The contrast to Strike Commander could hardly be bigger.

On the contrary, I think the Jane's name is there now for the same reason it popped up 15 years ago...the publication is known. Their reference books are ubiquitous to those who work in the defense industries and their other publications are well known and widely read.
The fact that there were a bunch of titles released over 10 years ago with that moniker is incidental and probably not very helpful marketing-wise.

That would be like Peter Jackson saying the reason the LOTR trilogy was made was people's love of the Bakshi cartoon from decades back and had little to do with the love of the novel.



The Jedi Master

The reason DCS sims are so dry is the fact there is no dynamic campaign engine.I shelved Black Shark and Lock on because of it pretty quickly.No fluid battlefield and an ability to role play a bit with rank and it collects dust pretty fast.

Just look at EECH and the Falcon series.This is one of the main reasons they are still very popular today and comunity upgrades continue to flow.Maybe developers should get some motivation from that but these days many just don't listen.Luckily,Combat helo will have the same sort of campaign engine.

i think the community modding flourishes there because extensive modding is relatively easy. not the case with dcs. the lack of dynamic campaign and role play elements to the degree of eech and falcon can be made up for by other areas dcs excels in. unfortunately such attempts to further bolster the game's strengths is limited by lack of modding.

But both Falcon 4, EECH and DCS are just too damn complex for an entry-level or casual player.

Completely not true. The avionics and flight models are completely scalable for the casual player. There is no one more casual than I am, and I have a blast with it.

Dude, the casual customer is someone who wants something that looks like Ace Combat but a bit more realistic and runs out of the box. Neither you or I qualify as entry-level or casual users in the accepted sense of the terms. It doesn't matter that the avionics or flight models in hardcore sims are scalable because they are designed as simulators first and foremost and not games. Besides, both EECH and F4 are both over a decade old and require lots of mods to make them look anything approaching decent. So that's a major turnoff as far as casual users are concerned. As far as DCS is concerned, it's whole reason for Existing is that it is a super-complex simulation of the A-10. Scale away the complexity and you lose the whole point of the game.

Again. Strike Commander has been mentioned as a good entry-level sim. Go play it again, then play something like F4, then stop to consider why Strike Commander is a good entry-level sim:

First of all, it has excellent production values and is plot-based. Casual users and especially those accustomed to console games like campaigns that have a definite direction to them.

Second, the combat feels pretty authentic (ie limited weapons, quasi-real physics, real avionics etc) but is cleverly designed so that distances are much closer than in real life, so you get more of the in-your-face action than boring "look at symbols" BVR.

There are many more examples of games that did these things, like Jetfighter III, Thunderhawk, Wings.

So a good entry-level/casual sim needs to be designed as game first, simulation second.

Since EA owns the rights to Strike Commander, when do we see an announcement?

My guess is when hell freezes over. If a big publisher would do it, it'd probably be Ubisoft.

And that is the part I cannot understand. SC was a decent hit for Origin. It has the format to appeal to a wide audience. Why wouldn't EA want to do a Strike Commander 2? The brand name is solid, and they have the rights already.

I can't imagine Ubisoft doing much semi- or light-sim anything going forward, but maybe I'll be proven wrong on that.

I think the market analysis for EA shows that the market potential for flight sims, even if they are somewhat casual, isn't anywhere to the truckloads of money that they can make with BF3 ... which happens to be what the shareholders of the corporate stock seem to expect. An EA executive once told me that they "aren't in the games business, but in the money making business".
I don't know what could be more telling.

I'm sure, one day something like it will come along. But I wouldn't hold my breath for it.

It was a really big hit actually IIRC. Like Crysis it made lots of people upgrade their systems just to be able to play it. But that was almost 18 years ago. The last time EA published a flight sim was a decade ago when they closed Origin for good. The problem with flightsims is that they are seen as a niche catering to grognards and when viewed against Modern Warfare 2 making over a billion dollars the flightsim is going to lose every time.

