With TSC not having anymore annual iterations, will the base version of TSC be updated and have the base routes changed at all? Or will it forever come with Huddersfield line etc?
It seems DTG are not producing content any more, with the whole focus on TSW and TSC core overhaul. All the yearly route bundles were DTG routes iirc, but there's nothing new. (Their parent company Focus is in deep troubles atm, having more debts than the company's worth). I think Pegnitztalbahn was their last production. Maybe atomicdanny can enlighten us, if he's allowed to... Hope Stuart Galbraith is still with the team. He's the main route builder as I understood, but probably now developing for TSW. Which is perfectly alright, as we have very productive 3rd parties for TSC.
Focus Entertainment's share price is about 20% of what it was a year ago. This month there was a sudden drop when they revealed their half year results. Revenue was up but profits were down due to the disappointing launch of Atlas Fallen. I expect they'll recover as they've got some other strong titles and brands. With regards the OP's question, I've no idea, but as the model for TSW updates appears to have changed to an annual charge, it's possible TSC may go the same way. I'm not opposed to this as such - it's a common funding model with other software - but obviously any updates have to be worth the price being charged.
Still they've stopped DLC development for TSC. Huddersfield was the last british route - Oct 2022! Focus is heavily struggling and are considered high-risk investment, that's pretty obvious. If I was convinced they'd stabilize, I'd buy some shares for sure. But, no. Too risky. Seems they went all-in with Atlas Fallen. Now can't pay their bills.
I'd say the game would still be updated with other DTG routes already available bundled - mainly for those that don't have them? Probably won't matter to long term players as we pretty much have everything.
Which is concerning to hear as I do wonder if sales and profits from train sim will be used to fund the downfall of the other games focus do and slow down train sim.
TS will not be funding the rest of Focus anytime soon, it's just too niche of a game to create enough revenue.
They said in some post that they would start producing routes again after the core updates are done. Not for Germany... no one produces long mainline routes in Germany except for DTG. It´s a too big job for freeware (excluding Bremerhaven-Hannover, great work!) and third party are focused on S-Bahn/U-Bahn (U1 Hamburg, Ringbahn Berlin etc.). The latest German offerring bei RSSLO was also bad quality. The last decent long routes we have gotten have been Dresden-Leipzig, Straßbourg-Karlsruhe and Pegnitztalbahn all by DTG. German community is a bit lost without them to be honest!
Berlin-Leipzig, Brennitzer Linienstern, Durchs Moseltal, Freiburg-Basel. Im Köblitzer Bergland 3, Konstanz-Villingen-Hausach & Salzburg - Rosenheim are all route of good length and operating options that were not made by DTG. Rsslo's Munchen - Nuremberg is a bit poor and stuttery.
749006 Nearly all of those producers are not around anymore. TSG went over to TSW, Padlabs/Aerosoft stopped making stuff TSC and insted made a Hamburg U-Bahn Game, SAD has not announced anything new and Bahnjahn has stopped making mainline routes and only focuses on Berlin S-Bahn now.
Building a Real Drive for it now. Runs very smooth here except in the area close to München hbf. I’ve driven the autobahn that run parralel to the route many times. I recognised all of that part of the route.
I have travelled on the railway quite a few times on the RE services with the 101 and local trains with a 111. The section from Munich Laim to Dachau seemed the worse when I tried the route at a friends house. I decided against buying the route.
749006 fully agreed. The scenery on the route seems rushed and is very unpleasing. It´s one of the few German routes, I don´t own. I hope someone makes a famous community update for it in the feature. Would be loads of work though. I think alone foliage would need a full replacement by hand. It seems totally off to me comparing it to cabrides.
Let's hope the state which Focus are in doesn't spell the demise of either TSC or TSW. With hindsight it would have been better if DTG had not acquised to the takeover. Could explain why TSW is seeing these quick fire routes like the poor quality Maintalbahn and the very short forthcoming Goblin Line as they try to keep cashflow going.
That has been exactly my thoughts... but I´m less pessimistic about TSC to be honest. If they finish up the core updates and drop it after that, TSC still has a good future with freeware and third party. Yes, the 1-2 routes a year by DTG are missing, but it won´t die. TSW without Payware DLC? Finished! I really wonder if and when they will do routes for TSC again and what kind of quality and length we will be getting. The last couple of German routes have been very decent milage (Pegnitzalbahn, Leipzig-Dresden Extension, Offenburg to Karlsruhe and Straßbourg, Frankfurt-Koblenz).
To be fair, at this point the excitement for DTG routes in Train Simulator is close to nothing. They're effectively secondary developers for their own game.
