sound good on paper but hitech already proved you wrong.
remember a few years ago when everybody was pushing for that game sharing site whatever it's called. so hitech linked to it and very few players stayed.
as for commercials, well it's been said it's not a good return on investment.
semp
And of the thousands that tried it Im sure a number of them have stayed. If he had never done that, would we have gotten the same increase in players over that same amount of time?
The steam release was a fiasco. HTC never thought they would see the numbers that got downloading that they did. VR was only half done as compared to now, the VR controllers didnt work then, something a lot of VR players are use to (tho Id hate to have to fight using the VR controllers). The misleading "Play for FREE" was also a bit turn off. In the steam world, "Play for FREE" means just that, you play for free, not for just 2 weeks. They lost a lot of people to that alone.
Social media is free except for the time involved in using it. I dont know what happened to "Hoppy" was it? but she wasnt there very long, nor did she post much. The FB and Twitter sites for Aces are dead, the player made Aces High FB page is still far more active than the official page.
TV ads may have not returned the money invested, but how about magazine ads? Modelers, RC, WWII history magazines, Flight magazines. Whats a half page ad cost for 6 months?
Type "WWII flight sims" in Google and you still cant find AH. If nobody knows it here nobody is going to try/play it.