Meanwhile during this decade Ubisoft has published the IL-2 series, AAA console flight games like Blazing Angels 1&2, HAWX 1&2, the entire Silent Hunter series (now there's a niche genre). So if any big publisher is going to develop a AAA Strike Commander analogue it would probably be them.

Considering all they've done with the MUCH larger Wing Cmdr franchise (so large it had a film let alone half a dozen major titles) is release a crappy little XBLA top-down scroller shooter, I'm not surprised Strike Cmdr is just growing weeds.
Oh, and EECH is far from complex. EECH is to Black Shark like the A-10 in LOMAC is to the DCS A-10.



The Jedi Master

Here we go again. You have to understand that the ED titles are at the very extreme end of complexity. EECH is very complex if you compare it to a game like Apache Air Assault or Ace Combat. As is LOMAC. So it will not be a good entry-level sim, which needs to "realistic" but with simplified mechanics. Strike Fighters is a good example of getting the formula almost right, even if it too is almost too complex to appeal to someone completely new to flight games.

Less clicks/effort to update EECH than BF3.

j/k

I think.

Ace Combat has zero complexity. There's nothing to learn. You could replace all the planes with spaceships and the game wouldn't be any different. Compared to Ace Combat, solitaire has more complexity.



The Jedi Master

And because it has no complexity, anyone can pick it up and have fun with it right away. Flight games (and that includes DCS as well) are fundamentally about giving us the ability to pretend we're fighter pilots and have fun doing so. What is so difficult to understand about this? To the casual user, too much complexity is a bad thing. That's why I said even SF is too complex for the casual user. The entry-level sim needs to be as realistic as possible while being no more complex than popular RPG's such as Skyrim. And it needs to look cool, which means a fairly linear campaign with impressive set-pieces.

Strike Commander was great in that it created a challenge for the player, yet it didn't take a fat manual to memorize. It shouldn't be so easy as to be effectively a side-scrolling arcade shoot em up. But I was pretty proud when I managed to land the F-16 safely in SC, and I still have a few memories about the more difficult dogfights (or the single one tank kill that I achieved with the cannon).

SC still passed as a simulation, even if it was definitely not one of highest fidelity. But it created a bizarre world of freelance mercenary fighter squadrons where you also had to somehow manage the finances. That helped to increase the fun, because missiles and smart bombs were a lot more expensive, which created an incentive to do without AMRAAMs whenever possible, and to throw Mk82 bombs which created a bit of a skill challenge to actually hit a target.
Strike Commander was immense fun for someone like me who wasn't so deeply interested in flight simulations but who still didn't want to have a totally dumbed down flight model. It was simplified, but in a clever way. Options screens cannot and will not achieve the same effect. It was a conscious game design decision to bring the player into dogfight situations where the F-16 was most fun to fly even though modern avionics try everything to avoid dogfights in the first place. I want stalls, I want some difficulty in flight maneuvers. What I don't want, as a casual flight simmer, are more than two or three radar modes to manage, 20 minutes of starting up the engine and taxiing, and shooting blips on a radar screen without actually ever seeing the target. At the same time I want a jet, and not a prop machine, and I want some sort of a storyline that keeps me engaged. Wingmen with different personalities to choose from.

The formula isn't too hard, actually. The problem is that the current developers and the current fans have painted themselves into the corner of a complexity trap. Every new flight sim will get measured by the number of options and the fine detail of flight simulations. That's fine for you experts, but it locks the door for everybody who might develop a deeper interest, if only there was something simpler and more fun to invite him into the scene in the first place.

Ssnake, based from what you wrote about casual flightsim above, I think you'd love Crimson Skies so much. Anyone still remember that one? Well, the planes ain't based on RL planes at all, but they still have wings..easy to fly, but still harder than ace combat. Good story and characters. Not to mention you can design new planes, too. I also love how the plane shakes when I fire the cannons. And the thrill of making precision approach to dock with the zeppelin. Imagine if they remake this game with today's graphics..

CS was an excellent title. IIRC it was a decent hit as well.