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Originally Posted by Julhelm
That probably had a lot to do with sub sims traditionally being of the survey variety. Flightsimmers have been used to single-platform sims since the 80's.
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yes, but those days are over. The economic model where you would pay $50-70 upfront and get a complete game no longer makes business sense. Costs have gone up and the number of potential customers are limited.
All the succesful recent sims, ROF, DCS, Third Wire, Combat Mission have moved to a building block approach. Even IL-2 would force you to rebuy the game every few years if you wanted to get the latest updates/new content.
I had suspected UBI had similar plans with SH5, since it contains code for Type II and IX U-boats. I would say one of the biggest obstacle was the lack of communication from UBI to explain their goals.
If you look at Combat Mission, their first generation games were all survey types. For their second generation games, they moved to a building block approach, but the Devs went to great length to explain the business reality and how a more focused approach would actualy produce better content for the consumer.
If UBI had a dedicated spokesman to explain their approach and that they actually care about sub simulations as more than just numbers on a balance sheet, they would get a lot more slack and support from the sim community. ROF, DCS and Combat Mission had all their share of misteps, bugs, missing features, but we forgive those because we know the Devs are committed to producing a quality sim.