[janh]

Originally Posted by Placoderm

"This can only mean one thing"

Yes, That UBISOFT screwed themselves out of thousands of sales and deserve the consequences for their lack of trust in their core customer base. The have nobody to blame but themselves and I, for one, could not care less if they never produce another game if this is what they think of the people who got them where they are today.

They were afraid of PIRATES?!?! Really?!? Heck, Ubisoft have done more financial damage to themselves by their own self-destructive paranoia than if every software pirate on the planet had copied their precious game.

Do you realize that at a 50% reduction in the sales price, they are loosing more money than if 1 out of every 2 potential customers had pirated their game? Add to that the PR nightmare and future losses of sales that will result from their decisions, and it is UBISOFT and nobody else who is to blame for this failure in their sales.

As for the whiners who are saying that if we do not kiss the figurative behind of Ubisoft or else we will never get another submarine simulation? Get real...we do NOT have a submarine simulation with SH5, we have a very pretty and graphically intense ARCADE experinece...but not a simulation. If there were a Silent Hunter 6, do you really think it would be any different? Again, ...get real.

Before Silent Hunter there was Aces of the Deep...and folks lamented the loss of their beloved Aces. Before Aces of the Deep we had Silent Service...and people cried that they could not run Aces on their comuters and begged for Microsoft to continue developing Silent Service. I guarantee you that after Silent Hunter sinks to the briny deep there will be something to fill the gap it leaves, and maybe...just maybe...it will take the collapse of the SH franchise to bring that opportunity to light. History has shown that whatever follows will likely be better than anything that came before.

Do I want Silent Hunter to die? NO, not at all...but if it does it will not be due to anything but Ubisoft's own lack of focus and abandonment of it's previously very loyal customer base.


"...They'll be no competitors of Ubisoft to come along and pick up where they left-off"

Oh Really? Exactly what competitors do they have now? Perhaps with a publishing giant like Ubisoft out of the picture, an independant development house can finally compete and produce something made by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts. (Eagle studios would never have been able to make Jutland if the Great Naval Battles franchise were still in the way...)


"...because SH5 is the last one and the horrible irony is, it's probably the best!"

Graphically, yes. It is gorgeous. The modeling is beautifully done and the ocean simulation is the best ever attempted, bar none. Historically though, not even close. Silent Hunter 5 is to historical simulations what Enigma Rising Tide was...except that Enigma at least understood that it was in an historical alternate reality. Silent Hunter pretends just the opposite.

Wow, very sharp posts, both of yours. There is little to add, nor much ground to argue against it. I concur that Ubisofts OSP-DRM concept has done them more damage for this generation of games (SHV, ACII, S7...) than pirates could ever have done. And this is surely going to propagate into their future releases for probably some 3-6 years. I hope this time they won't easily blame it on pirates.

I am more and more convinced that there are plenty of examples that show that not piracy is the real problem of the gaming industry, though it does cost some sales. There are just too many examples of new studios/developers in the past 15 years that have landed "1st time" superhits, which proved to be ground-breaking new game ideas, features etc. And too many examples of small and big companies developing something that they had in mind, but that was orthogonal to the gamers interests, or badly executed. They just failed to approach and bind customers through service, quality and addressing the wishes of the latter (all of which is so common in markets/jobs where you still have real contact with your customer basis).

Surely nobody wants to see the SH series die, many of us have spent way to far happy hours playing them. But a bad product is as good as no product at all. And as you concluded, many subsim series already died, and always a new generation followed that was better than any predecessor. So, have a tea and let's wait and see.