I am not disappointed with the game far from it in fact. I am a little disappointed with the content of the boxed 'Collectors Edition' which these days usually signifies something beyond the normal.
...<SNIP>...
First, you must believe us that if we could have had our way, we would have gone for a far more impressive package, but the market, economy situation and the skyrocketing manufacturing prices forced both us and our publishers to go for a more realistic and user-accessible "hard" content than our biased love for our sim suggested.
In our context, "collector's" means all the missions and features ever released for the sim, in a single, easily installable, beautifully printed, collectible package, with a price accessible to a large audience, even during the dire economic times which has been messing with everybody's lives for the last two years.
I am afraid that you being ready to pay $75 for a game puts you in a valued, but very small minority. That's what the industry gurus learned the hard way. However, this would have increased the entry ticket price to the Space Shuttle "club" for many, less financially fortunate but equally or even more interested. And we are not prepared to lose this part of the market. Actually we struggled to keep the prices of the downloaded and boxed versions at the same level, at the expense of making a higher profit.
Next, I must strongly reject your "false advertising" claim. We never promised anything that we do not offer, never claimed the printed manual was anything else than the Quick Start Guide, and definitely never hinted that we offer a full cockpit poster inside. Actually, when you hold the CD box in your hands, you cannot even hope to find these inside. This is in a stark contrast to another common (negative) practice in the software business: selling the game inside a luscious huge box, without anything inside but a single CD/DVD with a printed license agreement and no manual in sight. Actually I also miss the old big, colorful boxes, with huge manuals (Falcon 4 style), but alas, those times are gone forever, and there are many happy trees out there thankful for this change
I remember the MS announcement that they will forego with printed manuals for ALL their software, Windows, Office, games, etc. and the rest of the industry followed suit (or was it the other way around?). Anyway, these 5 years old analyst predictions proved correct: minimal packaging, no printed stuff. We were left with the option to investing in beautifully designed and full color box and CD and a useful Quick Start full-color manual (color manual in only US anyway), printed on high-quality shiny paper. Going for a less "honorable" design and materials quality would have reduced the costs considerably, but then we wouldn't have felt that we did our best to do justice to our sim, and to our customers.
In all our advertising and media we insist in telling our customers exactly what they get, we use in-game videos and pictures without trying to "beautify" the message with real NASA footage or other tricks. We've never lied or misled anybody, but we cannot prevent wishful thinking. We cannot help it if users want to believe that we offer something else, despite our best and most honest efforts to be very clear and forthcoming about our products.
But if you are still interested in having a poster, you can actually buy one. See the link in the Announcements board. Depending on which printing size and quality you chose, this may actuallly bring you to less than the $75 you said you were prepared to pay for the box
We have also toyed with the idea of offering the Commander's Reference Manual in printed version, for a price, but then we decided that not many would be interested in one anyway, especially since we offer the electronic version already, and interested people print the checklists and manuals anyway and cheaper too - if they chose to print on both sides of the page.
Last, I am happy you're enjoying the sim. At least we got that part right, and I think that this is more important than your expectation to find a poster and a full 200+ pages book inside a standard CD box.
I hope that this insight about how and why we decided to go the way we went, and our forthcoming attitude to your challenge, will change your initial unfair perception about our intentions, box format and its contents.
/Admin
