Seeadler, those are tough numbers! I am going to put my money where my mouth is and pick up at least 4 of these just like I did with SH4. From what one of devs is posting on another thread about the innards, SH5 will be a modders dream come true.

Early days yet and from the small amount of info already supplied by yourself , lots of people are very excited about SH5 and cannot wait to get it .

Part of the resistance is a business model which does a grave disservice to the market and the game company. Why must SH5 start out with zero sales? Why must it be "all new code, all new bugs?" Why must all those who have bought SH3 and SH4 be orphaned when neither game has reached anywhere near its potential? Why is Ubi settling for chump change when it could be uncovering much more income? What part of the disposable game business model makes any sense at all for the simulation market?

With the very successful MMORPGs, predominately web-based, evolutionary rather than disposable, subscription based rather than initial sale based, customer oriented rather than plastic oriented, the world has changed. We have an instinctive distaste for business models that work against our needs, our interests and which just disrespects the customers on whom Ubi depends for its income.

I would gladly pay $5.00 per month to play an actively maintained, evolutionary submarine simulation. Whoa! That's not enough money! Bullschnitzel. What has Ubi made off of me? Nothing. I bought my piece of plastic (that's all they sell) for $15.00 on Ebay less than six months after SH4's publication date. With a $5.00 per month subscription rate, I would have paid for two years and two months, $130.00. The only entity I could pay would be Ubi.

What kind of distribution costs are associated with all those stupid boxes and plastic disks? How much is wasted on copy protection when the game should most profitably be distributed for free, since you could only play it with a subscription? Why should I have to junk all my SH3 and SH4 experience to buy a brand new game of unknown quality? I'm VERY happy with what I have.

When the entry level of a game is $5.00, many more will try it. When it is subscription based at $5.00 per month many more can afford it, although they will pay Ubi much more cash. When it is subscription based, Ubi is paid to ensure that players have a great experience, not just to produce a plastic drink coaster. Companies do what they are paid to do. A subscription must be paid to the publisher, not Ebay! Millions of dollars from the secondary markets come home where they belong.

This is easy stuff. No brain surgeon is needed to figure out why the simulation market isn't working. It isn't working because the customer is not getting what he wants and needs. It isn't working because game companies are stuck on thinking that their business is producing disposable drink coasters. It isn't working because game companies aren't producing an income stream to support their products. It isn't working because the secondary resale market has no benefit for the publisher of the game. It isn't working because we want to drive cars and Ubi is producing buggy whips.

I'd rather play SH3 in 2015 than pay a monthly subscription, and that goes for any game there is.

@RR, You concept of a subscription based evoloutionarly sub sim, is not an entirely bad one.

but in reality i reckon the innital reaction to a 5$ subscription service would be one of horror from most casual gamers.
(who by the way, out number us hardcore simmers by, like -A 1000 to 1.)

long story short, I dont belive there are enough hard core simmers out there who'd be willing to cough up a monthy subscription.

Mr Non-sub-enthusiast-Casual-gamer,(with a short attention span) might buy an SH title based on good reviews or pretty trailers, but after a couple weeks or months, he will lose interest and move on - just like he does with most games he buys.

Just my 5 cents.

Actually that's the good part. The casual gamer, who wouldn't sink $50 into a sub sim that they don't have any idea they like would be able to try it out, be hooked and become a long-term customer.

Just look at the MMORPG market! Tons of people check it out for a couple of months and drop out. But most of them wouldn't have paid a penny or might have bought a game for $10 or less on Ebay, not benefiting the game company at all. Instead, the MMORPG gets full benefit of casual users. And a portion of them are hooked, paying their subscription rate for years. The companies using this model are fabulously successful.

Look. People do what you pay them to do. If you wish to pay a game company to produce a drink coaster, that's what you'll get. But if you're willing to pay them $5.00 per week to build, evolve and maintain a great game that keeps getting better, then THAT's what you'll get.

