I recently found an e-mail I had sent a little over ten years ago, during the time I had just begun to play AH. At that time I was playing only on H2H to learn some basics. I and my friend Kanttori didn't want to enter the Main Arena too fast in fear of being ridicule...
Now, back to the subject, on the e-mail I argumented, that for a fresh family man $ 14.90 a month was quite a big sum, especially when multiplied with the annual amount of months. For a saved $ 178.80 you could buy a lot of Christmas presents back then, even if changed to €'s. That kind of calculations kept me from opening an account for half a year. Today the price still remains the same, although the game has developed tremendously.
Novelty games, even remakes of an existing one, always have the advantage of starting from a clean board. Think about annual sports/rally/F1 games, for example. How much would it cost to buy a new game twice a year, updating your gaming rig accordingly, learning the physics and adjusting the settings and finally dumping it for a new one. It would be relatively easy to produce new eye candy with vague assumptions of future compatibility with existing hardware like many of them do, especially for the Christmas marketing. AH's strength is its longevity and HTC's solicitude of paying customers. I admit there are graphically more appealing flying sims and games, but as long as the landscapes don't prevent the adrenaline boost when I'm desperatively trying to turn into someone's six, the graphics are good enough. In the middle of the fight glaring at sceneries would be lethal...
A long time ago an elderly friend told me about having danced to gramophone records. The old 78's rasped and hissed, the spring driven turntable caused swaying and the reproducer gave a metallic sound, but no one noticed that. The human sound processor soon eliminated all distractions, leaving only the danceable music audible.
