True, but any serious concern should not look at this product as a good measure of the markets potential, agreed its no where near as big as flight sim, commercially ( speaking personally ) at best it returned 1/10th of the revenue of flight sim, but then MSTS1 was a green field site, what you ship now should have a broader appeal.
However l fear your right, this mess will have ramifications far beyond what ( KRS, Kuju, EA or who ever is hiding behind smoke and mirror company names and renames ) have screwed up.
There haste to please all has pleased no one, and has shown how fickle the user market is, get it right and its follow the yellow brick road to the pot of gold, get it wrong and your stuck in a ditch by the road side....which is where KRS is right now....waiting for a bloody big tow truck to pull it out, and the longer that tow truck takes to arrive the deeper the KRS vehicle slips into the smelly muddy ditch.
If and when the commercial plans are realised and released you'll see many pushing said vehicle back into the ditch....not assisting to pull it out I'll wager.
Regarding TSx, l think your right too, ACEs are on a limb and l'm sure they only got the go ahead becuase they opted to use the FSx game engine, there by reducing considerably the ground work required to make the game, they also reused said same staff from TSx, again another smart move as there pretty clued up on the game engine already....rather than bringing in new staff and a new game engine, if they had done that then it'd be game over by now. I also think that FSxi will be the last flight sim, it cant progress much further, already the modeling is reaching very high levels and addons dripping away, mind you what you do get is very very good.
If MS had a game plan then the five year wait between train sims is probably too long, but the every two years flight sim production is killing developers and you just dont have time to catch up and learn whats new and explore it before its down tools and relearn it all again, three years would be better, after three years most people are ready to move on but two ?, just a little too soon IMHO.
Theres talk now already of FSxi and some l know who are struggling with FSx are thinking of leap frogging FSx, carrying on with FS9 modeling and then jumping full scale into FSxi, the same will apply here, many will look at KRs and figure to bypass it, go back to MSTS1 ( which many have already advocated pre release....and many are doing post release ) or seeking other avenues, for the first time in five years l'm considering Trainz, how many others are thinking alike ?.
Best
Michael
MaxFreak wrote:mickoo737 wrote:And all the others who urged caution ?.
Sadly they were shouted out of house ( quite vociferously in many cases ), problem is now that said same persons are urging other points ( some positive in the global train sim land scenario )and yet again there being ignored ?.
Truth is, as John D pointed out, this pile of mess will now impact peoples feelings toward up coming sims.
Time and time again were told not to mix apples and pears yet in the same breath those said same people are saying well if KRS did this and that then TSx will do this and that, now thats hypocrisy at its best.
Best
Michael
It's not just people's peoples feelings and atitudes towards up coming sims we need to be concerned with , if things do not go well here ( and they are not ) , the chances of
ANY Dev funding or seeking funding for another Rail Sim are
Zero . It's also possible that TS2 will also be Microsofts last venture into Rail sims if sales do not reach a level that satisfies the bean counters - Trains ain't Planes .
~A~