[WhiteKnight77]

I was perusing the Ubi Forums page and noticed something that flies in the face of what Ubi devs and marketing have said. We all have heard that Ubi is not gonna be concentrating on PC games or sim type games, but if one looks at the forum page, the 2 most popular games are sims, hardcore flight sims.

This is why I have stated in the past the Ubi developers (like Philip Theiren) are not very smart about what the company they work for have done. I have also lambasted Ubi's marketing department for similar reasons.

What do y'all make of it?

[firefly2442]

Well, just because a game has a high amount of forum posts doesn't necessarily equate it with high popularity. However, I think a very important thing that many companies don't focus on is the core community that purchased their game. Do flight sims have more mod tools available than other games? Maybe their communities are stronger than others? I don't really have any simulation games so I can't comment on this but it's something to think about.

[WhiteKnight77]

The iL2 community is very strong. I haen't seen or heard of any models released for the game, but skins and movies are big hits for the games. Maddox games used killer models for the game to begin with with lots of detail, nothing a modder would really could improve on. Missions and campaigns is another area that seemed pretty good mod wise.

[Rocky]

I notice those flight sims forums were extremely busy a while back, took me be surprise, I was like "Wha?".

Not sure what conclusions you can draw from that, but it is an interesting observation.

[WhiteKnight77]

With the last few statements from Ubi employees and moreso, the CEO, it appears that is out of touch with what gamers really want. At the least, they show that niche games garner a huge following.

[Sup]

Niche games definitely have a huge following --- and a larger percentage of that following is vocal.

To say ubisoft is out of touch with how much their 'big name' games are selling -- and how much attention they give their bigger niche titles -- is pretty foolish. They've just decided to pursue a few specific markets, and we unfortunately aren't one of them

[WhiteKnight77]

Now that I have a bit of time to reply to this, I am going to address it.

I have always maintained that Ubi has had success with niche titles. iL2 and LoMAC both show it as well as the Silent Hunter series. Over the past you have stated that niche market games are aimed at a small market and on that we agree. The Tac-Sim market is also a niche market that is small when looked at the big picture of the FPS market. Now you are saying that the Tac-Sim market is smaller than the flight sim market. Which is it as you seem to contradict yourself with what you have said in the past?

Ubi does have great success in niche market titles, in franchises that are smaller than the Tac-Sim market yet Ubi has decided to forgo that as you have noted. As seen with GRAW/GRAW2 and LD through V2, making games mainstream hasn't been really popular from a gamers perspective. Even if it does get them instant money (yes, I know companies are in it to make money), it doesn't get them a good reputation when they are churning out junk that no one plays 6 months after release.

Look around the Ubi forums. The GRAW forums are on life support as are the R6 forums. Splinter Cell forums still show plenty of life and the rest are barely used outside of the Frag Dolls, iL2, LoMAC, Silent Hunter and FC. Sure there is use in the forums for games that haven't been released yet, but for games more than 6 months old, not much use. That is the whole reason for this thread. It's amazing that one game franchise that is 7 years old is still going remarkably strong while another game that is the same age is on life support. What does that tell you? To me, it tells me that the chemistry of the original game is lacking from the sequels that was supposed to forward the game. The other game has stayed true to it's original intent, even with several sequels/add-ons.

[Sup]

Look at xbox live and PSN servers. Just cause people aren't posting doesn't mean they aren't playing. Wait for the announce of the next GR/Rb6 games. You'll see tons of excitement in the 'mainstream' crowd.

The hardcore base makes up 90% of the forum posters, but not even 10% of the players. Judging by forum activity will get you very skewed results.

[WhiteKnight77]

There was plenty of excitement for GR and R6 as they were (at least through RvS). V2 has slid out of the top 10 from what I hear even on XBox Live. Doesn't say much about how much it is played. Even with the PC version of V2, there were 3 players in 59 servers the other day when asked about it.