waiting for resolution ED/RAZBAM Situation Info & Discussion

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

18 hours ago, Esac_mirmidon said:

And you cant just imagine the things that would have comming for RB modules that were in development.

Things that could be a first in DCS, like STOVL, TFR Radar and Syntetic Ground Mapping, GCI link for Mírage, were.

All lost. Like the modules will be in the future.

Just so sad.

Oh, so like the MiG-19S they kept saying we'd get?
Or the A/V-8B manual?

[Esac_mirmidon]

Nobody keeps working for free for 2 years

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

34 minutes ago, Esac_mirmidon said:

Nobody keeps working for free for 2 years

Whoosh.

[draconus]

9 hours ago, Dangerzone said:

You're more optimistic than me.

Yeah and I base it on over 1 year of good experience.

[happyhappy]

5 hours ago, Esac_mirmidon said:

Nobody keeps working for free for 2 years

That means I haven't worked for two years.

[Esac_mirmidon]

That means someone is lucky enough to have you working for free. When you finish please call me. I will be delighted to hire you for free

Edited 23 hours ago by Esac_mirmidon

[Dallenbach]

vor 23 Minuten schrieb Esac_mirmidon:

That means someone is lucky enough to have you working for free. When you finish please call me. I will be delighted to hire you for free

Groundhog Day. - You are repeating yourself. And get bored. And if you repeat that for a thousand years, you won't change the situation one bit. 
Just leave it alone. 

[Esac_mirmidon]

Im just giving answers. 

I know i cant change a thing. Thanks for enlighting me. 

[Mike Force Team]

This situation has resulted in some learning patience. We wait to see what does or does not happen. While DCS will support RZ full-fidelty modules, there may come a time when they do not work properly due to lack of updates. 

We know the Razbam's modules are not available for sale. In the meantime, we see what happens to us, the customers, as the impasse continues. 

 

[Hammer1-1]

18 hours ago, Dangerzone said:

You're more optimistic than me. When ED can't even keep their own modules from having repeated issues (scoreboard, ground unit pathing, track replay desync, etc where they have all the source code and can work on it from all angles - it seems more plausible that sooner or later there's going to be a change they make that's going to change something that breaks the F15E in a similar way too - but without the F15's source code to be able to diagnose from all angles - well, as I said - if they struggle when they do have it, this can only make it far more difficult. (This isn't a go at ED with their bugs - but just to point out that if it's so involved when you have the source code, it's going to be far harder without)

Agreed. I see only 2 ways that the F15E survives this. Either Razbam and ED come back to a mutually beneficial arrangement, or somewhere in the contract it's stipulated that ED must get a copy of the source code and the legal proceedings end up forcing Razbam to hand it over. Otherwise, without developers actively maintaining the source code - it would be a very hard ask to expect this to remain operational long term. 

if ED doesnt get the F-15E from Razbam, I dont see Razbam surviving outside DCS any further. Theres only one simulator thats competitive to DCS at the moment and I dont really see them going very far with what BMS has to offer unless they offer up a BRAND NEW simulator. Dont think Microprose has that kind of talent or money to update BMS to current tech.

[SkateZilla]

3 hours ago, Hammer1-1 said:

if ED doesnt get the F-15E from Razbam, I dont see Razbam surviving outside DCS any further. Theres only one simulator thats competitive to DCS at the moment and I dont really see them going very far with what BMS has to offer unless they offer up a BRAND NEW simulator. Dont think Microprose has that kind of talent or money to update BMS to current tech.

MP hasn't done much except hype up and live off the Copyrights for old MP projects they had zilch to do with, and when that revenue pool started shrinking, they increased the prices. $15 for Falcon 4.0 now is absurd, you can buy a F4 CD brand spankin' new at dollar general for $2, and they know the only reason it is still selling is because of BMS's requirement of having it. I paid $3.99 for the entire Falcon Collection, just so I wouldn't have to retain a DVD Drive in my rig anymore.

F5 or any completely new sim of the 2020+ era is likely not even in active development, they are already way behind on their other projects, outside of bar napkin notes, there is likely no F5 work being done.
 

Edited 15 hours ago by SkateZilla

[PLAAF]

On 5/26/2025 at 9:42 AM, AndyJWest said:

Being 'dealt with by legal teams' need not necessarily involve active legal proceedings. Very often, the most important part of their job is finding ways to settle a dispute before it comes to court. Court cases are expensive, can run on for years, and can often result in disclosures that neither side in a dispute want to become public. 

yep 

 

[Hammer1-1]

3 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

MP hasn't done much except hype up and live off the Copyrights for old MP projects they had zilch to do with, and when that revenue pool started shrinking, they increased the prices. $15 for Falcon 4.0 now is absurd, you can buy a F4 CD brand spankin' new at dollar general for $2, and they know the only reason it is still selling is because of BMS's requirement of having it. I paid $3.99 for the entire Falcon Collection, just so I wouldn't have to retain a DVD Drive in my rig anymore.

F5 or any completely new sim of the 2020+ era is likely not even in active development, they are already way behind on their other projects, outside of bar napkin notes, there is likely no F5 work being done.
 

exactly what I was alluding to. Im literally ok with passive eugenics in this case.

