Chance of an Expansion?

[Grayghost59]

If we the customers contact them by e-mail, snail mail and by phone, that should show them that profit is in this market. Money always talks louder.

[Yosarian]

Originally Posted by Grayghost59

If we the customers contact them by e-mail, snail mail and by phone, that should show them that profit is in this market. Money always talks louder.

For a game publisher profit starts not until 150.000 sold copies.

[Ducimus]

I think you'll be lucky to see a patch, let alone an expansion.

If you dig through the files you'll see plenty of comments that suggest
a "Pay me" for this fix type thing was planned.
Like the Expansion for SH4 was done.
With all the Villagers ready to Burn down Dr. Ubi-stien's abode?
I think they'll just move the lab and throw something ugly at us at a future date and call it candy.

[Ducimus]

Personally, i think SH5 will be the last submarine simulation released for many years to come. Their just isn't a big enough market for it this day and age.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Personally, i think SH5 will be the last submarine simulation released for many years to come. Their just isn't a big enough market for it this day and age.

You've been saying that for a few months now. I used to disagree with you, but as of late, I have come to believe that you are indeed correct.

From the SubSim Meet 2008?
I never really thought SH5 would be here now.
I figured on one more year till release.
(It needed it badly unfortunately for us.)
The market was bad enuff before SH5.
Then they throw out something that just wasted a possible whole new crowd!
As I go back and watch the hype?
I keep seeing Crack being sold on the street corner.

[janh]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

You've been saying that for a few months now. I used to disagree with you, but as of late, I have come to believe that you are indeed correct.

You guys are probably right, but I would also not completely rule out any surprise from a new publisher that sees his time to enter this genre come now.

Also Sonalysts have been doing well recently, and might be up to "outsource" some of their training software for the navy again as a greatly simplified game. Maybe they'll finally work on a new sequel for 1950+ naval warfare.

My opinion is that if we were given simulations at a lower release rate (in contrast to Ubis new strategy), but each time with substantial new features and improvements as wished by the community, and great modding capabilities, then these games would have a long lifetime and may over a few years generate their 150k sales. And with good games like SHIII, especially once it was supermodded, I can wait for another 3-5 years for the sequel.

[DeadlyWolf]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Personally, i think SH5 will be the last submarine simulation released for many years to come. Their just isn't a big enough market for it this day and age.

Are you kidding??
SH5 could have sold tons of copies if not for the retarded decision-making by Ubisoft, both in the drm, the shameful state in which the game was released, and the total lack of support afterwards.
IMO all the people here that loved SH3\GWX should not buy a Ubisoft game ever again.

I've recently come across this, regarding the incredibly healthy state of pc gaming even within the big companies. Look, at Ubisoft (they even list the revenue in % and not in $)

The PC gaming week made me think about something... it's the whole "PC gaming is dead" debate.

People basicly throw this claim into a discussion but hardly have any evidence to back up their claim besides "there are no games for PC", "there is no money in PC gaming because of piracy" or some old NPD sales report. So i figured there must be a way to bring some actual facts to this discussion.

These facts can be easily obtained, trough the annual finnancial reports by publishers. So i did look up some reports and the results are rather suprising. That's why i'm gonna share them with you people here:
(All $ numbers are MILLIONS)

Electronics Arts

Link to the report: [files.shareholder.com]

Important information is on page 184 of the adobe document.

Net revenue by platform

Xbox360 - $868
PS3 - $771
Wii - $570
PC - $687

As you can see the PC made even more net revenue then the Wii did. It's within shooting range of the PS3.

Activision Blizzard

Link to the report: [files.shareholder.com]

Important information is on page 27 of the adobe document.

Net revenue by platform

Xbox360 - $857
PS3 - $584
Wii - $584
PC - $1.412

It should be noted that this is the Report of 2009, all other publisher reports are from 2010, the one for activision 2010 isn't released yet afaik. So it doesn't include Starcraft 2, but it does include Modern Warfare 2. As you can see WoW is hard at work. The money generated by WoW alone dwarfs any other platform by far.

Also MW2 had a huge impact on the console net revenue, boosting it considerably. For comparisson here are the 2008 numbers that don't include MW2:

Xbox360 - $362
PS3 - $241
Wii - $407
PC - $1.251

Without a mega release like MW2 the WoW/PC revenue alone surpasses that of ALL consoles combined.

Take Two Interactive

Link to the report:
[phx.corporate-ir.net]

Important information is on page 23 of the adobe document.

Net revenue by platform

Xbox360 - $171
PS3 - $155
Wii - $5
PC - $10

That's Red Dead Redemption hard at work, which didn't get a PC release.
The PC once again generated more net revenue then the Wii did.
Without such a mega seller the platforms are way closer to each other. For comparisson reasons here are the numbers from 2009 where no huge console exclusive title like RDR got released.

Xbox360 - $30
PS3 - $11
Wii - $15
PC - $13

As you can see, without a huge console exclusive getting released the PC holds up pretty well. Who knows how the numbers for 2010 would have looked if they actually released RDR for the PC too...

Ubisoft

Link to the report:
[www.ubisoftgroup.com]

Important information is on page 16 of the adobe document.

