(Shocking) News!!!!!

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Baron Munchausen said:

Actually, SE IV was published before it was ready. I don't think the game was complete until the Gold edition. And that was only Aaron and Richard making the decisions (I didn't hear anything about Tim Brooks leaning on them if he did... ) This seems to be a general problem with software, not just games. Proper development takes LOTS of testing, and that means lots of time. Very few people, or companies, are financially secure enough to finish the development of a major software project in one go. I fully expect that SE V will be incomplete in some major ways when first release. If I don't get in on the beta team and get a 'free' copy I'll probably wait till SE V Gold to buy it.

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20000715.html

[Will]

Tim Brooks said:

Sorry tesco, what I meant is that on our 'all time' top sellers list, SEIV is in the top 3, not our "best seller by far". Last year, 2004, Dominions II was our number one seller and SEIV was 4th.

This is not meant to discount SEIV in any way, we are proud to call it a best selling Shrapnel game, it just shows how much our fan base has grown since we started in business. Heck our new releases now do in a month what it took SEIV several months to do back in 2000, when it was first released.

Sooo, Tim... When's the IPO?

As for the publisher jump, it of course could be a mixed blessing. It sounds like Aaron will be leveraging a bit of SF's resources to get more mainstream advertising and reviews, as well as helping out with translations and such. It's much easier and better to have a professional translator make a non-english version of a game, both the internal description bits and the manuals and such. That opens up the market quite a bit.

The mainstream part is what worries me. The majority of gamers I know in person prefer console games, and the PC games they play are either A) a shoot-'em-up, or B) the Sims, or C) Snood. I still don't get the Snood crowd. Regardless, I have no idea if SEV will fit into the mainstream. I hope it will.

Also, kudos to the wonderful Shrapnel people! Keeping the forums goes beyond anything expected from customer service. Now you said something about selling off existing stocks of SEIV and SE:Starfury... You all are still the publisher for those games, right? (and Dungeon Odyssey?) You'll still be selling those, right? I could understand not ordering any more copies of SEIV once SEV comes out, since people will naturally go with the newest version, but SE:SF should still have some life in it, I think.

/me needs to go to the Shrapnel Store and make some purchaces soon...

[Fyron]

NullAshton said:
Space Empires needs to use .jpg files. Would reduce the size of mods and the game a lot, and allow more stuff to fit in. Imagine... THOUSANDS of system pictures! TENS OF THOUSANDS of component pictures!!!

JPG is not a good format. It loses too much color information (even with those algorithms used by David Gervais...). PNG is far, far superior, and has no royalty fees involved to boot.

[Fyron]

DeadZoneMDx said:
Actually David, I now fear, that with Aaron going to SF, what happens to every other game on the market will happen to SEV
Aaron is pushed into releasing before its ready

Truth be told, both SEIV and Starfury were released before they were really ready to be released... Both of them had big bugs lurking about and that were not yet fixed, as well as some lacking features. Certainly, they were patched within a few months, but still...

[NullAshton]

Imperator Fyron said:

When was this? SE3 had nothing but BMPs...

What does this have to do with anything?

Edit: Why did you have to do that?

[Suicide Junkie]

Will said:
Also, kudos to the wonderful Shrapnel people! Keeping the forums goes beyond anything expected from customer service. Now you said something about selling off existing stocks of SEIV and SE:Starfury... You all are still the publisher for those games, right? (and Dungeon Odyssey?) You'll still be selling those, right? I could understand not ordering any more copies of SEIV once SEV comes out, since people will naturally go with the newest version, but SE:SF should still have some life in it, I think.

/me needs to go to the Shrapnel Store and make some purchaces soon...

Doesn't SE3 still sell copies?

I would expect that the SE4 and SF games will still sell after SE5 has had its 15 minutes of retail fame.
Trying to sell them while SE5 is breaking into the market is probably not a good idea, of course, but it shouldn't kill the market.
There is bound to be a surge of people interested in the whole series.

[Phoenix-D]

Suicide Junkie said:

Doesn't SE3 still sell copies?

I would expect that the SE4 and SF games will still sell after SE5 has had its 15 minutes of retail fame.
Trying to sell them while SE5 is breaking into the market is probably not a good idea, of course, but it shouldn't kill the market.
There is bound to be a surge of people interested in the whole series.

Any additional SE4 copies would probably have to be made by Strategy first, unless MM made a deal with Shrapnel to continue production.

[Suicide Junkie]

SE4 has nothing to do with S1st.
Why would they make copies?

[mac5732]

IMHO, I think we all need to just sit back, take a deep breath or two, (maybe a brewski to help drown any sorrows) and look at the total picture. This is a business, and Aaron, like any other buisness person, looks ahead to further his growth as well as income. He apparently wants to try something new and look into other possible markets. Thats business. I/we/whomever, apparantly are upset which is normal reaction. However, Aaron has been with Shrapnel and all of us for a long time and I don't think he would turn out a half baked game. If he did, I'm sure most of us would not buy it, further, I would bet that some of us would say so in other forums as well. Therefore, Aaron has everything to gain by putting out another quality product and everything to lose if he doesn't. I know its hard for us addicted rapid fans to make/see a change, but, lets wait and see how the game turns out. After all, we'll still be here and Aaron knows where to find us and Shrapnel. I wish him the best of luck, and still hope he drops in on the forum and in the IRC SE4 chat room once in awhile. Life goes on and so will Space Empires (hopefully). Thanks to the great people at Shrapnel, we will still have a SEV forum here for us to use/talk/complain/gripe/mod/etc. What other company have you ever seen who would post a forum on a competitors game? None that I know of. Tks Shrapnel we appreciate it. The real question is do we combine the SEV and SEIV forums into l or keep them seperate? There are pros and cons for both. We have time to decide and let Shrapnel know. Oh well, my 2 cents, I'm going to go have a brewski or two to enrich my depression over this

[Lisif Deoral]

Tim Brooks said:

All the above quote actually says is that the Space Empires IV crowd is vocal and the game has enjoyed longevity - which, I believe we all knew . We wish we could get the wargamers to be this vocal here, but they have a vast forum network that extends beyond the Intel Forums. The reality though is that SEIV was not our 'best selling game by far'. It however has been in our top 3 sellers since its release over 5 years ago. In 2004 it was beat out by Dominions II, which was our top seller, and, in fact, SEIV came in 4th place for the year.

Er... yes, I think I used the wrong tense (English syntax error in line 2... er, I meant "it isn't my native language, sorry"). What I meant was that I thought that SEIV was the best seller in 2001 or 2002. Anyway, I suppose the overall sales total for 2000-2005 is good if it managed to stay in the top 3 for 4 years.