That's interesting because Oleg has said he doesn't agree with ROF's business plan. Although he has been doing paid addons to the IL-2 series for years. It all depends on what constitutes a paid addon. Olegs paid addons were quite extensive while ROF's could be just an aircraft.

Personally I think we've been very spoiled over the years with all the free content. A business model that would make quality combat flight sim development more profitable would be advantages to us all. Unfortunately the market base is small, but on the good side people who pursue this hobby usually have deeper pockets.

Here you go chivas, http://www.freewebs.com/heinkill/stormofwarnews.htm

Thanks Tree. It will be interesting to see how it all pans out. Hopefully it will become a very profitable business plan. In the end it will depend on the quality of the product. Oleg's past attention to detail bodes well for another successfull project.

So long as he doesn't use ROF's multiplayer. It's seriously horrible compared to IL2.

why is there a countdown of 353 days for the SOW's release?
where did they get that info ?

If their add-ons are reasonably priced it should be no problem. RoF's problem is not the business model per se, i think the add-on planes are cheap for the quality of work involved. It's the other baggage that's coming along with it, forced updates, the way the copy protection works and a lack of things to do with those planes after you've spent a few hours on them, that's making it seem unattractive. If they had an engaging dynamic campaign, a sufficient number of AI planes to help model it correctly and an option to run the game offline after the initial authentication it would be no problem. But as far as price goes they are ok.

Think about it like this, you could get a boxed add-on with new flyables and maps for $40 or so a la pacific fighters, or download it all for free with the planes as AI and then buy just the ones you want online for $5 per plane, it would add up to more or less the same. Of course, if you divide the price with the number of planes in pacific fighters i guess they are cheaper than what RoF offers and BoB will offer in the future, but then again these new sims take more time to model stuff. I think Maddox once said that making a SoW aircraft with a complete FM/DM and graphics model takes about twice the time it took to do the same plane in IL2, so the price will jump up somewhat.

All in all, i wouldn't object to it as long as they offer the end user enough alternatives. If you can fly online with people that have different flyables and not face incompatibilities, if the add-ons are reasonably priced and if this whole thing only needs to authenticate online once for each time you add new content, it will work. Heck, keep the options open and let people buy a boxed set with all the flyables too, instead of downloading and having to authenticate it, some people still prefer it the old way.

A direct port of the RoF model would be a huge mistake, as the only really useful thing in it for the end user is to fly online with people that have different planesets and not have their versions be incompatible. This is something they could copy for BoB:SoW, the rest is simply technical overhead. I hope they don't change their minds, as Maddox himself pretty much said on a SimHQ interview that he's not a fan of the recent protection methods and they want to use a different one. The thing is, a Maddox title might be a flight sim but it won't be obscure, so it will attract attention from pirates and if other blockbuster titles are any indication, when that happens the game is leaked even before the official release date. If they use an activation model that drives away the fans their sales will suffer double damage, if they keep it simple some people will steal it from the internet but at least the fans will buy original versions.

I'm still a fan of the "traditional" way, buying a boxed add-on that goes in a merged installation with what i already have, but i wouldn't mind having an extra option down the line to buy a couple of interesting planes here and there without having to buy the entire theater of operations. For example, say i don't like the eastern front much, but i buy 4 planes that are in my favotire server's planesets, just so i can fly both teams when an easter front mission comes up on the map rotation.

I agree, very good post Blackdog.

Hoot, I would pay $40 for an update that would include all lot of what moders have made.

I would buy IL2-1938, or IL2-1916. JUST make an improvement in the AI and add dynamic campaigns. Then I would buy Storm of War.

I hate pay-as-you-go business models for games, I prefer substantial packages like the GTAIV DLCs, rather than say the Forza 2 DLCs where you might have to buy individual cars etc.

I'd also REALLY hate this in a flight sim, but it also depends a lot on the pricing.

One thing that I hate is when PC games limit modding potential in order to be able to charge more for their own DLCs, and I really hope SoW doesn't go down this route.

Though I get the feeling it will, at least with aircraft.

But as long as SoW(the main game package) itself is fairly content rich and is of the same quality as the IL-2 series in terms of bugs, stability etc, then I will most certainly buy it.

I know what you mean. It's not that i don't want to pay for it, it's just that i want the option to get the whole deal for the sum of the price in one go. Having an option to buy single flyables would be good in a way i described in my previous post, that is for someone who doesn't want to have the entire list of flyables for a certain air force but would want to try his luck with a couple of them.