Yes, they're living off the huge back catalogue accumulated in 13+ years. Development is on TSW, and only a small team takes care of the TSC core to make sure they can profit from TSC DLC much longer. Ok if you ask me. There's so many 3rd parties with excellent content out there, and I've yet to discover DLC I purchased years ago... Anyone noticed how utterly great the ten years old Oovee Class 156 actually is for example?
Sadly I can't say much, it's more it's not my place, but also don't forget Steve Potter and Dan Barnett though, he also did the route building too (well at least of the route builders that actually got credit in manuals :P ). I'm now working on TSW.
Interesting... However it also makes me wonder further if TSC is being scaled back and which sim, in the event of hard decisions having to be made in light of the Focus situation, would be chosen to continue if only one product goes forward.
I think that Focus' problems are being exaggerated and I see that in the last 10 days its share price has started to recover a bit. If there are distress decisions to be made, then I think the game that generates the greatest cash/profit would survive. TSC has a massive DLC catalogue which must generate a lot of money without too much work. But if Focus needs money I think it's more likely it would just sell a complete studio, of which it has at least eight.
Let's hope it will blow over then. In any event I would guess the fishing games or Catan sit in a more precarious position than the Trains Division.
Sound-wise not quite, but it did have a number of features that would not become the universal standards until a number of years later. The Class 150/2 was similar in that regard.
Not true... the last german routes have been very solid and I would not mind a couple more. There are still massive gaps in the German network (unlike England and Austria).The Huddersfield Line (last UK route) was also decent. DTG have denied this several times on these forums. There will be some routes in the future for TSC after the core updates are done. ATS also says on some streams, that TSC sales are still decent and you constantly see new members arriving on Railsim and the facebook groups. Yes, TSW sure sells more, but TSC is not dead in my eyes. At least not for me! I´m working on a freeware route and have another project on my mind, when my first one is released.
If you read the new Railsimulator.com (DTG) accounts then you see that their bank loans were all repaid after the takeover, so the takeover is already cash positive for DTG. If Focus ever did get into trouble then DTG is a very saleable item so they aren't going bust anytime soon. Also in the accounts I notice that despite DTG not paying any dividends this year there were some very heafty dividends paid in the past, so again they don't need a sugar daddy, they are perfectly self-sufficient. They do release their player numbers though and its interesting that the active paying player numbers decreased slightly in the last year. Finally I was waiting for the March 2023 accounts because if you remember, there was a flurry of activity especially in TSW in March with stuff being pushed out of the door right at the last minute so it got booked as revenue in these accounts. With that in mind they had slightly higher sales than last year but not by that much, which suggests they were likely short before that big push, as I suspected and said at the time. These accounting figures were what Focus would have been shown when they agreed the price to buy DTG so they wanted to show performance that was increasing over time.
It'll be a tough year nevertheless. Atm, Focus market capital is around 100M, while the debts is 120M, which has to be considered critical. So they need to be very very efficient and profitable now to get out of that hole. Xmas sales at least stopped the downward trend, which does not say much though. (RailSimulator.com belongs 100% to Focus Entertainment btw. While said to be creatively independent, financially they're not. The premature and bug-ridden release of TSW4 was forced by Focus as the decline was apparent and they needed immediate cashflow, I'm 100% sure of that.) It seems as if all is depending now on the success of the upcoming Warhammer game. Looks like "all-in" to me. It's no wonder they decided to put TSW3 and yes, even TSW2 back in the stores. Every cent counts. Lots of stuff is in an uncertain, almost abandoned state here. Look at the Catan and Fishing forums, the age old logout redirection error, the short lived "Dovetail Direct" project, no new route bundle and TSC background. And I wonder if Stuart Galbraith, the main TSC route builder, has also left. He can't just sit there and do nothing, maybe he's working on TSW (no indication for that though) or he's gone One thing's for sure. RSC/DTG founder Paul Jackson sold his company at the right time, and many ex-DTG employees, like Derek Siddle who also left to retire in his early fifties, probably don't have much financial worries now. So the question is, what happened after DTG developed their last routes in 2022. Either the team consisted of private RSC shareholders who left the company after the deal, or they're working on TSW now. I recall them stating they hired a lot of new staff (which is obviously causing quality problems in TSW), which could mean a lot of the old crew have retired.
I didn’t realise Derek Siddle had retired. Top man. His Weardale route will always be a fitting legacy to his time with KRS/RW/TSC.
