An Alternate Strategy?

[Chivas]

Originally Posted by Insuber

The first Il2 was sold in 6 or 7 million copies, IIRC.

I would bet that the initial sales of COD were higher than the initial sales of the original IL-2 . The original IL-2 sold slowly by word of mouth and took time to build momentum, while with COD everyone in the flight sim community new about it and people would have bought it sight unseen on the developers reputation. Thats probably the only reason the development didn't fold after the initial unfinished release as enough copies were sold to keep the development solvent long enough that its possible it could be finished.