To me AH is the richer, fuller game over all.
Fair enough. AH has it's own pros and cons like any game. However, does the market agree with you?
Selection bias. Asking a bunch of players who have stayed in AH 15-20 years if they think AH is the best, well, of course many are going to say AH is the best because that is why they are still here.
The more illuminating question would be what did the 600 nightly players that use to be here, and left, think?
What did the 40,000 players that downloaded the trial during the Steam launch, and declined to subscribe, think?
If the goal is just to keep the players already here, then ignore that. If you want to add more players, simply asking the players already here, and swear they will never leave, isn't very productive if you want to understand where the game is failing to attract.
I suspect the goal is to keep the remaining players and ride them into the sunset and not worry about what would be needed to reverse the numbers trend. I think the loss rate has shallowed compared to years past and demographic mortality is the main source of attrition. That's not an unreasonable strategy given the circumstances. Just keep releasing skin batches and fix any major breaking bugs that crop up and don't sweat it.
IMHO, organic growth has never been AH's strong suit. I think most of it's early growth came from the collapse of competing MP games and picking up their refugees. I suspect the number of players that come to AH brand new not having been a AW, FA, WB, WWIIOL refugee is fairly small. That well has pretty much dried up. No more low hanging fruit.
One possible opportunity might be if IL2 starts to stumble now that the main driver Jason Williams has left the franchise. It is unclear to me if the population is going to embrace Korea as a replacement for WWII in the new upcoming product. If they feel WWII is being put on the back burner, they might consider moving to AH. But I think the subscription model, weaker graphics and lack of engine management will create resistance to that cross-over. Even though WWII centric, they might feel AH is stepping down a notch. However I do think AH has a superior massively-multiplayer server implementation.
Combat pilot is going to be interesting to watch, but it might be 5-8 years before they have a full MP solution. Many a slip between cup and lip. A lot can occur in 5-8 years so it is no guarantee that it will even ship at this point too early to guess.
DCS has given WWII very little focus (so far). Their warbirds are very, very nice IMHO. I spent all yesterday playing with them offline. A fully fleshed out DCS WWII offering would be astounding. DCS has the industry momentum, hype and revenue now to actually get development done instead of withering on the vine. The DCS CEO is supposed to be a closet WWII fanatic and has piloted many of the remaining warbirds (it must be nice to be rich). If they see IL2 faltering, they may decide it is time to pounce and capture that market share. Wags himself has mentioned that eventually they are running thin on compelling modern jets they can implement due to security constraints. Up until now there was no reason to try and directly compete against IL2 when they could make plenty of money on modern jet and rotary. If IL2 starts to stumble with Williams gone and they are running out of jets that are worth implementing, they may decide to move on to the next greenfield ripe for take-over, i.e. WWII. Several WWII airframes are already in the pipeline and Wags has made some vague side references to unannounced WWII projects.
It's an interesting horse race. I really don't know if IL2 players would move to AH in it's current form. If they are looking to leave because they see a lack of WWII development, they might not see AH as any better, certainly not enough to justify a monthly subscription that would be worth the cost of two GB versions every year with nothing owned to show for it. Some might just stay and run over the same ground until they drop like AH's remaining base. Some might move to DCS because they don't want to step down in fidelity.
Maybe it all ends up in a bifurcated market. WT for all the casual pilots and DCS for the simulation level combat pilots. With Combat Pilot being the wildcard we will have to wait years more to form a solid opinion of.
"It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future." - Niels Bohr
Shrug.
