I've been playing TS2021 and TSW2 for a few months now and have both noticed and heard DTG talk about their big three core markets of the UK, Germany and the USA but I've not been able to work out why these are the 3 core markets. Does anyone know? I know DTG is based in the UK, so that makes sense, and the US is one of the biggest markets in the world for tech, so I get that, but why Germany? Are they just especially a nation of rail fans more than any other? What about the Dutch or French? Also, if you look at the amount of track mileage there is in the world, countries like China, Japan and India are huge and Spain and France have more high speed mileage than both the UK or Germany. If we consider language, then again, the US and UK make sense, but Germany doesn't (other than their English is usually better than most non-english speaking countries, but then the Dutch are very good too.
Rail Fanning in Germany is very popular, and German content sells better than US and UK content on TSW. There is obviously a call for more countries to be represented, and for TSW its Australia that is the most popular request for another country to be developed for, according to their most popular routes request list they did on stream a while back. There’s also the logistics of gathering reference material for new countries and their trains, the US, UK & Germany are easier for a UK team to travel to, rather than say Asia & Australia, there’s also the fact that big TOC’s such as DB, CSX, Amtrak and many of the British companies that have worked with DTG for a long time now, which obviously makes it much faster and easier to create content that include those companies.
Germans are also really REALLY into the simulator genre...I would suggest a significant amount of their income comes from this region and therefore obviously be in DTG's best interest to focus some of their attention there.
Here is a link to a post which has the info from the stream (I don’t remember which stream it was so this is the next best thing). The list is 50 routes long however above 23 they are mostly single votes, from 23 there are multiple votes. https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/list-of-top-23-route-suggestions-for-tsw-2.31425/
Here's a fun fact just to put into perspective how big sims are in Germany. Angela Merkel went to Gamescom, mostly just did some photo ops, but the one game she ended up actually playing a bit of while she was there is Farming Simulator.
About Germany I would like to add that it might attract the whole european crowd, particularly for the more modern stock. As everything gets more standardised and the same locos are more widely used in mainland Europe a lot of the German locos can be familiar to a lot of people.
Well, would imagine that their biggest fan bases are in these countries and therefore make lots more money. That's my guess
As others have said, they follow the money. Also, it's a bit of a self perpetuating cycle in these markets. Because the big three markets are their most lucrative, they buy up licenses in those areas for rail companies. Then, they're far more likely (and have said as much) to make content based on licenses they already have, which means they have even MORE incentive to keep making content there. You'll notice that even for TS1, the only route I can think of outside of the big three (including Canada with the US) that DTG made themselves is Lyon-Marsailles. Anything else in Japan, NZ, South Africa, even Austria and Switzerland have all been by third parties. It makes Train Sim WORLD a bit of a misnomer. But, if you look at the earlier history of the original TSW, it seems they did have a very different strategy than today. I mean just look at the names of routes. CSX Heavily Haul, Rapid Transit, etc. I think the plan may have been to have different routes billed more as unique experiences around the world (to some extent) rather than the TS1 idea of route from point A to B. However for whatever reason, player demand, the realities of development, etc. they've gone back to the same model as TS1.
Some Russian routes would have been really cool. "Such routes, much trains". I think that would be real fun to play, and a quite a different experience at that. Also, more US heavy freight!! Always, more US heavy freight!!
Germany offers a couple of practical advantages. 1) the DB trademark license can be used all over the country. 2) Since most of the rolling stock is common, it can be layered into other routes or recycled into new ones. Having said that, the same applies to SNCF in France, so one would think more French routes might follow. And research trips are even closer than Germany.
That's hardly unique to Germany. Many European countries have a national railway company that can be seen throughout the country. That's only one license to obtain. Plus, especially modern rolling stock is commonly shared over multiple countries, especially freight wagons and lease locomotives. And although national passenger trains often have their own livery, international trains do not. The ICE can be seen in quite a few neighbouring countries in it's usual DB livery. And although you'd need a license of such a national company, there has to be a few European railway companies willing to sign off such a licensing deal. Train Simulator already has DLC showing SBB (Switzerland), ÖBB (Austria), SNCF (France) and NS (Netherlands) logos. Although licensing may prevent DTG doing a specific country, I'm not convinced it's what keeps them within their favourite 3.
