What will become of the Silent Hunter Series?

[hocking]

I fear we are nearing the end here as far as Silent Hunter is concerned. At this point, I believe that UBI has locked the series between a rock and a hard place. Here is my predictions:

1) The game will not interest casual or FPS gamers like they are wanting it to. Those people will not buy this game no matter how you dumb it down. Furthermore, by providing one sub to use for the entire game goes completely against this strategy. It is laughable. Imagine a FPS with one weapon to use through the entire game. Just laughable is all I can say here.

2) UBI has completely turned away the hard-core Silent Hunter fans by their stupic DRM decision, and there desire to dumb the game down in an effort to attract the people mentioned in number 1. Most of us will wait for the greatest mods to come out, but these mods will be very very very slow in coming since so many of us are not into the series. This could be upwards of 1 1/2 to 2 years after release at the earliest.

3) The game will end up being the most highly pirated game from the series due to the DRM decision. I am not condoning this at all, but this is the way it works. The more you try to prevent pirates from pirating your software, the more your software gets pirated. SH5 will be the most pirated version of the Silent Hunter series without a doubt. You maximize your revenue by just pricing your game at $40 to $50 and deal with it. When you load your game up with DRM junk, people don't buy it, pirates pirate it just for the challenge, and then the people who wouldn't buy it before get a pirated copy just because they are mad at you. They rationalize their stealing very quickly and easily because they feel like they were being wronged by the publisher who was inflicting them with DRM junk even though they paid for the game. You turn non-pirates into pirates very quickly when you do stuff like this. Again, I am not condoning this at all, but this is how it works. Why don't publishers get this.

Put all those three points together, and you have a game that takes in less revenue than any of the other four games in the series before it. This usually spells "DOOM" for the series. Just like my other simulator, "Flight Simulator", I feel like I am about to lose another one of my favorite simulations on the PC.

[Boris]

1) I play FPS games too, so I must be stupid. This whole "they've dumbed the game down" argument is getting so annoying. We haven't even seen what the game plays like on high realism. Making a COD style FPS is not their "strategy", where are you getting this from?
One sub is fine if it's all polished and done well. There's no reason why the devs can not make a good, realistic sim, with only one sub-type. There's plenty of sims with only one craft, even dumbed down ones:

Realistic:

Falcon
DCS Black Shark

Dumbed down:

F-22 Lightning
F-22 Raptor
The Commanche series
F-16
Mig-29
Armored Fist

2) Again, you have no evidence for the game being "dumbed down". Not sure what your point is in this one. You go into DRM in 3). Not sure if you're right about the mods being slow to come. If the dev tools come out as promised, I bet you'll see the opposite happening.

3) This is a warranted fear. If the DRM gets cracked SH5 may be pirated more than the other titles. I agree with you on this point.
This may be the case, but maybe it won't. This is just speculation at this point. Maybe all the negative hype is all just a lot of hot air, and when it comes down to it, the new DRM will do no worse than starforce did for SH3.
Fact is that SH5 will come out with Ubi's new DRM, and there are no signs that this will change at such short notice. For Ubi's sake, and for the sake of the SH series, I hope it works.

Ps: There's no way SH5 will be as successful as DOOM

[mookiemookie]

Hard to fault what you're saying, but what I would offer is this:

1) It never has.

2) We say this every time a new SH game comes out. However, this is supposed to be the most moddable yet. And while many of the old modders have said that the DRM has scared them off, I think that either a) Ubi will drop this scam in the not too distant future once they realize it's not working, or b) the game will turn out better than expected in terms of a modding platform and people will begrudgingly buy it to satisfy their curiosity/modding itch. Either way, I think we'll see a lot of great mods for this game.

3) I don't doubt it. But then again, that goes for most every game that Ubi is planning on releasing under this dumb idea. And that will only contribute to Ubi's decision to drop this idea. Which I guarantee WILL happen within the next 12 months.

[JU_88]

Sales = Outcome
Simple as that.

Mind you, since Ubi are tightening their purse strings, Id expect them to concentrate on more profitable projects for the time being.

[Méo]

Originally Posted by JU_88

Id expect them to concentrate on more profitable projects for the time being.

Excellent point!

And I would add ''less controversial projects too''

I always see comments like: ''We, the customers, have the power to demand a game without this'' or ''the customer is always right'' and blablabla...

The problem is that ''We'' are MAYBE no longer enough potential buyers and/or we are too capricious ...at the end they have the power to simply reorient their business choices (i.e. put an end to the series).

I'm afraid we might not be so ''powerful''.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Méo

Excellent point!

And I would add ''less controversial projects too''

I always see comments like: ''We, the customers, have the power to demand a game without this'' or ''the customer is always right'' and blablabla...

The problem is that ''We'' are MAYBE no longer enough potential buyers and/or we are too capricious ...at the end they have the power to simply reorient their business choices (i.e. put an end to the series).

I'm afraid we might not be so ''powerful''.

If I were going to bet, I would say you are right. There are not enough sales to justify the expense of a comprehensive, historically accurate, realistic simulation. And some of us are way too anal about every detail.

My prediction: if SH5 comes out in good condition, it will sell comparable to SH3. That may allow for SH6 somewhere in the future.

If SH5 is buggy and broke, then the negative reaction will kill sales and there will be no more Silent Hunters for a long time, if ever. People don't want to buy an unfinished game, and it's hard to trust Ubisoft to support the game with patches, after all the trouble it took to get the final SH4 patch from them.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

If I were going to bet, I would say you are right. There are not enough sales to justify the expense of a comprehensive, historically accurate, realistic simulation. And some of us are way too anal about every detail.

Let's say Ubi drops the SH franchise. Still holds the rights, trademarks, etc, but says "that's it, no more." What do you think are the chances of another publisher putting out a U-boat sim? Some small boutique firm that's big into simulation/war games? Without Ubi as a competitor, I would think it would open the playing field, so to speak.