Oh, IMHO, the amount of things that could be done still is quite large.
They could even redo a better BoB. I don't care that a previous dev had done one two decades before. Do it again better. Can't do something you did decades previously with new technology? Why make a Falcon 5 then? Four other versions of the F-16 sim hadn't already done everything that could be done? OR and Aces High III for that matter. Wasn't everything already done by AH II? Sometimes just a tech reboot is enough justification.
Personally, I don't think BoB would be a great seller as a DLC or whatever. There are tons of early war aircraft in IL2 that are seldom used because the majority of the population flock to servers with the late war stuff (Combat Box, for example). One of my/our squad's goals in 2025 is to start running Snapshot style events on our server in IL2 and perhaps dip into the earlier stuff as it's more fun to us. But just like in AH, it's tough to get people to give up their P51 or Tempest.
So of course everything could be done better, but clearly someone there did a cost analysis and determined the best course of action was to take a leap with Korea. As I said in my previous post, I would've preferred MTO and do an Italy map, maybe add a playable medium bomber or two. At least it's a new theater with essentially the same planes (USAAF, RAF v Luftwaffe + some Italian planes). If you hop into Combat Box during an Eastern Front setup they just enable all of the Western Front planes too since people complain about not having a P-51 lol. Kinda dumb.
There is exactly a use for competing with that. WWII is their bread and butter and only source of revenue currently. Korea is unproven, years away, and already showing sign of not really being wanted even by a large portion of their own fan base. It's a "forgotten war" era that evokes little emotion in people because no one cared about a UN mandated "Police Action". Not exactly a backstory that inspires.
CP is gunning for their bread and butter with brand new tech and funding. They can walk away from their money printing machine and leave it for CP to take over, or they can fight for it. And CP chose it's franchise name a lot more intelligently so I bet you bucks to Navy beans they don't plan on stopping with the Pacific. Instead they are abandoning their money printing machine to go compete in the jet space with a company that pisses jets for breakfast. With unproven technology that may or may not play out. With a dev team that pretty much was a basket case before Williams straightened them out, and now he is gone again, now he is their competitor. My guess is their team will badly flub this new effort without his guidance with an era no one cares about, abandoning a loyal fan base that didn't ask for that and still has lots they want to see finish and\or explored further.
It makes no sense to me to hand my money printing machine over to a new competitor startup. They have two years probably to get in there first with an update Pacific Fighters for this century and deny CP an unfulfilled niche to get a toehold on their way to taking the whole WWII space. If you let them establish a beachhead with CP, they will eventually take your whole market share, and if Korea flops (65% chance IMHO) then you are left with nothing.
The only thing Korea will provide, personally, is a slight breath of fresh air with jets, as it's the last era without abundant missiles, radar, tracking, etc. It'll be fun but I agree it's probably going to be a dead end. Everyone will buy it, though.
I hope Combat Pilot does well, more combat flight sims can only be better. It would be ideal if they had some arena capabilities like AH does where events can be run.