Sales by platform in %.
(sadly there is no net revenue in $ values)

Xbox360 - 22%
PS3 - 23%
Wii - 26%
PC - 8%

Okay doesn't look that great over at Ubisoft. But the question is, why? Hasn't Ubisoft been the one who invented their awesome new DRM to combat piracy? Doesn't look like it worked that well... to the contrary i think it actually backfired. Also they make the majority of their money trugh Wii casual titles, so it could also be a problem with their overall software lineup.

Another Publisher i wanted to add had been Bethesda Softworks (ZeniMax Media Inc.). But sadly i couldn't find any annual finanical reports from them. If you find them feel free to share them.

But it's not far stretched to assume that the PC side of things don't look that bad at ZeniMax either. Considering that that Bethesda has a tradition in strong PC games, they also have Arkane studios, Splash Damage and the newly aquired id Software which traditionaly are also very strong in the PC sector.

So here you have it, these are actual facts about the market situation. And they clearly show there is TONS of money to be made on the PC. It's the task of publishers/developers to tab into that potential and actually make that money.

And before anybody brings this up: I'm well aware that EA has The Sims, Acti/Blizzard has WoW which are big hitters. But as the examples of MW2/RDR show that the console market also depends very heavily on a few very big franchises beeing sold. So i don't see that as an valid counter-point.

Thanks for reading (if you got this far) feel free to discuss and feel free to link to this comment the next time some troll comes along going "there is no money in PC gaming herp derp".

You can find the article here: http://kotaku.com/5677764/

Personally, I can only hope Ubisoft to go bankrupt and sell his intellectual properties to others.

PS: uhm the quote above was way too old , consider it as a mere inspiration for the post ^^

[janh]

Originally Posted by DeadlyWolf

PS: uhm the quote above was way too old , consider it as a mere inspiration for the post ^^

Those are 2009-10 numbers, so quite up to date. I would also expect a correlation between Ubi's decline in PC sales and it's pioneering role in ever worse DRM solutions. But so many other factors, from actual product quality (or buggy 1st releases and related bad press), decline of the customer group of "complex sim/strategy" fans and growing group of "casual" gamers (with little interest to read through thick manuals/learn complex interfaces/games), and the companies shift to "cheaper, simpler" console games play into that as well.

Any conclusion on that would, however, be as unsupported as statements like "the PC market will die". Maybe the PC market will see a decline for simple titles without higher complexity, which can be realized on a console without keyboard etc., or appeal more to casual gamers. I doubt anybody looked at that in detail. But I would expect that for complex simulations, or games with complex backgrounds/rules/physics etc, the PC will always be the platform of choice. Maybe with the number of customers for this market declining, we will see less of those titles in the future, but hopefully more quality. And maybe some "garage-company" now and then will throw in a big surprise, just as it was in the past 20 years.

[elanaiba]

Originally Posted by privateer

If you dig through the files you'll see plenty of comments that suggest
a "Pay me" for this fix type thing was planned.
Like the Expansion for SH4 was done.

Jeff, I'm sorry but there's nothing true in your assumption of a "pay me for this fix attitude. And there's nothing bad about planning ahead for further development, free or paid. Hell, we've been using some code from SH3 era.

If everyone would plan ahead properly things would run much more smoothly in development, instead of hitting all sorts of bad / obsolete parts of code that you can't rewrite cause you lack the time.

[BigBANGtheory]

Not just bad planning, bad communication also.

Its not just SH5 either this whole mess has damaged the entire Ubisoft brand.

The development team should consider going it alone IMHO, put a business case together for another publisher with proper planning and resign from Ubisoft when the time is right. There is some good work in SH5 it just not all there...

[Karasunx]

Even if expansions aren't planned, that would be an interesting route to take with Silent Hunter. Other sims that I know of (Rise of Flight, Railroad Sims) add other vehicles and features in expansion formats. It makes sense, at least in my mind, trying to support a niche game has got to be costly so why not develop smaller add ons that people can pay for if they really want them. True, people would probably complain that these "added features" should have been in the initial release, but paying 10-20$ for what someone spent 100's of man hours on would be worth it. Not to mention extending and improving the life of what was a good base game.

Originally Posted by elanaiba

Jeff, I'm sorry but there's nothing true in your assumption of a "pay me for this fix attitude. And there's nothing bad about planning ahead for further development, free or paid. Hell, we've been using some code from SH3 era.

If everyone would plan ahead properly things would run much more smoothly in development, instead of hitting all sorts of bad / obsolete parts of code that you can't rewrite cause you lack the time.

thats like building a brand new car only to put bald tires and a worn out engine in it , it makes no sense and is the core of where ubi went wrong.

[SilentSnake]

Well the devs are paid to make the game and once they have made it they are not going to continue patching it or making expansions unless UBI pays them to. Unfortunately the game did not sell very well and its one of those games that a good review would actually get people to purchase. The lack of an expansion proves the game did not sell well. That does not mean its the end of the subsim genre, far from it. A company might see a gap in the market and i am sure another will come along eventually, it just wont be called silent hunter ( unless someone buys the right to name ).