When the lack of info starts causing so many problems with your consumer base - it's normally wise for the companies involved to divulge a little info to prevent that consumer base loosing faith in the product; Be it in the computer game market, movie industry, music industry, infact pretty much any creative industry!
If you start alienating your consumers you are going to damage your sales. Right now IL2 / SOW is the only flight sim that has such a large following and as far as I am aware there are not a huge amount of games lined up that will rival it - however, you simply cannot run the risk of everyone jumping ship and going onto WW2 online, BOBII or any of the other flight sims that are constantly being updated/added to - or even ones that are in development!
This information blockout is simply bad business, there is no way you can justify it being a business strategy! It is caused by legal issues, bad communications, lack of customer focus or other BS.
I am very happy with IL2 46, and I am happy to wait for SOW for a reasonable time framem however the complete lack of information is very discouraging to many people, and I feel that this is going to damage SOWs sales as your pre release support has been non-existant - how are people going to expect your post sales support to be any better?
Ivan - I know you cannot say what is what, and I am sure none of us would not want to put you in a position where your role is threatened due to the community - however, it seems prudent that you talk to those in the know and tell them of all you see here:
the confusion, the anger, the fustration, the speculation, the mis-information, the dying hope, in order to help the community, and to help the company. However good SOW is, if the blackout continues over the coming months and years I am certain the amount of wallets eagerly awaiting it will dwindle to such an extent that breaking even is not even going to be on the cards.
Regards,
V
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