I'm not a business expert and I could be wrong but it seems to me to be quite possibly hard to make a loss with many PC games these days. With on-line downloads, distribution costs of the product are virtually nil per unit aren't they (no packaging or paper manuals etc)?
Again, on-line updates mean it's infinitely easier and cheaper to maintain/update it. This also means it is quite practical from their point of view to release it "unfinished" (whatever you think of the ethics of that).
Finally, PC ownership and use is going up exponentially as the developing world becomes computerised; even if only a fraction of 1% of total PC users in the world are flight sim fans that still represents an expanding potential market of tens of thousands. Perhaps the reasoning is to sell it for a few quid and maybe thousands more will come on board.
Discuss...
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