Doubts!? Will they release a new Silent Hunter?!

[Leandro]

A good day to all commanders this is my first post hope you like it.
With the advent of successful simulations of war will be possible to have another title based on silent hunter, perhaps an alternate history during the Cold War, with the passage of conventional submarines (diesel / electric) for nuclear submarines? Or perhaps something that go in the future, around 2015, using the new Virginia-class maritime patrol missions?! Unlike the period of the First World war and Second World war, in which the submarines that were used on a large scale, the Cold War was a period technological development and in modern times, despite the SSN and SSBN platforms are the most powerful ever built war, wars maritime play a more tactical compared the use of submarine warfare in the first half of the 20th century. It would be possible to have a great simulator with submarines today?!

[1480]

Originally Posted by Leandro

A good day to all commanders this is my first post hope you like it.
With the advent of successful simulations of war will be possible to have another title based on silent hunter, perhaps an alternate history during the Cold War, with the passage of conventional submarines (diesel / electric) for nuclear submarines? Or perhaps something that go in the future, around 2015, using the new Virginia-class maritime patrol missions?! Unlike the period of the First World war and Second World war, in which the submarines that were used on a large scale, the Cold War was a period technological development and in modern times, despite the SSN and SSBN platforms are the most powerful ever built war, wars maritime play a more tactical compared the use of submarine warfare in the first half of the 20th century. It would be possible to have a great simulator with submarines today?!

Welcome aboard sir! This has been debated on these forums since sh4 was released. Search the forums for that subject since you will find many posts about for and against the cold war era. Not even sure at this point that there will be a sh6.

[CCIP]

Any game is possible in theory, and would be fun if made well.

In practice, this will not happen for a while. There are a few strategy games and wargames being developed that feature modern subs (from Naval War: Arctic Circle to Command Ops), but it is not very likely you'll see sub sims as such any time in the next few years. Ubisoft is not likely to develop another Silent Hunter game soon, or perhaps ever - SHV was a critical and commercial flop, and they will not be looking to spend money on this franchise. The only developer with real experience and credibility in making modern sub sims, Sonalysts, is currently not working on anything for the consumer market, instead building training software for military clients.

The most likely source from where a new sub sim might unexpectedly appear is from Russian developers - there is a decent simulation market and community in that country, and lower development costs; but to date, noone has announced any plans to work on it.

I don't think sub sims are dead or anything, and the dedicated community here more than proves that, but you're not going to see commercial development any time soon. I can almost guarantee you that you will not see a new sub sim title until, say, 2018. And then it will probably be another WWII sim. I think the market will, eventually, support new development, once new technology comes around and some of the current problems in making money from games that are not Call of Duty are resolved. But the Silent Hunter series is probably dead - long live Silent Hunter!

[HW3]

IMHO Silent Hunter V killed the Silent Hunter series, just as gaming consoles are killing PC gaming. There are few if any gaming makers willing to invest the time and resources into making games for PC's, when they can make them much faster and cheaper for the gaming consoles.

[Jimbuna]

Have to agree with the two posts above

While I would agree that the Silent Hunter franchise is now dead, I think that it is premature to kill off PC gaming due to consoles and such.

Rather I believe that PC games will evolve into something somewhat different than what we have become used to. Sound and light spectaculars, stunning visuals and first-person role playing games will continue to drift into the console format, becoming more interactive and also simpler to accommodate a wider audience. On the other hand, niche games and military simulations will continue to be produced but by smaller publishers and even individuals. These games will feature greater simulation value but be graphically limited since the cost of fancy graphics requires a large investment and commiserate return.

In addition to small companies, groups will come together to produce simulations either as open source or closed source with potential user input applied to the finished product. Expect no more CD-ROM or DVD and follow on DLC at additional cost will become industry standard.

Look at the work being done on Command here:

http://www.warfaresims.com/?page_id=1101

Also Steam and Iron the new WW1 naval simulation by NWS (hardly a large company) here:

http://forums.navalwarfare.net/showt...WNLOADS-THREAD

One might also include Guns of August, essentially a one-man design by Frank Hunter and marketed by Matrix Games:

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/...st.1914.-.1918

I would suggest that these games are indicative of the future of PC wargaming and there is probably little chance of a graphically impressive submarine simulator resembling the SH series in style or scope anywhere down the pipe.

[Angelo Cire]

I don't know. The assertion that it is cheaper to develop for consoles is incorrect. The SDKs for consoles can cost thousands of dollars up-front, and even after that you'll be developing in C# for 360, or C++ or the like for PS3(which you also can use for pc games).
The reason more large companies are developing for consoles is the ensured-compatibility user-base they offer over pcs.

