Post made by Jason at Sim HQ

[ACE-OF-ACES]

Originally Posted by Rattlehead

Let's see...some of these figures include marketing and other costs, but to get an idea:

Crysis back in 2008 cost $22 million
Grand Turismo 5 cost around $60 million
Modern Warfare 2 was nearly $50 million
Halo 3 (development cost only) was $30 million
Grand Theft Auto 4 was around $100 million

Yep, $8 million is really not a lot at all.

Not sure what this cost comparison is suppose to prove? All I know is this data can be 'looked at' in different ways to prove different things..

As it is, this data can be very misleading..

For example, a bigger software team can do more in less amount of time. So for this data to really be useful you would have to take into account how many worked on it and how long it took to develop those 'games' you listed. Ill bet that none of them took 6 years like CoD has.

Also note that and a lot of those games are spending a lot of money 'creating' worlds that don't exist, the neat thing about WWII flight sims is they only have to worry about 'copying' a world that already exists.

And as you noted marketing is included in those numbers, marketing can be a very big chunk of the pie!

With that in mind, when I look at this data, I see it as 'proof' of how small the flight sim market is in the rest of the gaming world, and not much else.

[pupo162]

Originally Posted by ACE-OF-ACES

Not sure what this cost comparison is suppose to prove? All I know is this data can be 'looked at' in different ways to prove different things..

As it is, this data can be very misleading..

For example, a bigger software team can do more in less amount of time. So for this data to really be useful you would have to take into account how many worked on it and how long it took to develop those 'games' you listed. Ill bet that none of them took 6 years like CoD has.

Also note that and a lot of those games are spending a lot of money 'creating' worlds that don't exist, the neat thing about WWII flight sims is they only have to worry about 'copying' a world that already exists.

And as you noted marketing is included in those numbers, marketing can be a very big chunk of the pie!

With that in mind, when I look at this data, I see it as 'proof' of how small the flight sim market is in the rest of the gaming world, and not much else.

well on the other hand, Cod supossedly has an engine made from scratch. Wich reduces de costs since buying an engine like unreal or frostbite does cost millions of dollars

[skouras]

i believe the next patch
will show us the real mood of development
lets hope that they will be able to finished the project
and make us all happy

[Cyanidix]

Just seems like a bad situation.

I bought this sim on day 1, and have barely touched it since. I knew it would be like that, and the very reason I did it was to finance the current developers in the hope that at some point down the track they could turn this mess into the game it was meant to be.

I've felt sorry for the developers since release. Obviously nobody in their right mind releases a game in such an incomplete state, so there were obviously major factors beyond their control at play.

If you feel bitter about the situation, your purchase or whatnot.... take a chill pill, break for a year, come back and see if the sim is in a state that validates your time then.

[icarus]

Originally Posted by cheesehawk

........ the dollar rules all!

Agreed. That is the main reason people are scared this won't get fixed. I personally don't care how long it takes, I just want it fixed. The money thing scares me, because there comes a time when the law of diminishing returns calls the shots. Its a race to fix it before that law kicks in.

[Rattlehead]

Originally Posted by icarus

Agreed. That is the main reason people are scared this won't get fixed. I personally don't care how long it takes, I just want it fixed. The money thing scares me, because there comes a time when the law of diminishing returns calls the shots. Its a race to fix it before that law kicks in.

I'm not so sure.
The reason being that this was intended to be the first installment of a multi-part series, like the original Il-2.

It's only speculation on my part, but it could be that financially, Cliffs has been written off already, but 1c/Ubi have decided that they could recoup their money from the other installments which will follow.

The thing is, they can't abandon Clod because the tech powering the game willl be used for all successive games in the series too.
So despite maybe Clod being a write-off financially, they can't just shelve it and begin work on the next game.
Clod needs to be finished not only so that they can begin work on the next game, but also to reinstill faith and trust in their customer base.

Once the engine is sorted, development for the other games in the series should then be much less of a hassle.
The original series continues to this day, and I think this one could and should have the same lifespan, more or less.