Which means, limited DLC packages is a secondary marketing option for the guy who won't buy your pacific add-on but wants to try some carrier landings once every 10 days or so. It's not the prime money-mover and developer companies should wake up to that fact. It might work in other game genres, but there's one thing that is so deeply embedded in a combat flight sim by design that will never let it take off: the demand for a level playing field in an online match, while still maintaining historical accuracy.

I mean, how is that supposed to happen and how does the online community get a kick-start when half the people quit the servers every 3rd mission in the rotation, because they lack a necessary flyable and the rest of the slots are taken for example?
Bundled packs for add-on content usually appear after the initial sales surge has been milked dry, so pay-as-you-go for 10 flyables will probably be more expensive than a bundle of the same flyables coming 4-6 months later. Sure, these guys need to make some money and pay their bills, but there's a small caveat here.
Let's face it, even if the price of buying everything separately is as low as a bundled pack, when the only option is to pay-as-you-go there will be a lot of people who will skip certain aircraft.
In today's flight sims with long development cycles, that equates to a realistic DF server with limited planeset choices being unable to run a realistic mission rotation properly, because all the hot-shots bought the Spitfires and 109s but almost nobody bought the Hurricanes and Stukas to fill out the rest of the slots for the mission, and all this happening for as long as it takes to get some new flyables out and renew interest. Temporarily renew might i add, as simply a pretty plane is useless in a combat sim if you can't shoot things with it, it would be good for FSX though. That could take as much as 6 months or more, while your online base slowly withers away and dies, or moves to other competing titles.

So, because of the special feature set demanded by a combat flight sim, there are some design elements that don't work well with a strictly pay-as-you-go method. Lack of options is putting all your eggs in one basket and to take the prime flight sim example of such a business model, that's one the reasons Rise of Flight is hurting at the moment. They are a smaller company with other worries to attend to first and the weakness of such a model might not be apparent right now, but when DF servers become available there could be some renewed gnashing of teeth.

I'm not a software developer or have the money to fund one, but if i was any of the two that's the way i would do it:

1) Base game ships with a minimum of 10 flyables plus a lot more AI to make sure one can flesh out the important scenarios with accurate planesets.

2) Sufficient single player content in the form of the required maps, missions and campaigns, even if they are scripted at first and dynamic ones will be made available later (just like IL2 was through the years).

3) DF and coop mode for multiplayer.

4) At least two ways to buy the game and the addons. Digital download version requires a one-time initial online activation and subsequent re-activations for any add-ons/DLC. Boxed version ships with regular copy protection. Updates and patches are common and interchangeable between versions. Boxed and downloaded add-ons can work on either a boxed or downloaded initial version and they activate just like the original game (serial and cd-check for boxed ones, one-time online activation for downloaded ones). Of course, purchasing single flyables as boxed add-ons is not practical, which leads us to the final point.

5) All-inclusive packs, shipping no more than 3 months after the release of the last part of the pack. Say they do the pacific, 3 months after the last PTO flyable is out, there should be a complete pack that features everything, both as DLC and as a boxed set. This way, everyone could get up to speed easily and in their preferred method and it would form a solid common ground of content to use online.

This last one is the crucial bit for long term spotlight coverage. IL2 had many more offline than online pilots, but most of them used the internet in some form or another (skins,missions,campaigns,etc), even if they are not joining multiplayer events.

If the game's content is fragmented between users, even without compatibility issues, the online community becomes fragmented too and this back-and-forth that kept IL2 alive for so long is missing. The guys in charge of developing flight sims should get wind of this fast, otherwise it won't be long before we have squads that fly dedicated planesets on dedicated servers, in dedicated theaters and time periods only. Which means, more things to coordinate between players before a simple multiplayer event can occur. This is not the way to propel a game to the hall of fame, no matter how great it is in other aspects. It's certainly a good way to kill it before it has a chance to take off though. And before someone starts lecturing me on the merits of pre-arranged multiplayer sessions, let me just say that sometimes real life means that all you've got time for is to jump into a server and hurl yourself to the closest furball for half an hour or so.Keeping it simple is an art form that's almost lost to game designers in general nowadays. You can have as much of an elaborate and engaging game as you want, but for it to succeed the process of reaching a point where you can actually start playing should be as hassle-free and fast as possible.

Just my 2 cents as usual