Lets actively promote the game....heres why.

I'll drop my $0.02 on the bar and say that subsims will always be a relatively niche market because they demand patiance to play them well at high levels of realism. Spending six-hours stalking a convoy to torpedo one ship that you don't even see sink (this in December '44 in a U-Boat) has limited appeal even in the hardcore subsim community but the ability to do exactly this sort of thing seperates sub sims from sub games.

Widening the audience is a great idea but doing so will tend to turn sims into arcade sound-and-light extravaganza. Mainstream = lowest common denominator and the demographics that enjoy games like this:

http://www.theonion.com/content/vide..._game_consists

or this

http://www.theonion.com/content/vide...ts_gamers_play

are where the money is. Next step is an arcade style console submarine game with no simulation value but lots of GTA type action and that would be the death of franchises like the Silent Hunter series.

I suspect that SH5 will end up less of a simulation than either of its predecessors just to ensure a wider initial audiance. That SH5 cook would get real old real fast on a three month patrol to the Cape but might be tolerable on a single mission lasting perhaps an hour while racking up 150,000 GRT in the process. Hope I'm wrong though.

And yes I know those Onion vids are fake but if real either one would probably outsell SH3 or SH4.

Good Hunting