Once a drink coaster is built, there is no incentive to fix any problems, improve it, or make sure buyers have a positive experience. The game is already sold. All the cash it can generate is already in! All that is left is expenses. Expenses are to be minimized.

Game developers are expenses too! When the game is finished they have to leave to work on another drink coaster. Then, as in the case with SH3, the code is incompletely documented and nobody knows how it works. It can't be properly modified and it becomes a black box to be used or discarded. In any event, with the drink coaster marketing model, game developers are expenses to be minimized: disposable liabilities. That's what you paid for!

If you want the best game possible, that's what you have to pay for. If you want the most income possible from your project, your business model has to produce that. The drink coaster business model fails both ways.

We have preety decent Romanian beer and there's not much difference between ours and the imported one. Actually draft Timisoreana beer is good enough to sink you to the bottom without too much CO2 headaches :shucks:.
But on the other hand I'm not a fan of fitlered beer. So when I decide to get dizzy and sing some Guitar Hero tunes without feeling like a dork, I get some imported Paulaner unnfiltered beer from a nearby store :up:. Love it.

Already did :03:

Damn it Jim! We are dealing with game sales here!


http://iamodb.files.wordpress.com/20...ones-mccoy.jpg

Nail on the head. A sim needs ongoing support to be polished and become all it can be. :yep:

And actual game development needs to continue after release. Simulations should continually evolve with a stable dev team. There should never be another version of Silent Hunter. It should change weekly to be better and better. There could well be parallel versions for U-Boat and Fleet Boat. There would be plenty of room for a playable ASW module and interoperability between the three.

But no more drink coasters! Distribution costs and antipiracy costs (which don't do ANYTHING to keep piracy down, only make sleazy companies like Sony a lot of ill-gotten profits) can be slashed to the bone. ENCOURAGE people to copy and distribute with wild abandon, at their expense. The game can only be played with a paid subscription.

After a year and a half of evolution, the sub sims would be so good Mikhayl would be a full convert. The drink coaster business model is not capable of producing the submarine simulation the market wants and is willing to pay for.

Online activation for a game is enough for me not buying. Monthly fee for digital content? Just no way, ever.

Now maybe you're right, maybe a huge majority of people would follow that model, I don't know, I just know I wouldn't.

I think MMORPG is not a good example, it has a much wider appeal than Silent hunter.

You say the casual gamer might be hooked once he plays it, (its easy enough for us to say that) but whos to say he wont pick up the sim and within a couple of hours think:, 'meh it too slow and / or too complicated - i cant be arsed'
Submarines simulations are a niche market and they have never been very popular. I dont see how providing an 'evolving subsim' will sufficiently change that.
Since you cannot bring a product market in the hope that it will create a mass of consumer interest that isnt already out there.
- unless you invented something new a revolutionary like the television, but subsims are tried and tested.

In this case you'd literally need to convert a signifficant number of casual gamers in to die-hard Subnuts... i just dont see it happening.

Dont get me wrong I love your idea. but to pay a subscription for an evolving subsim of any kind, you need to be fanatical about it. outside of this forum, how many Subsim fanatics do you know?

Once again I drag the DCS series into this. The idea is to release standalone packages for a single price (no subscription or micro-transactions), but all packages can be used together.

Say after SH5 release, they continue to work on the engine (patching) while developing more subs and other units. 9 months later, they release the next game, for example British subs. People who are only interested in the British subs buy only that, but people who have both modules can choose from either German or British campaign.

Simply put, a modular structure, with all of them plugging into the same engine. The basic game is expanded and refined continuosly, while regular modules add more content and provide income.

Ideally the content is modular to such a degree, that all content can be relatively easily ported into a new engine to keep up with progressing technology.



If they can do it for a flightsim, it should be possible here too, but it requires a huge effort, I guess. :hmmm:

Doesn't matter. They have decided what they will do. Now it's up to us to decide what we will do. In the meantime I love SH4 and don't feel I have a great stake in whether SH5 is a diamond or a lump of coal.

A diamond would be nice though!:D