As far as seeing a SH-style subsim in the near future, well.... gaming companies often forget their failures and put their hopes in reboots. Not that I'd expect graphics-obsessed Ubisoft to understand what was wrong with SH4 and SH5, and right with SH3....

The key is showing independent subsim developers support, which in-turn larger companies see. One indie success can spark corporate interest in a genre. Just look at Minecraft.

I think that unfortunately, modding communities for old games look to companies like die-hard nostalgic fans, rather than a genre-oriented user-base to work with. When Fallout 3 was released, all the FO1&2 fans derided it as missing the point of the series, and instead of Bethesda going, "maybe these guys know what they're talking about", they said "these guys are just old stick-in-the-muds", and went on to make Fallout: New Vegas, which flopped for exactly the reasons that the fans had told Bethesda it would.

[Fish In The Water]

Originally Posted by Leandro

A good day to all commanders this is my first post hope you like it.

Welcome aboard mate and thanks for kicking it off with an interesting topic!

[CCIP]

Personally, I also think SH4 and 5 get unfair flak as being 'botched' and 'worse' than SH3 - they were not. People really need to go back and remember SH3 as it was when it first came out. It's just that SH3 came after a long drought and filled an empty niche. I think very few people these days remember what SH3 was actually like when it first came out, and tend to compare 4 and 5 to what it became (largely thanks to mods) rather than on their own merits. That's not to say 4 and 5 shouldn't have been more, but the rumors of their being worse than 3 are greatly exaggerated. But they came at a point when the target market was already saturated. SH4 tried to capture that market with another theater, wasn't a significant technical improvement over 3 (although still an improvement), but that market was so sold on SH3 that many were too loyal to the Atlantic theater to give the Pacific a fair try. IMHO as both a game and a platform for mods, SH4 is far better than SH3. It's only because of loyalty of the fanbase to its predecessor that it never took off. SH5 instead tried to expand the market to more casual players - again, not a terrible idea, and again many good concepts. Sadly money ran out before ambitions, and the design was never really finished, and support cut off early. But as released, I'd argue it was better than SH3. It was just that we came to expect a lot more thanks to SH3, which brought something incredibly fresh to the table that, for all its flaws, still turned out to be exactly what so many of us wanted for years.

Give it a few years for technology to get substantially ahead, and the thirst for a new subsim will come back.

I think the base is solid through SH5.
They would just need to fix the things that need fixed and not add crap before that!

And if they don't want to do that because they don't want to sink any more $$ into it?

Allow a dedicated Group of Modders the Source Code!
At lest part of it anyway.
We could do so much and it would only put more Money in thier pockets.


OK. I woke up just now from a dream and realized how stupid that sounds to UBI.

What? Get something for free? Where's the catch?

[Obltn Strand]

This forum has some 65 000 members. I use this as a guideline to represent the number of subsim gamers around the globe.

Privateer said SH5 is solid base. Now 65 000 want's a better subsim like SH5 + additional expansion pack which has all the cool stuff like AI wolfpacks and so on. If this expansion pack costs 30$, profit is 1 350 000$ - expenses. Let's assume this expansion doesn't work without SH5 so ubisoft makes even more profits selling the original product.

I don't know nothing about computer programming. My guestion is how much subsim we can get for 1,5 to 2 million dollars?

[Angelo Cire]

Originally Posted by Obltn Strand

This forum has some 65 000 members. I use this as a guideline to represent the number of subsim gamers around the globe.

Privateer said SH5 is solid base. Now 65 000 want's a better subsim like SH5 + additional expansion pack which has all the cool stuff like AI wolfpacks and so on. If this expansion pack costs 30$, profit is 1 350 000$ - expenses. Let's assume this expansion doesn't work without SH5 so ubisoft makes even more profits selling the original product.

I don't know nothing about computer programming. My guestion is how much subsim we can get for 1,5 to 2 million dollars?

Unfortunately, companies the size of Ubisoft spend MUCH more than 2 million dollars developing games now, and expect returns in the high-tens to hundreds-of-millions. So called "AAA" games are mostly what Ubisoft focuses on making now, apart from their sport franchises.

The problem with subsims going forward is that any developing company won't want to treat it as a "sim", they'll want to do something "different" and "original" with the genre, like making your sub a home-base from which you conduct land incursions circa 2070..... or whatever they come up with, in order to turn a niche series into their next "AAA" action and/or FPS series.

Besides, "Silent Hunter" is already close enough to "Ghost Recon" or the like to make a gamer unfamiliar with the series think it an FPS just based on the name.