Realistically I am not sure how much more there is to do in WWII.
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.
There is Pacific, of course, but it seems to stray away from the bread and butter they have, plus with CP upcoming there's no real use competing with that.
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.
I know IL2 is a household name in the aviation video game space, but it feels like if they really wanted to harness other eras and theaters they should've re-branded a long time ago, somehow strategically dropping the IL2 name.
Agreed. It's stupid. Especially since they imply the road is forward from here. So IL2:Vietnam? IL2: Gulf War? Wut?
They'd have been better off leveraging the other part of franchise name. Great Battles. Or maybe Great Air Battles. Still invocative of their previous titles but unshackling from an era specific title that will not make any logical sense going forward. Like: Great Air Battles: Vietnam, Great Air Battles: 6 Day War, etc.
In my opinion, the IL2: Korea thing has a big chance of reliving this brilliant product decision:
$0.02.