I dont see the use of rehashing the history of the SH series or engaging into yet another UBI-bash thread. Of course the SH series is dead, but you can't say it's all UBI's fault, the consumer has to bear part of the blame.
We have always known Ubisoft is in the market to make money, well guess what?, that's how the free market system works, you make a profit or you go bankrupt.
Wargames are a niche market and subsims are in an even smaller niche. According to UBI's own figures, the entire SH series from SH1 to SH5 sold 1,500,000 units which sounds like a lot until you find out that Assassin's Creed 3 alone sold 7,000,000 units in just the FIRST MONTH.
Major publishers are becoming like major film studios, just looking for the next blockbuster. At least we should give UBI credit for sticking with the SH series instead of just bailing out of the sim market like every other major publisher back in 1999-2000.
Yes, the SH series was never hard core enough for some, but UBI never hid the fact that they were aiming for a subsim-lite that was fun to play. It is easy to blame UBI for not putting out a ultra realistic sub simulation, but they never said that was their goal.
A lot of people say the SH series started to go downhill with SH4. Well guess what, SH4 fully patched worked great and fully modded is now one of the finest subsims around. I still play it regularly.
A lot of people tore apart SH5 and refused to buy it. I bought it, played it, looked under the hood and with all the mods that have come out, it could soon rival SH3/4. There were a lot of realism improvements/features that were packed into SH5.
Were SH4 and 5 perfect? Of course not, but when you refuse to buy a subsim, the message you are sending is not: "we want a ultra-realistic subsim", it is rather "there is no market for this subsim crap, make another Assassin's Creed instead".
A lot of people were secretly hoping that UBI would drop the SH series so that another developper would rush in to fill the void. Well, UBI stopped all work on SH5 almost 3 years ago, but I don't see a rush of new ultra-realistic subsims being developped. As the old saying goes: "be careful what you wish for, it may come true."