Not to say bad things about Stuart - he of course is a great guy, but he wasn't the only route builder on the team, there were at least Steve Potter, Dan Barnett and myself too (before going to TSW - I can't comment for the others, as it would be on them to say not me, but you should at least mention the other route builders too - they have also done great work (I can't comment for myself on that one of course ) He chose to focus on other things - I mean (I'm sure he won't mind) - but he does post a lot of what he's doing on his Instagram now Instagram
I don't know about the others - I found Stuart's name in most of the (sparse) manuals, so probably not everyone was credited there. Of course y'all did a great job
Those of us in DTG rarely get mentioned in Manuals (as for Dan Barnett and Steve potter since Chatham and Medway which i think was his first contribution for Steve, but both have been mentioned in Manuals - Dan Barnett was one of the originals like Derek, but then became a contractor and did outsource work - like Steve and Stuart)
atomicdanny can you comment if any TSC routes are beeing worked on and if not, will there be any new routes in the future? The freeware community might be more pushed to step up a level, if it´s known toe everyone, that we don´t need to expect much in the future. That you have been moved over to TSW seems concerning to me.
Sadly anything like that can only be mentioned by the community team (it's not my place to comment on future things or things that may or may not be in development, and of course it is upto the community managers to post that sort of thing - anything released i can comment on or info that has been released )
Well thank you Danny for your time and effort you've put into the route building. I'm grateful for it
Sadly DTG dropped Stu when they stopped TSC development rather than take the time to show him how to develop with UE4 Outsourcing most of the landscape scenery to "cheaper countries" is why TSW routes are never quite right to the eyes of people who know the area.
I though they will resume TSC development after the core updates? So once again a lie... lots of lies latley coming from Chatham.
Not necessarily a lie, Stu was always a contractor and never an employee of DTG. They might be getting him back and he just hasn't told me, I haven't had a decent conversation with him for a little while... I'll ask him tomorrow
This kind of speculation about a diagram that shows something is in my opion always tricky..... Whe have no clue in what type of arangement DTG is involved in this case. So say its direct a result for DTG is not a good statement i guess. We simply do not know how the finances are divided and who would benefit from them in the event of bankruptcy. I don't think DTG is so stupid as to throw everything overboard and leave everything financially to Focus without proper agreements. It looks very heavy on such a diagram, but time will tell what it really is.
I can clearly remember someone at DTG saying that they'd be able to work on more DLC once they're happy with the core. It certainly doesn't make sense that they would spend time and money getting the core fixed only to mothball the title. And even if they did call it a day, I'm pretty sure there would be a buyer for platform. While TSC is a very niche market it's still got a very healthy, enthusiastic following. The main issue is that starting a TSC collection nowadays is daunting and expensive. The bundle packages help but I think there needs to be a raft of modern routes and rolling stock if DTG/Focus are to entice new, younger players.
Correct! I think that DTG as TSW and TSC is a stady income and big changes to this title to earn more money will create more negative sides than good ones.
I believe DTG may release routes for TSC when the core is updated. Thankfully, 3rd parties have been releasing stuff in the mean time to keep us preoccupied. I don't know how long the core will be worked on for but I think it only makes sense that more routes come if they are taking the time to update and stabilize the simulator. If the devs wanted TSC to be obsolete or a thing of the past, I am sure none of this work to revamp would be happening.
I think it depends. I don't know how popular the game was between 2007 and about 2013, but for a while it was quite lucrative with a consistent set of content: the 8 routes, their by then versatile rolling stock collection, and most DLC supplied for it. It was a good basis to expand, too. There are similar DLC and editions these days, but it's random. Then it crashed, with no such core content anymore and some yearly editions being really unrelated, plus workshop cross-referencing and 3rd party requirements. I was lucky to buy TSC 2015 Steam Edition which had 4 just routes but 5 additional trains (1.5 of which was a reskin). What do you think about offering a relatively big package again with a bunch of routes and trains? Or is it a lost cause between regional offerings and the community pushing towards non-Steam content and enhancements?
That explains a lot, like the misspellings on Maintalbahn (on their promo shots even) or this on MML (which was quite a debacle on release, and has only been improved with the help of modders supporting Skyhook) I mean you can make a mistake when making the texture. But if you don't notice when placing that sign, you're probably not knowing what it says. I smell cheap labour and a lot of pressure. Then again I'm happy TSC core gets improved and we have so much to choose from and a great freeware / 3rd party scene.
This is why I'm worried about the GOBLIN route. First TSW route in what I would call "my neck o' the woods" so any really bad scenery could wreck it for me. I want to be able to leave Riverside station and walk the short path to a tidal Thames but I fear it'll be a field on one side, some bland new housing on the other and no river.
