Silent Hunter Online

[TheDarkWraith]

There's a fundamental flaw in their business model. It's clear that they and many other developers are targeting the casual gamer and the kiddies. The flaw is these people are not brand loyal - they will switch to the next big thing in a heart beat. All they (upper management) see is short term profits. Short term profits do not sustain a business. If they were to target the brand loyal consumers and actually develop something real that was fully tested and worked as delivered and charged a premium price for it they would get repeat customers. Repeat customers sustain a business. I would gladly pay $100 for a sub sim that was near perfect as delivered AND was an actual sim and not an arcade game.

But sadly this will probably never happen. The Gen X and Gen Y kiddies are the instant gratification generation and they want everything now. The developers are tailoring to them and forgetting about everyone else because that's where the short term profits are

[Wolfstriked]

Originally Posted by 7thSeal

Based on what exactly, putting hope into the 'next game' ?

If it fails it fails for them and they lose their job.I wish them luck.

[theluckyone17]

I'm going to stay cautious optimistic. I hope"

• SH Online takes off without a hitch.
• It's relatively bug free.
• The casual players latch onto it like Farmville. (hey, it's nice to dream...)
• A great deal of the feedback received by Ubisoft afterwards concerns the amount of realism and detail.

Note that the above doesn't mean I'll actually play it... SH5 with mods has sucked me in pretty deep.

[Red October1984]

Y'all quit hatin on Rainbow 6 and Ghost Recon.

And SHO is sounding pretty nice to me. My system isn't powerful enough to run SH4 and 5.

[Drewcifer]

The fact is Simulation = hard the companies of today want to toss out games that give instant gratifaction with minimal effort in learning the controls or concepts of what makes the game work.

We are a dying breed and a very, VERY small portion of the costumer base for these companies. Modern Warfare, Battle field, Assassins Creed, Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, Madden, Halo, Uncharted... if you aren't one of these games or VERY VERY similar then you simply aren't even up for consideration as a big seller.

That said I think its time we all start looking to the indie developers they are really starting to produce some quality stuff and all I can say is games like Grimrock blow me away it is nostalgia at its best, perhaps not everybodies favorite genre but it is surely a good sign and perhaps someday an indie developer will make a subsim but I know it won't ever be an EA title unless the Subs can fly and do barrel rolls.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

Well they're making ever more money every year so obviously they aren't mismanaging things. We might think they are mismanaging etc but we're not the target audience for big publishers anymore.

It's like when the milsim crowd whines about how UBI ruined Ghost Recon or Rainbow 6 but the games sell more on consoles than they ever did as PC exclusives, keeping shareholders happy.

SH in itself is just another franchise and franchises exist to be milked to the last drop. I'm just surprised and disappointed UBI didn't let the franchise jump on the modern warfare bandwagon like every other franchise. Could've been interesting.

I understand what you're saying - any publisher is going to want a broader audience for a series. Look at Skyrim and compare it to Morrowind, for example...the RPG elements have been toned down in favor of action. While I still consider Morrowind to be one of the greatest games ever, I can't fault Bethesda for doing what they did, and the sales figures for Skyrim bear out their design decisions.

But I still say that the Silent Hunter brand was damaged, probably irreparably, by SH5. In an attempt to broaden the audience for the game, some half baked RPG elements were mashed together with sim elements that were rushed and incomplete. The end result is a product that makes no one happy, and consequently sales tanked. If Ubi had allowed/told the devs to stick to the blueprint that SH3 laid out, and update and improve where necessary they may not have increased the audience appreciably, but they would have given the existing fanbase what they wanted and redeemed themselves in the eyes of the customers who made the SH franchise what it is. While that would be great for us as sub sim fans, I think it would have also delivered decent enough sales, which helps the bottom line. I'm a firm believer in the idea that doing right by customers is the best way to profitability.

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

There's a fundamental flaw in their business model. It's clear that they and many other developers are targeting the casual gamer and the kiddies. The flaw is these people are not brand loyal - they will switch to the next big thing in a heart beat. All they (upper management) see is short term profits. Short term profits do not sustain a business. If they were to target the brand loyal consumers and actually develop something real that was fully tested and worked as delivered and charged a premium price for it they would get repeat customers. Repeat customers sustain a business. I would gladly pay $100 for a sub sim that was near perfect as delivered AND was an actual sim and not an arcade game.

But sadly this will probably never happen. The Gen X and Gen Y kiddies are the instant gratification generation and they want everything now. The developers are tailoring to them and forgetting about everyone else because that's where the short term profits are

Great way to put it TDW, hell, I AM from those generations, and I think the overall instant gratification move is sad.

[Julhelm]

But I don't think forumdwellers are the target audience for this just like how the AVSIM crowd wasn't the target for MS Flight.

In flightsim land there used to be TK as the indie king, but even he seems to have given up on sims these days. So I don't think we'll see an indie subsim anytime soon.

[joea]

Wow, pretty disappointed overall with the direction UBI has taken but I'll withhold judgement until people have actually played it.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by privateer

Couldn't steal a Limo I presume.

Could have and would have but it would be too big to get into the plane home

[Commie]

I can see it now: Facebook and Twitter integration.

You'll be able to give FB requests to your friends to give your crew special soup and load the torpedoes.

