Eagle Dynamics has delayed the Phantom another day, ON the day of release.
Usual poor performance BS from them (I don't know if it's ED or Heatblur who really did it).
I don't pull any punches for their ineptitude regarding management of releases (or discounted early access pre-purchase con)... have at it! 
Best I can say is “I told ya so”. Their model and numbers don’t work. The more delay on AC coming out, the worse it will get. Every situation will cause player confidence to drop. They aren’t dead, but future indicators and tells are emerging. Dedicated players will be the last to know. It’s becoming a bad investment. If they don’t pick up production and new planes real quick they will enter a spiral that will be hard to recover because of their payment model.
This is not new to me. Before returning to AH, 2020, I DLed DCS to find something new. As soon as I discovered their payment model I chose not to invest. I saw this coming way back then. These kind of numbers are easily imploded as soon as AC stop coming out. No new AC, no revenue, dev becomes unaffordable. The fact they sought investors is a major tell.
Obviously, Trips has pre-pay caution for a reason.
Just because past pre-pays went through that doesn’t mean future pre-pays will. Just the fact they are asking for pre-pay system is a tell they can’t afford dev. Now if all the buyers have pre-paid profit is already swallowed. The pit gets deeper.
People with vast investments will be the last to admit there are problems. Denial takes over.
This new model will prolly come out, it was in production before major problems hit. Future models is your true concern.
This payment model is easier to implode than a sub model.
Obviously, player confidence is dropping, even if its not global. That’s not where they want to be. It will make a spiral spin faster.
Its a beautiful game, but I think these cockpits swallow dev time to get AC out. Its very time consuming - expensive. I think they set their sights too high to be affordable dev., only to be smashed by a problematic payment model. They can’t afford their demands on dev. subcontractors.
If they don’t turn out 2-3 AC real quick…you can guess where this will go.
I hated watching people invest in a bad system. At some point investors are going to want a return.
I’m not in their books, its all instinct, but tells are emerging, and those are only those you know about. They are in damage control panic. They will tell you what they think you want to hear to keep you interested, then have the backlash as failing to deliver. Had Razbam not gone public, you may not see it coming. Evidently, to me, that issue has not been resolved. Some devs walked away from razbam due to not being paid because razbam was not paid. They may not be able to resolve that issue. Damage is done.
Beautiful game, horrible biz model. A shame.
When I can accurately predict something I don’t have all the facts on, good chance instincts have it nailed. I predicted this 4 yrs ago. <shrug>.
If it takes s team 6 mos to a year to turn out an AC, I’d hate to see that invoice.
