[Abraham]

Originally Posted by Gizzmoe

I´m grateful that Ubisoft chose to put their money into the development of a niche product, SH3, and thus taking a certain risk. They could have easily taken the safe route and put the money into a project that guaranteed them a much bigger investment return. Yes, it´s a business and it´s about money, but I believe that Ubisoft isn´t a soulless company.

Gizzmoe stated what I ment. Subsim games were not a big deal. Most were like Silent Service where with a lot of imagination from the gamer you moved a blob over endless ocean squares, your biggest risk being that you ran out of fuel. Which by the way had no realistic consequences.
Aces of the Deep was the first game with a thrill; a band and girls waving your boat goodbye, "Rauchsäulen am Horizont, Herr Kaleun!", etc.
SH II promised much but it was due to modders like Vickers on this site that the game could be played at all. And many still remember the long and winding road that led to SH III.
So UBI could have stayed out of the subsim business altogether, could have made a simple product, but decided to take i'ts job seriously and came with a fully moddable game, with 'sexy' features like birds, lighthouses, nice waves AND A CREW!
With all the critic on the system of watches, I'm convinced that there will never be a sub game without lookouts on the bridge, thanks to UBISOFT. And now UBI decided to stay in the market and bring out SH IV, which should have perfected many of new features of SH III. And perhaps SH III will later be brought up to SH IV standards...
For me one thing is clear; UBISOFT is marketleader in good subsim games, and we owe the growth of our Subsim.com community largely to those games.
I don't know how much real interest the top management of UBISOFT had in subsim games, but I do know - I spoke with some - that the development team was highly motivated and enthousiastic about the project, which showed in the product.