Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-7146531-20140131090141/@comment-25467429-20151102160445

I think there has to be a realization that this is a series that simply is not going to appeal to an appreciably larger audience than it already does, short of releasing a competent game. Be it arcade or sim, there has never been any evidence that an air combat game was a whole lot bigger segment than it is now. Even the best seller in this series is not really a huge sales success, just a success.

A re-release of the older games is not going to do much to bring in fresh eyes or cash, just spur on the already embedded base that is interested in the series. There will surely be some that jump in just from the fact that it's a new game out to play, but even that will be more dependent on advertisement and word-of-mouth than simply the existence of the game. Which is unfortunately the other hiccup. Like stated earlier, if it was a launch game for the PS4 or even for both the PS4 and Xbox One, it would have helped by having a landscape without much competition. They likely made the bet there was no rush because they didn't think the new systems would move all that quickly.

Which gets to a problem the series has had in the last decade or so - bad bets. They bet on a 360 exclusive to reach a bigger audience, that failed. They bet on a real-world setting, adding non-fighter jet aircraft, and a multi-platform approach; that all failed. They've made a series of bets that just haven't worked the way they hoped.

The potential audience of any game is realistically limited by the population interested in engaging that genre, then limited by the execution of the product. There is little evidene the interest in the genre is going to swell any time soon. That cycle hasn't come back around. I think fans, and PA if their mentality is in that vein, need to get away from the idea of the next game needing to be some huge moonshot ultra amazing game. It just needs to be competent and polished. Build credibility and momentum. Going for broke has left them, well, broke.