[cfrag]

9 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

$15 for Falcon 4.0 now is absurd, you can buy a F4 CD brand spankin' new at dollar general for $2, and they know the only reason it is still selling is because of BMS's requirement of having it.

I believe that we are overlooking the elephant in the room, and to me it is a dire warning. MP are charging $15 because they can. Meaning that the audience is so starved for a good fighter sim that they are willing to shell out $15 for a nearly 30 years old game. As if we don't know. Do you know of any other game (ok, beside Star Citizen) where people routinely shell out $50 for an unfinished product that never gets finished? Look at the sorry state MSFS is in. People still buy it.

I liken this market to the state of mobile phones pre-iPhone: people buy mobile phnes and use them - not because they are good, but because they aren't terminally flawed. I used a Blackberry then. When the iPhone came out, RIM/Blackberry Ltd. confidently announced their iPhone contender "PlayBook" with "Amateur hour is over". Do you own a PlayBook? When Steve Ballmer saw the iPhone he laughed. He mocked the $500 price tag. ''There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share." Look where Windows Phone is now. Those were the market leaders, and they thought they understood why their customers bought from them.

The moment that a real, good and fun combat flight sim shows up, it'll be curtains for the others. I assert that the majority doesn't play DCS because it's "so realistic, so carefully crafted, so good". They play DCS because there simply isn't a better alternative, they play it in spite of the bad quality and the forever-early-access low quality nature of the planes. I've spent in excess of 1000 on ED products alone. They are good enough for me. But are they good? No.

So yeah, MP saw an opportunity, and they'll milk it dry. On our side of the aisle, we are getting ready to spring much more for Fat Amy.

[SkateZilla]

5 hours ago, cfrag said:

I believe that we are overlooking the elephant in the room, and to me it is a dire warning. MP are charging $15 because they can. Meaning that the audience is so starved for a good fighter sim that they are willing to shell out $15 for a nearly 30 years old game. As if we don't know. Do you know of any other game (ok, beside Star Citizen) where people routinely shell out $50 for an unfinished product that never gets finished? Look at the sorry state MSFS is in. People still buy it.

I liken this market to the state of mobile phones pre-iPhone: people buy mobile phnes and use them - not because they are good, but because they aren't terminally flawed. I used a Blackberry then. When the iPhone came out, RIM/Blackberry Ltd. confidently announced their iPhone contender "PlayBook" with "Amateur hour is over". Do you own a PlayBook? When Steve Ballmer saw the iPhone he laughed. He mocked the $500 price tag. ''There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share." Look where Windows Phone is now. Those were the market leaders, and they thought they understood why their customers bought from them.

The moment that a real, good and fun combat flight sim shows up, it'll be curtains for the others. I assert that the majority doesn't play DCS because it's "so realistic, so carefully crafted, so good". They play DCS because there simply isn't a better alternative, they play it in spite of the bad quality and the forever-early-access low quality nature of the planes. I've spent in excess of 1000 on ED products alone. They are good enough for me. But are they good? No.

So yeah, MP saw an opportunity, and they'll milk it dry. On our side of the aisle, we are getting ready to spring much more for Fat Amy.

From the chart's I've seen for steam, since the price hike, no one is willing to spend $15 on F4 just to play BMS, they go to other sources that still have the entire collection for less than $10, or purchase a physical copy for a few bucks from a bargain bin supplier ( ie: Dollar General etc etc) as their "Proof of Purchase".

[Czar66]

5 hours ago, cfrag said:

The moment that a real, good and fun combat flight sim shows up, it'll be curtains for the others. I assert that the majority doesn't play DCS because it's "so realistic, so carefully crafted, so good". They play DCS because there simply isn't a better alternative, they play it in spite of the bad quality and the forever-early-access low quality nature of the planes. I've spent in excess of 1000 on ED products alone. They are good enough for me. But are they good? No.

The problem is that you're comparing current sims with something out of your imagination. If everyone thought like this, there would be no Falcon 1, 2, 3... Flanker, Lock on...etc, because no one would buy them.

You can't beat imagination, because it doesn't rely on real life practicalities.

If some dev group could snatch the whole market at once from BMS, DCS and others, they would already have done so.

DCS W have a ton of value for the majority of customers, or there would be no community growth throughout the last years. Demand rises as well as curiosity given the growth of content creators.

Today this sim is much larger and with a lot more quality than when it has begun when the MiG-21 was the shinny new thing and the cutting edge of immersion and nowadays everyone is screaming for it to be updated.

Edited 44 minutes ago by Czar66

[cfrag]

27 minutes ago, Czar66 said:

If some dev group could snatch the whole market at once from BMS, DCS and others, they would already have done so.

Tell that to the people who designed the Phone in 2006 when the mobile phone market was already 10 years old and considered 'mature'. I think that the computer entertainment market is still in its infancy, and there is a lot of dynamics to be observed: the way we purchase, consume and contribute content, how content is presented, the way how people interact. and of course the sheer performance available to us. I'm enthusiastic about the future, and I hope DCS will be with us for a long time to come. It's a bit disappointing to see how slow the established marques (amongst them DCS) move, and I think that the future might well belong to the more nimble competitors. Unless there are seismic shifts in the way that DCS operates, I think that there is a good chance that another company swoops in. In German we say 'the better is the enemy of the good'. Let's see what better things become available