I haven't been able to play because of the queue problem, but even if i don't like it, or even if i don't ever get to play it I hope it does great. I hope it kills, I hope it becomes the next WoW.
Why? because it will broaden the base.
Imagine the distribution of sim players along an axis of difficulty/realism. I'll bet that like many other things it has a roughly bell-shaped curve, with a looong tail towards high realism/difficulty. The bulk of the potential players will be in the middle, because they enjoy or tolerate a moderate difficulty. But they are the majority so they will be targeted by developers. Hard core realistic sims are a fringe. They are marginal, meaning they exist in the margin. The long tail of the distribution. For the margin to be substantial, read economically profitable, the base has to be big.
Take flight sims. If we consider every flight sim, combat or no combat, including the utterly unrealistic space sims, the base is humongous. A minority of players will enjoy the hyperrealistic sims. But this minority, because of the huge base, is sizable enough to attract some developers. So we have great flight sims.
If you've ever wondered why Silent Hunter was the only game in town, and Dangerous waters was left on the side of the road (except for the modders), it's because the subsim base is not big enough to sustain development.
So the best thing that can happen is that everybody and his brother plays silent hunter online. When I see the ridiculous 630 people/ 2 months and a half queue, I don't think "damn ubisoft is screwing the pooch again". I look forward to all those people hungering for more realism, and other companies, or ubisoft itself, noticing.
And I close my browser and smile, waiting patiently for a cold-war nuke sim.
|