[StarTrekMike]

That was a really well written post, it really does reflect many of my feelings on the subject, I think the Microsoft flight reference is apt and I compare SHO and MS Flight often because they share many (rather unfortunate) qualities.

My concern is that this is just Ubisoft's way of saying "This is the way it is going to be from here on out!" I mean, it is not hard to see that they have taken many steps away from the simulator genre and one only needs to look at how they handled the release of IL-2 Cliffs of Dover and pretty much any Silent Hunter since SHIII to see how little they actually care about the simulator audience.

I have had many discussions with folks I know about why simulators went from being one of the sure bets in the PC gaming market to something of a extreme fringe genre where only the most dedicated stick around and we only get a slow trickle of new blood.

The answer is simple, we as simmers are much more aware of our wants and needs than the average gamer, we have years of reading books, looking at data and playing prior simulators so we already know what we want and what we expect, companies like Ubisoft don't want to deal with those kinds of expectations because they require a investment of time and money that they are simply not willing to put forth.

Now, the interesting question is how did it get that way? How did sims go from one of the more popular gaming genre's to one of the least in such a short time? (compare sim production from 1997 to about 2001 and you will see what I mean.)

The answer lies with the publishers, guys like EA (who once controlled the mighty Jane's combat simulation's), Activision and Ubisoft (who owns Silent Hunter, the Lock-on name and a few others) have worked very hard to convince the public that specific genre's are dead (sims being one of them) and they do that because they want two things.

1.) Customers that are younger and more receptive to newer practices like DLC, the free to play concept, MMO social features and invasive DRM practices, us older gamers are not as keen to jump on those particular industry buzzword wagon.

2.) Genre's like the tactical shooter (the original Rainbow six, Ghost recon), the simulator and others have reached a very high level of sophistication and did so rather early, these publishers don't want to invest that much money and time into pleasing the fans of those early games because they can't exploit them like they do with more modern properties or even modern interpretations of games like Rainbow six or Ghost recon (both pale shadows of what they once were.)

Big publishers don't want us around anymore, they tell us "not everyone has time for those sims, we need to try and grab a wider audience that might not care about historical or technical accuracy) without even looking at the fact that simulators are very much a "if you build it, they will come" kind of thing.

Simulators are not dying because nobody wants them, they are dying because these big publishers don't want to make them, not because they are too expensive but because the market already knows what it wants, we know what kind of quality we expect and many of us won't settle for anything less than that.

Many call us stubborn but in reality, we are some of the best consumers in the gaming industry, we don't just buy everything just because, we actually think about our purchases and tend to stick with them longer (which brings me to my final point.)

Guys like EA, Activision and Ubisoft hate the idea of a title that lasts more than a fiscal year, they want to put out sequel after sequel and only add small additions to each, it is good business but bad for the overall gaming market because games are no longer designed to have any sort of longevity, sims tend to gather loyal fanbases that are hesitant to move on to something new if they feel the current version works just fine.

It is a sad state of affairs that is only made worse when companies like Ubisoft sit on properties like Silent Hunter and don't just auction them to whoever might be willing to give it a fair shake, they did the same with Lock-on and yet Eagle Dynamics still said what essentially amounts to a "screw you!" and released a followup called Flaming cliffs (though you still need the original Lock-on disc, thanks Ubisoft...)

Companies like 777 (and the new 777/1C merger), Eagle Dynamics, Laminar research, Chris Roberts with his Star Citizen project and even Fingers crossed interactive (Scott Juliano) with his Rogue system project are proving that the demand for simulators of all types is still high, not in the way the demand for the next Call of duty is high but still enough for publishers to take notice.

In a way, I am glad that big publishers leave sims to smaller, more talented, dedicated and more ethical privately owned developers, they have proved that customer satisfaction is not as important to them as their overall sales.

Still, it would be nice if we could have a larger audience for sims, at least enough to lower prices on peripherals and bolster the sizes of the teams working on sims currently.

Silent Hunter online is simply a symptom of a larger disease and other great franchises have been tainted by it also, just take a look at Mechwarrior online and Microsoft Flight (thankfully a failure).