This thread will probably be digitally vaporized in a matter of days so I am going to take a serious liberty and float a conspiracy theory like a genteel Surrey version of loudmouth American crackpot Alex Jones! I suspect that given the utter fiasco of Metro Rivals and the presumed monetary losses incurred there is now a bit of a black hole in the DTG financial plans going forward for the next year or two. Maybe if the upper echelons at DTG listened to the feedback in the General Discussion section of this forum they would have realised what a doomed pea brained concept the whole Metro Rivals thing was but it is too late now. How do DTG make up for a loss of planned income? Simple, they go back to the disgusting and immoral practice of charging for the next yearly edition update like they did before. I don't think TSW7 will have a free update version for existing customers. The reason they switched to a free update sales model was because of the bitter and often angry resentment the charged updates produced most noticeably on the General Discussion section of this forum. I guess you can see where I am going with this... If TSW7 is going back to conning customers into paying again for essentially the same game they have already bought (sometimes numerous times) then they would want to silence all dissent on the forums and doing away with the GD section is the way to go. I sincerely hope I am proved wrong and will gladly feed my tin foil hat into a shredder if that is so.
I think you are being unfair to DTG. They make poor product backing decisions, have a shambolic QC process and don't seem to have the ability to fix serious problems with the game, but I don't think they are corrupt. The thing that worries me is if they give up on TSW as being suitable for further development and create a new incompatible train simulator. I think that's increasingly likely.
I'm not sure it was the forum that did the free "upgrade" thing, I think its far more likely to be third party developers rightly concerned that people won't buy a 3 route pack they don't care about in order to be able to run a new third party route that they do.
The OP is not entirely implausible but if DTG went down that road, it would be all over Facebook, YouTube, other forums, the Steam Forum and not just Discord where the Google bots can't penetrate. And they surely know that if they do start charging again, more than a few customers would simply stick with TSW6. The only add ons on the Roadmap I conceivably might want and then only in a sale going forward are the next JT route (Cumbrian Coast) and the German steam route. However I think we have more chance of seeing Iceland (if not Ireland too) and the Coaches expansion for ETS2 before we see the TSG route and I would hazard a guess the JT route is going to be Q1 or Q2 next year. Plenty of time for TSW7 to qualify for its desperation 80% off sale at Christmas or the Festival Of Rail.
Therefore, the two-month period between July and August is shaping up to be a real financial suicide for TSW users (at least for those who continue to make purchases), considering all the DLC already announced in the RM and assuming TSW 7 is released in September.
And of course the opening post is really going to make DTG want to keep the forums open! I wonder if all these people with the crystal balls will come back and say they were wrong if it turns out their crystal balls are faulty. Frankly I don't know if I want to be part of this "community" if this the levels it has stooped to. Drama and hyperbole seems to be the order of the day. If think it is better just to enjoy the sim and forget about the "community".
DTG sells dlcs (without much guilt and at full price) defective for console, until proven otherwise. Ultimately, with this methodology, I don't think conjecture is out of place... I'm not saying that DTG is defrauding its customers (because they aren't forced to make purchases with a gun pointed at his temple), but there is something wrong, and it's a fact. Try to look at the whole thing.
Absolutely agree but there would still be people who blindly defend DTG like there were in the past. Are some brutal home truths and free thinking now reason enough to shut down a forum section? No one is forcing you. Bye bye.
My 2 pence….the next iteration of TSW will continue with the same model as the previous versions. A clean break will be made from TSW8 using a new game engine, probably UE5 but maybe a completely new engine to coincide with the release of the next generation of consoles with their respective increase in VRAM or unified RAM. A lot but not all of the current problems are down to the limitations of this current gen and it simply isnt worth the time or effort to fix. DTG obviously have an private internal roadmap which they are working to. Third parties will continue making DLC for TSW7 as some have already confirmed Roadmaps for the next 2 years. Honestly I foresee that the current and future versions of TSW will continue in parallel much like TSC did/does when TSW first emerged.
IMHO if DTG is hiding something it would be that they are working on TSW Next. TBH many of us asked DTG repeatedly to not launch so much new DLC and spend more time fixing the old ones, so I am not surprised when I see them do it. The GWE remaster was a great success, the ECW remaster was good and the TOD4 update to SKA was just OK (the updated timetable was also very good, but it was released previously). Another thing I have heard a lot from DTG, usually after we complain that some asset or area is not even close to the quality we expect, is that they run out of budget and they couldn't put more time into it. When I hear that I always say it is a bad decision to release DLC with sections that are very noticeably below average, that they should reorganize their time better or go a bit over the budget. Basically, what I want them is to release the DLC when it is ready (as the game studios with great reputation used to do some years ago). It seems it is quite difficult to predict exactly how long the development of a DLC is going to take or what unexpected issues will happen, and they cant extend the budget for the development of a DLC past a certain point because it becomes a problem of risk management. What happens if they think the route they are releasing is awesome but we, the customers, do not think the same? So, who can spend as much time as needed to finish a DLC no matter what? Mostly 3Ps, specially the ones that are rail fans, earn their living doing something else and make DLCs both as a hobby and a way to earn extra cash. Those can keep working on a DLC at their own pace for as long as needed. And I have to say, we like the result. Don't we love it when we hear a 3P spent year and a half or 2 years doing something and it ends up being great? Sure we do. Can we blame DTG for noticing it and going that route as much as possible? Don't think so. If I can complain about something it is that they released a ton of the DLCs in the same month, or that there are still many issues that are fixed internally but not fixed in the [public] game because of QA, builds, etc ... but not because they are letting 3Ps do most of the new DLCs.
It won't be until 2030 before the PS6 is as widely available as the PS5, and even then, many won't have the money for the upgrade. Meanwhile, let's see how the PS5 handles GTA in November...
2030 before its widely available? Where are you getting your info from because that’s not what my sources are saying I’m afraid!
This conspiracy theory makes the HUGE, unfounded assumption that you "lose" money when offering a "free upgrade." Two problems with that. a) Very few people actually got the free upgrade and NOTHING ELSE. Most did in fact go onto purchase other content, which they might not have. It made them money, even when "free" at first. b) It doesn't cost DTG anything. Unlike say a car that has metal and plastic, etc to produce... once TSW 7 we'll say is created... it's done. Offering the core upgrade to another person doesn't cost them anything additional. They're ALREADY making it for the thousands of other people who will download it for the new routes, so there's no cost. If just one person who was on the fence buys it and then later buys one DLC in the year....that's profit. It's like if you have a highway you're already building for cars to drive down and it's paid for (like here in the states) through gas taxes...then if you let a bicyclist ride on it, it's not really costing you anything. The road was already going to be built and is already paid for by the huge number of car and truck drivers who are paying for it with gas taxes. The bicyclist using it doesn't cost you anything additional. In this case, substantial number of players who get the "free" core then buy DLC later, so it's net profit to offer it.
The other possibility is they just won’t call it TSW7 and simply continue with a core update and content bundle, but that’s ground we’ve already gone over in other threads. And with all due respect to the sentiments expressed by The Organist, I don’t see anything wrong per se with the OP. It was the speculation last year about TSW6 which encouraged DTG to make an earlier announcement than usual. The one thing we can be certain of, is there do seem to be changes afoot so nowt wrong with encouraging a bit of transparency.