The publishers can still make a lot of money from this series, provided that they have the faith that it can be salvaged.

[Revvin]

If the statement by Jason is true at least we get a peek at what is going on at Ubisoft/1C and perhaps understand Luthier's position a little better, perhaps those who continually berate him will just take a step back but I doubt it. Its the same old conspiracy theorists who post as many rumours and speculation as they can and when something half sticks they crow about how right they were and try to validate the rest of their ramblings from it, its done us no good, we're still in the same position we were in last week.

[Rattlehead]

Originally Posted by pupo162

well on the other hand, Cod supossedly has an engine made from scratch. Wich reduces de costs since buying an engine like unreal or frostbite does cost millions of dollars

If it reduces costs, why do most developers buy engines then, instead of making their own?

[Skoshi Tiger]

Just a few more words from Jason over at SIMHQ

I tried to give some insight into what happened so some people would stop dumping all their dissappointment on Luthier. My point is that he is not solely responsible for everything that went wrong and you guys should cut him some slack and give him time, like they did for us and ROF. There are a lot of Oleg fans out there and rightly so he brought you IL-2 which is great, but he is not a god. Something went wrong and I know a lot of the inside story, but what I said is as much as I want to divildge. The sim development community in Russia is quite small and a lot of what I have posted here is widely known in the Russian sim community. 99.9% of us westerners don't speak Russian so we don't pick up on it.

As for you insuating that the ROF team stole the IL-2 code to make ROF that is a serious charge and is way off base. Over 40 people were hired to make the ROF engine fromscratch and the original investor spent millions of dollars trying to make a sim. Hence, the teething problems some of you refer to. Our engine has nothing to do with IL-2. Originally a small group wanted to make a game using the IL-2 engine, but they didn't like the treatment they received by MG so they went and found a new investor and started everything from scratch. They even dumped the models they had made to make sure they had nothing to do with IL-2. Our engine has made a drastic leap forward in the past 2 years because of the hard #%&*$# work of a small and talented team and a supportive community and nothing else.

Believe me I wanted CLOD to be a huge success and help, along with ROF, WOP and DCS to show the retailers, publishers and potential investors that sims were a resurgent genre, but it's troubles have made that a little more difficult for all of us.

Anyways, I'm done with this topic.

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...3373697/6.html

Now I posted it as a whole so hopefully I don't take it out of context but here's my take on it.

The interesting points for me are

The sim development community in Russia is quite small and a lot of what I have posted here is widely known in the Russian sim community. 99.9% of us westerners don't speak Russian so we don't pick up on it"

So most of what was originally stated by Jason was/is common knowledge in Russia.

Like most of us westerners we only get to see a small amount of any of the discussions where someone sees something that will backup the points that they are trying to make and translated only that small part.

Originally a small group wanted to make a game using the IL-2 engine, but they didn't like the treatment they received by MG so they went and found a new investor and started everything from scratch. They even dumped the models they had made to make sure they had nothing to do with IL-2.

One of the good things about ROF is that it is it stands on its own as a SIM. The developers can be very proud of what they have achieved. Like many projects a lot of ideas are bounced around in the begining. I'm sure the ROF team made the best choice for their project.

In my opinion the Cliffs of Dover team can be proud of what they have done so far. There's still alot of work to be done but that goes with all projects. You don't see the ROF team stopping their development work!

Our engine has made a drastic leap forward in the past 2 years because of the hard #%&*$# work of a small and talented team and a supportive community and nothing else.

From what I see when I play COD I know that the COD team has a lot of talent and has put in a lot of hard work. Now it's our turn as a community to do our part!

Believe me I wanted CLOD to be a huge success and help, along with ROF, WOP and DCS to show the retailers, publishers and potential investors that sims were a resurgent genre, but it's troubles have made that a little more difficult for all of us.

Maybe as a community we should be a little less interested in point scoring seeing what we can do to make it a success?

Cheers!

[335th_GRAthos]

Interesting post, thank you for posting it Tree!

Does not change my opinion about certain things of this flight sim but it is interesting background information that sheds light to what happened behind the scenes.

~S~