My hot-take which may be off base.
Listening to them talk about how it was decided, they talked about what the devs wanted. What the devs thought would be easy. What the devs thought would be fun. At no time did I hear them mention what the market wanted or what their customer base wanted. Who was the customer's champion during these internal "referendums"? Who was there represented in the voting that was focused on what the market wanted?
He mentioned the decision was NOT unanimous. Odd thing to mention. That is the time frame Williams left. He mentions PTO was considered but apparently carriers, like AH has had for a decade, are impossible to implement.
I could imagine a scenario where Williams wanted to go PTO, like he has stated since Kuban, and got "out-voted" by the russian devs. Maybe that is why he decided to leave. He probably had a better finger on the pulse of what the market and customer base wanted, but got voted out by the russians. He didn't decide to go off and do a Korea sim, he went off to do PTO which the russian team rejected. Just my guess.
I still have found very few current IL2 WWII fans who are thrilled about dropping WWII and moving to Korea. I'm not sure what kind of marketing research they did, if any. It's a bold move, Cotton. We'll have to see how it plays out.
