PC simulation games still have a future
Paradox Interactive still thinks there's money to be made in PC simulation games like Ship Simulator Extremes.
After Frank gave us a demonstration of VStep’s upcoming ship simulator, which is a realisitic simulation of many actual ships in realistic situations, we asked him if he thought that the simulation market was dying out or being marginalised on PCs in recent years.
“Absolutely not,” he said confidently. “Sims aren’t dying out at all. We’ve sold more than 450k units of the Ship Simulator series and while I know it’s a niche audience it’s still one that has been very good to us.”
“I don’t know the specifics of why Microsoft closed down their Flight Sim team, but I do know that the simulation genre has always been there and sims like this are still good for business.”
Even if PC simulations were a fading genre, Frank still seemed to think a resurgence would be inevitable, pointing to the adventure game genre as a comparison.
“Just look at adventure games. The same thing happened there. Everyone said they were dying out and a lot of people stopped making them, but there were developers that did very well by persisting in the genre and now there’s lots of adventure game franchises making a comeback.”
Ship Simulator Extremes will be going on sale at the start of 2010 and will feature all sorts of realisitic missions, from disrupting whaling missions for Greenpeace to quelling fires and evacuating oil rigs. All 35 ships in the game can be fully explored in first person, including the Titanic, and the new multiplayer and co-op modes are coming on well too. Let us know if any of that interests you in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyId imagine in future there will be some game related to simulator that are good it need good multiplayer how ever
Because it nice to have a race / test ur skill with other people / or just plain fun with some random people and if you can do Crash collision option then that even more fun : I like a bit This testDrive game but it lacked of freedome of Do Some Collision like Midtown Madness 3 The Dev are still no sign of any game related to that but dice working only on action game now every since Xbox 360 / Battlefield II modern combat
and i think anything related to race is over with them tough id say id like a good simulator of car / plane / and maybe boat LOL ?
While sims are profitable (given a realistic budget/sales ratio), and good old economics states that as long as people can make money, they will make the product. The is the other hand, where the opportunity developing something else (eg. console games) is bigger, ie. there is more profit to be made. So the opportunity cost (what you give up) when making a PC Sim vs console game can be quite high.
With respect to Vstep, if you are them things are peachy, as they likely don't have a big opportunity making console games. However if you are Microsoft, it probably makes more sense to spend their money and time focusing on the console rather then the PC, because the potential for profit is just larger.
*shrugs*, just a thought at least :)
What've we got now? ****ing Ace Combat. OK, so it might be the first game in years to include a British aircraft, but I'm not sure it knows how to spell "realism". Thanks, consoles.
not when you crash the titanic into the Q.E.2
Job done, unless the extreme part is a first person role fighting off pirates!
That was AVSIM.com and they were largely based around freeware addons for Microsoft's Flight Simulator series, nothing open source.
The flight simming community is well-established, and IMO, the hobby is going to be around for a long time yet.
haha I was thinking the same :)
I never thought i'd be interested in a sim before !
same with the racing sims, unless you've been in a car or motorcycle going over 150mph, you can't really understand the physics popping a saddle and using a fake steering wheel.. nothing beats the real deal when it comes to machines- same with military sims, proven to work with training.. but it still won't help a saddle popper disassemble or clean a gun, or even get his fat ass over a fence XD
games are entertainment.. leave the mmos for the saddle poppers (big money in that), but make fun, unrealistic games for the rest of us :D bring on more mass effect type games
Myself, I think of games as one thing (that I enjoy and would like to get into more) and flight simulating as another (that I also enjoy and would like to get into more). In other words, I'm not saying that one is better than the other, just that I (along with most serious simmers) view them as separate categories.
if you can i want to know!!!!!!
Out of interest, are there any decent racing/driving sims that have been released within the last couple of years? Like, with GRID's graphical quality, but full sim levels of realism? GTR2 always gets mentioned as a fantastic sim, but it's ageing badly...
edit - Test Drive Unlimited looks quite visually lush, don't know how that slipped under my radar...will be checking that out soon.
You are right about nothing beating the real thing but IMO wrong on how close to real life these sims are.
I've been racing on sims such as GTL, GTR2, RACE 07, Rfactor for years (Big Motorsport fan). I finally got around to buying a Locost 7 (Kit car) and prepared it for the track.
Within 2 laps I was pushing it around Castle Combe, heel and towing and clipping apexes all because I had done it all before with my G25 wheel on the likes of Rfactor on the PC. You get an understanding of how to drive a car on the track and how to balance it mid corner on the throttle etc
It was the same with FS2004. I used to fly with my Saitek joystick all the time, took a real flying lesson and the guy was convinced I had been having lessons. He let me guide it in on the landing approach while he had control of the power.
Simulation games really are the dog's danglies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXlr52Cp_Uo
This vid is a good example