BOOM!
Nobody can ever say I'm afraid to share a room with an opinion! I just enjoy the heck out of Silent Hunter 4. I don't wish anything bad for SH5 but I do see it for what it is: a sim that only needs to exist for one reason.
There's a really interesting controversy going on over in the Valve/Steam world, where players of Left 4 Dead are finding that Valve is releasing Left 4 Dead 2. Now some splinter groups are claiming abandonment from a game company which has time after time demonstrated a pro-player stance, even organizing a boycott of L4D2 in the style of KrazyFrenchman over at Ubi forums a couple of years ago.
How dare they release a sequel to a game everybody loved! We shall intimidate them into changing their ways!
So what did Valve do? They sent a nice letter to the leaders of the boycott, paid for airline tickets, motel rooms and a tour of their operation. The prima-donna boycott organizers sold out and now are great cheerleaders for L4D2. Talk about great response by a game company!
Game companies aren't evil. They are conservative, following established business patterns which will to some degree succeed. They are afraid to innovate. Small companies MUST innovate to grow. Large companies are much more afraid to fail than they are willing to succeed. Fear of failure is fear of success. But it is NOT evil.
They think they're protecting their assets. Tell that to Sony, who squished all opposition to Blu-Ray and now is proud sole owner of an overpriced turkey nobody wants to buy. All that bribery and intimidation cash was utterly wasted. They would have been better served to put those assets toward building a superior product for a price that people thought was fair. Gangster tactics, whether in the business world or your personal life, only work for a little while. Then you pay the price for being vastly outnumbered by angry victims.
Hey, back to the subject! Vive le Silent Hunter 4! (spelling is subject to correction). Nose to the grindstone, Sir Captain America. You're working on a winner. Until morale improves, the beatings will continue!