aleader, your opinion is just as valid as anyone else's. The main difference between IL2, CMSF, and Steel Beasts is that the former are catering primarily to the consumer market where good looks are essential for commercial success. With Steel Beasts however the situation is different because about 90% of eSim's profits are made in the market for training solutions where functionality trumps good looks; still, about 20% of our development time (and 97% of all customer support) is spent on the Personal Edition, or closely related to it - clearly a disproportionate amount. SB Pro PE users are anything but second class customers to us.

We at eSim Games like good looks as anyone else, but we must concede that as long as the looks get the job done, the majority of our customers is served better by adding a new feature that enables a certain tactical training scenario that could not be adequately trained before. If that means that we cannot win some consumer customers who place a higher emphasis on visuals, that is unfortunate but the price to pay for superior functionality and code maturity.


Now, we tripled the number of programmers this year, and one of the reasons was that we also want to give SB Pro a facelift. It will come sooner than you think, just not this December; some things simply take more time than is available if we want to maintain the rhythm of a new major PE release every 15 months. We were confronted with the choice to have everybody wait for at least another half a year, or to bring a playable T-72 as soon as possible to the community that demanded it for several years now. We chose the latter option.


Whether I "flamed" Oscar lies in the eye of the beholder. I never, in all the years, rejected the suggestion of animated roadwheels as "rubbish" or anything. I just pointed out that from a functional point of view they add very little, so inevitably it can't be very high on our priority list. (I also pointed out that if he indeed is the same guy that has developed some notoriety on the SteelBeasts.com forum for his solo campaigning for animated roadwheels, in his third year he's beginning to sound a bit repetitive. If you're honest to yourself you'll admit that a mere repetition of the same arguments from the same one user can hardly be the basis to change the course of a development work plan unless the argument is of really exceptional quality). If I came across as a condescending arrogant #%&*$# - that wasn't my intent, but please let me say that maybe you just don't know the full background here.

Our prime consideration is code stability, followed by functional expansion, then low effort-high yield utility value improvements, followed by "better looks". Everybody is entitled to a different emphasis, but as it happens we are in charge of the development of our own software and nobody else. Therefore we will follow our own guidelines as long as we see financial reward from our customers. Other developers do a great job with their products.


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