Maybe they'll have submarine hats available as DLC.

At level 50 your submarine will unlock a super cavitation drive.

[P_Funk]

You know CoD sucks. I hate it, I hate the gameplay, I hate the community, I hate how it makes Counterstrike look like bloody ArmA, I hate the fact that they limit it to 60 FOV now not just cause Xbox isnt as powerful as a PC but also because it narrows your view thus increasing the spammy gameplay, but... when all that is said and done, I understand it. You know that most people are idiots anyway with no taste. For every John Lennon, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix you get a million Bee Gees. Alright, I can live with that, cause I always roll my eyes and laugh and go find my niche that is so much better.

And while I've been able to do that with film, music, books, pretty much everything else, gaming has slowly been killing the niche. Why? I don't know. They just can't seem to get on board with a project anymore that breaks new ground, is polished to a high quality, and which appeals to more than just the face rolling 15 year olds who apparenlty can't even muster the brain power to play an even marginally challenging game.

So I said it, I understand why CoD exists, whatever, game on. But why do companies like Ubi take a niche game and try and turn it into a mainstream one? I don't understand. Its like pissing off all the Patriots fans cause you decided to replace them with an XFL team.

Sims are niche games. They appeal only to a very very small crowd. I don't get it why they look at the relatively poor sales and try and make it into something that it isn't. Its not like there's potential in this game. Does anybody really think in that boardroom that this online thing is going to make them a lot of money? I think its almost a reflex. They just naturally like someone with OCD tinker and bugger with everything to try and fit their little agenda. They have that vision and its usually completely out of touch with reality. How many great games get directives from publishers and when the reviews come pouring in they say its crap and needs patching?

I'm so pissed off. I'm so tired of it. I've been an avid gamer since the late 90s and I've watched the steady decline. I feel like Hunter Thompson sitting in a Vegas hotel room looking out over the desert seeing where that wave broke, wishing I was still there. Gaming used to be great. Now its just polluted by absurdly bad money grabbing.

I was playing the new Tribes game this week. Its also free to play. They gutted the core of that game. Made it so casual accessible. Another great game ruined by the need for "mass appeal".

I don't get it. Why can't they just have their niche market and their mainstream one? Why do they have to marginalize us? They know we're gonna hate it. But we're the ones that made Silent Hunter into a franchise that existed for 5 releases. How does that make sense?

Its baffling. But I think we're in a critical mass for gaming right now. Looking at how things are going Ubi and for EA they've been playing some strange games in their development. EA is really in trouble I think. Not real trouble but I can see some issues down the line for PC gaming. Bioware got bought by EA and now they stink. The Old Republic? Awful. Mass Effect 3? Well they keep saying 'don't finish it, disappointed'.

Its like, they've cracked the mainstream, now they don't know how to actually make it good. All the energy seems to go into making money, the schemes for collecting it. Why make a good game when you can make amediocre one that costs like 60 to 80 bucks in microtransactions for the average user to see it all and then decide it sucks?

I remember back in the day when a game that launched needing a patch just to be playable was a kind of sin. Like a laughing stock. Now, its business as usual. I've seen the high water mark. I saw the wave break. I'm going back to GWX and pretending this news never penetrated by cynical consciousness.

[quink99]

I concur completely, TDW, and would gladly join you in the "$100 line". It is thanks to your efforts and those of many other diligent MODDERS that we are approaching having a true sim instead of an arcade game.

My sincere thanks to all of you who have helped by showing that you can, indeed, "make a silk purse from a sow's ear."

[mookiemookie]

My guess is that it has to do with the increase in popularity of games in general. It used to be that the audience for PC games was smaller and more... tech savvy? (I'm guessing here.) This crowd appreciated in-depth games with steep learning curves....games like simulators, the Ultima series, A Bard's Tale and all of the other D&D titles...things that required patience. Game companies could afford to indulge the niche category players because that's all there was. You weren't going to increase your audience substantially by dumbing down...excuse me, streamlining....your games, as there wasn't much of audience as a whole to gain. The entire market was a niche.

As video games grew in popularity, the audience grew bigger and less sophisticated as a whole. Stuff like shooters and hack and slash and fast twitch games appeal to someone who doesn't want to think, but just wants to play. By getting rid of the hardcore detail-oriented parts of your game, you could appeal to these players and gain more of this growing audience. If you restricted yourself to niche type games, you're only ever going to sell to the niche type market, which comprises a smaller percentage of the market as a whole than it did 15 or 20 years ago. And when it comes down to it, unit sales are the only real metric that matters, so anything that limits your sales is out of the question.

Pure speculation and I have no evidence of any of this other than what I've pulled out of my butt. But it makes sense to me.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

Well they're making ever more money every year so obviously they aren't mismanaging things. We might think they are mismanaging etc but we're not the target audience for big publishers anymore.

Agreed. Major publishers now are like major film studios, only interested in releasing profitable blockbusters.

SH3 and 4 each sold around 100-200,000 units, certainly respectable numbers, but a fraction of the estimated $ 1 Billion in sales for "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3". Almost all the major publishers bailed out of the sim market in 1999-2000. If SH could not reach a mass market, it was only a matter of time before Ubisoft dropped the franchise.