WCM Forum - Statement von TRI

..aus dem Avsim Forum:

"A statement on Fly! II..."

Everyone,
Tensions are certainly high here in the forum on getting more details for Fly! II, as well as questions on the marketing/PR (or lack of) for the product. I will share what I can, though you'll have to do your best to read between the lines here; this is an ongoing private matter between us and our publisher.

The fact is that right now there is disagreement between us and our publisher on a variety of issues regarding the product, covering everything from box design, lack of advertising, disagreements on marketing plan, scheduled shelf date, and funding for future versions. Our general concerns boil down to their lack of understanding of flight simulators in general, and definitely of the flight sim community. I've made no secret at my displeasure of how their promotion and marketing materials lump flight sim users into the same category as "action" game players, who might be more excited about the way our publisher promotes themselves (instead of insulted or embarrased.) This is also why we will not be participating in E3 this year; our time and money would be much better spent attending Oshkosh, Fun 'n Sun, the Paris Air Show, and other major aviation events.

To get to the point: more screenshots will definitely be coming in the next week or so. Some of them will be from TRI directly, others will be from our publisher. I would take a guess that you'll probably get a MUCH more accurate feel for the look of our product from screenshots released directly from TRI; the shots recently released on our publishers site had ground detail effectively turned off to the lowest resolution possible. You may ask why we simply don't take over the rollout of information ourselves. The answer is we are a tiny company, and almost 99% of our staff is directly involved in the creation of products. Given our release dates, we are all having to spend 110% of our time working on products and not typing up marketing materials and producing screenshots. I am much more concerned about putting out the best product we can than getting short-term exposure, even if that exposure would give us a stronger rollout.

Our beta test cycle continues to improve; we've come a very long way in the past 6 weeks, but we still have a LONG way to go in a very short amount of time. For those interested, I would say our biggest issues right now in testing are related to performance (load times, frame rate, memory footprint). As a forwarning: there is a very good chance I will be unavailable within the next few weeks until at least mid-summer; this means I would not be able to answer e-mail, read the forums, or give any feedback at the point of release and for quite awhile afterward. I will share more information on this soon, but it is related to my medical situation. However, Brendan and other TRI team members will continue our participation during this time.

TRI and the Fly! team remain committed to the product we've worked so hard to create. I appreciate the concerns on marketing issues, and the really good ideas many of you have come up with. These issues aside, I hope you'll find Fly! II an enjoyable product.

Richard Harvey
Terminal Reality