Quote:
Originally Posted by mazex
C'mon Tree  It's simply impossible that you work in the private sector of what the rest of us call "the economy"? Basically it's about the fact that if your company does not make a profit it gets shut down... Fast.
So - who would put up the money to have the team working on patching a product for 18 months that unfortunately must have been a financial fiasco? 1C? Ubisoft? Just get over it, CloD was a failure - both financially and technically. End of story. Now they have actually spent too much time trying to get it right as they are naturally embarrassed that some bean counter forced them to release it while the engineers with Oleg at the helm most certainly wanted to do a second (or third) restart of the project with a new engine... Which was naturally impossible after that last managed code experiment that failed...
A pillar of the market economy is that you don't throw good money after bad. The only reason we have gotten patches the last 18 months is that Ilya and "the new" team convinced someone with money that they could do a sequel based on the failed project to get some money back from that seven year investment. The financier probably realized that even if a sequel was successful, they would never get all the money back for the previous seven years. As they don't live in Northern Korea they know the meaning of "sunk costs" and agreed to finance the development of a sequel anyway, as the costs to have the team running another 2.5 years would be smaller than the expected revenue from the sequel (keeping in mind that they did not start from zero). Ilya probably had to get a new suit for these meetings and certainly got some milestones set that they had to deliver along the project time line or the money tap would get shut down at any point...
I really would like the CloD we all dreamed of, but we have to to accept the fact that it will not happen. Every hour spent patching CloD that does not benefit the sequel increases the risk that MG will have to pick down the sign next year (or this year if they don't show good progress). That sequel has to get decent reviews at least and sell a couple of hundred thousand copies. That's the only way we will ever see a FW 190 in the future in this engine...
And no, the argument that they have to fix CloD or no one will buy the sequel is naturally bull. If the sequel hits the market next fall and gets reviews in the > 80% range every single one of the customers that bought CloD will buy it as we there are only 1-2 decent simulators released every year. We are not that many anyway - so it's the ones that did NOT buy CloD that they need to get green figures at the bottom line 
EDIT: The ones we have a right to be pissed at are the publishers 1C/(Ubisoft) - that actually released the game to the market in the state it was, I don't hold MG responsible for that bad decision at all... But - if it was that or nothing I must say that I've had quite some fun with CloD anyway that definitely makes up for my $39. |
That's a very optimistic view, mazex. You may be right that they were pushed to release CoD early after a long time of development. But I don't think the developers were in any way pushed to release the do-nothing-"patches" they released over the past 18 months, leaving us basically in the same state as per the release.
And the thing that many people buy BOM regardless, is pretty optimistic, too. I think, by now, after so much crookery and blatant lies, many users have made it a matter of principle NOT to buy BOM (as did I), preferring to stick with 1946 or so rather than to let that shabby scheme succeed (*).
Plus, many gaming magazines probably will think similarly, and will consider the utter failure when testing the sequel, so even IF the addon is somewhat 'good' (which I don't believe for a second...), high ratings for it will be next to impossible - game tests in magazines are there to inform about quality and to save people from rip-offs, after all.
(*) It may be true that companies' power is great these days, but if that doesn't spark some sort of 'grass-roots' boycott, then I don't know what does...