Time For A Next Step, Dtg?

Nice little earner.

 

Yeah. Looks like they are registered as Railsimulator.com limited. I will wait until September to see how much they have grown.

 

Although if they have a growth target that need to hit, it might explain why they keep pushing bad DLC's out. It looks like they might want to have some tough conversations within the company to see what they want to be.

 

If I've understood the numbers correctly (not an accountant) they made an after tax profit equal to 11% of turnover? That's hardly excessive is it and confirms my suspicion that what we get for our money is the most you're going to get from anybody in this low volume niche market.

 

11% net profit is whoppingly good- double or more the usual

 

See section 2 of this website's terms of use... It's under "Help links" on the menu at the top of every page

 

OK, can we lose the "money crunch" notion. And they seem to be doing quite well with the organizational structure they have in place, don't they? I don't think they need our help running things, do you? (Thanks for the information, synthetic.angel.)

 

Yes - this is true. I have analysed quite a few companies, and 5% return is easily good enough (usually) for full dividend cover. And if I scan-read the report correctly, the vast majority of the profit (well over 90%) was spent on returning equity, at a phenomenal 200% profit for the investors, and the company continues to expand all the while.... TSW is with us for quite a while to come. ;-)

And we haven't had the COVID boosted results (assumption) come in yet - and I suspect they will be quite phenomenal.

Anyway - the key point here is that DTG has the money. And they can afford to buy some books on project planning, and hire The Spice Girls to read the books to them and point at the pictures, while they gently bathe themselves in ass's milk, if they want to. And after that they can then get a copy of MS Project, so that in future the "product testing" bit precedes the "launch stream marketing" bit in the Gantt chart, rather than be a paralled/combined activity..... ;-)

 

And they can even afford to pay a consulting firm rather than get advise from strangers on the internet. Lol. But seriously hope they get their stuff together. I want to see more routes like HMA and less like HHL

 

Simple solution: give the head of QA a line-stop button. A veto: "This product cannot ship in its current state."

 

Not because of financial reasons. But in general we are not happy with the product quality and a number of people complain about prices as well. it is clear something needs to change. In my own interest I give them a good advice.

 

Exactly. And over the last year they will have saved a huge amount of cash from not having to keep the pantry fully stocked..... so they can afford to get someone in.....

Or they could send some of their staff to work for another company, on secondment, to learn some project management skills and experience some quality management culture (TQM), and then bring back some ideas/learning to the Chatham office - or just chat about it at the water cooler..... plant some seeds, so to speak (not in the water cooler itself).

HHL will be absolutely fine when it is finished - and possibly one of the best routes to date. And... in my personal opinion, pretty much every single DLC for TSW and TSW 2 is really good (eventually) - the only exception is Oakville, which is a completely horrific mess. But if DTG earned a reputation for making DLCs that broadly worked upon release, then they'd get more cash from the initial premium offer price.

More QA = More Money

 

I have to disagree with you about that. I would say it was left unfinished ( no passenger services, restricted world), but it has one of the best locos in the game in the GP9RM and I think has some unique and interesting scenarios/services.

 

I agree with you that the GP9RM is fabulous, inside and out. I love the CN liveries. Fabulous route for screenshots. Oakville actually has really good physics, and great CPU performance (maybe because they didn't finisih it....). I am not sure about the audio on some of the wagons (I don't think buck-eyes quite clank like chain/hook couplings...).... But I only use terms like "horrific mess" when it is thoroughly deserved..... because Oakville still has "never event" issues like:

- out of bounds issues that will kick you out of the module;
- invisible barriers across the track (transversely) that you can hit with your loco without warning, which won't kick you out because of out of bounds (it's the boundary...), but will derail you anyway, and kick you out;
- unscripted ethanol loading services that ask you to "wait for 20 mins", but if they had scripted them you could fill the tankers in seven minutes (or four minutes for the shorter ones)......;
- services within the GP9RM journey that are almost impossible to complete (actually these are fun because they are broken....., but they are VERY VERY broken);
- bits of track that you need to use on switching scenarios that do not appear on the map;
- LOD on the EOTD which is brightest when farthest away, dim when close up, and completely off in the middle LOD transition.... ;-O
- the LOD transition on the centre-beam wagons (when loaded) is an absolute eyesore;
- there is a Journey service which has weather set to lightning with no rain.... which was clearly a test-bed module and was not meant to be in the final release (the effect is quite nice, BTW);
- there is truly bizarre Xing trackage at the car plant which is incomplete;
- all of the originally conceived Hamilton yards were picked up and replaced with a fake industrial estate, instead of made to work....;

..... AND.... there is the missing passenger services.

The majority of the services that actually work are very short straight freight runs on a straight and largely level piece of track, between two sidings (Oakville/Aldershot), with no AI coming the other way. Start. Stop. That's it. One 15mph SR to remember.

I only found one service (outside of the scenarios) so far that was up to scratch - and that was in the GP-38 Journey - switching the auroracks into the yard. Even that had an issue with the stop markers in the wrong place, relative to the driving position. (But quite a nice service, because of the hump into the yard, and the nice physics on the route).

In the context of this thread on being subject to QA, Oakville is a route that not only did not get beta tested before release it didn't get through the alpha stage, or get developed..... (cf. lightning scenario), and it was originally released with the Hamilton trackage in place (and mapped).... with buildings on top of the track.

"Horrific mess" is an understatement, for what exists as the Oakville route, a year later.

If the Oakville route were to be finished as a freight only route (with the Hamilton yards), they would need to put in a huge amount of varied and meaningful freight services to make Oakville get anywhere close to Clinchfield in scope.

If the Oakville route were to be finished with passenger services, then it would still be about half the scope of the San Fran-San Jose route, so it would still need to have work done to bring the freight content along.

 

If you want to continue the discussion, please stay on topic.