks these days (at least the last time I saw it somewhere on shelves, and that is quite some time ago), the new version will ship at around 125-145 bucks, depending on wether they use dongle technology or not. That's why I philosophized about the different business model: make up for lower sales numbers with higher prices, if it is the hardcore theme-simmers and enthusiastically theme-interested fans anyway. From the beginning they do not aim for the wide market (that they will do with SB2 in not before early 2007 - it will be a less "sim-heavy" sim for that reason).

The market for subsims of the niveau of DW unfortunately is overestimated in size, probably, and it also is still quite saturated with SC. Also, compared to SHIII (the direct rival booth by market and release date) the DW graphics seem to be of slightly improved SC standard "only" and thus inferior to contemporary gfx standard, also SHIII is lacking the complexity of DW, hell, even SC has more complexity than SHIII, and for these reasons SHIII may have attracted a far bigger audience then DW. That is no critizism of mine, that is the reality of gaming markets - I just cannot imagine other reasonable explanations why a sim of complexity, thick manual and realism does not sell as well as was hoped for. People DO KNOW it is there, and it got good reviews in major print medias as well. But I saw people's interest level drop almost always whenever I tell them details about it. The theme of sonar, SSNs and sub-hunting by electronical means does not attract as much willingness to get engaged in complexity and manuals as other simulation themes can count on, namely flight sims. That is the bitter reality (disclaimer: No, I did not blame SA for patches when mentioning DW to other people, but even pointed out that as far as I do know it got relased in much better shape than SC back then). In regard to sale expectation, I think eSim (SBP) is more realistic in it's projections than SA was back then. So they avoid unrealistic planning and dissapointments and probably can only experience positive surprises.

One faint hope remains, that is a modding scene that swings into higher gear and comes up with siginificantly more than database editing (don't ask me what this "more" could be, I have no clue, but it must be a difference that is obvious even to the casually bypassing gamer). SCXII was a great acchievement for SC, but you only benefitted from it if you have dived deep into SC vanilla and thus had the experience to compare the abstract data and become aware of the diffrences in sonar and sound profiles and weapons - to the casual gamer (and most young customers are console-driven eye-candy lovers and action-freaks, don't forget that) the diffrences between vanilla SC and SCX maybe was not obvious at all.

If you visit simHQ you may have realised that they published two extensive "game revisited" reviews recently, about European air War and Enemy Engaged. The modding scene for these two games are amongst the most active and complex ones I have heared of, beside Falcon 4. If DW could show such a diversity of different styles and lifes in the long run, then maybe the revenues that were missed in the beginning will drop in piece by piece over longer time. But I doubt that this could be acchieved by numerical magic alone (editing sound profiles and such). DWX is unlikely to compenasate the missing sales of the present. But turning the somewhat aged-looking graphical presentation into something really spectacular maybe would help. Because unfortunately today's present indicates that DW has not the needed interest-trigger like for example SB1 to compensate for it's not-above-average graphcial presentation. It's the eyes that buy for many gamers out there.

Just one word on that I do not want to bash DW's graphics here, I judge them on the demo tht I know so far and regard them as slightly improved (and still way too dark :) ), compared to SC, but I admit the graphics alone wouldn't have drawn my interest to DW, if there wouldn't have been other factors as well. I am fact-oriented for the sake of my argument when rating them as standard only, it is not meant as critizism. Saturday I'll get visitors, and then have the complete game to see myself.

Skybird, i agree with most of what you say, especially with the point about community driven mods to keep DW alive. I think we can expect great things from the guys here.

And yes I did realise you ment SB Pro. SB pro is a spin off of the current tank sim that is aimed at defence agencies. SB2 will be the game version aimed at the home user/gamer.

As for paying $150 for the sim version.....yep id do it because it should be a quality product. Anyway your right the subsim community is overestimated as far as numbers go. My point is, (and i have both EAW and enemy engaged) is that i would of expected more cross over from devoties of other sim genres.

After all DW isnt just a sub sim, you can fly a seahawk or a orion, command a perry. Maybe its our fault for not spreading the work amongst other simmers, perhaps SCS should have focused on that aspect more. At the end of the day, i find it hard to belive that DW didnt become the cult classic it deserves to be, Just like EAW, Enemy engaged and dare i say it Falcon