Well dang. I was waiting, just assuming it was lagging behind console release like all of the others. I was looking forward to it. Ah well.
SNARK MODE: ACTIVATED
Perhaps they figured people would expect all the weird bugs to be fixed and decided that wasn't achievable this decade?

Ruffiana wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 22:12:
Those who don't understand it are buying the hype spinning this as revolutionary out-of-the-box thinking.

...or dismissing it as shenanigans because Notch said so.
...or cultivating a healthy level of skepticism based on reading what people who seem to understand it are saying. (That last one's the category I fall into.)

Parias wrote on Jun 9, 2010, 16:02:
Neat - does this mean it'll have co-op play?

I was wondering that myself. The clips of spotting appeared to be from a single-player campaign, though there was at least one clip of a multiplayer kill.
All of the videos I can find are of single-player campaigns or "team deathmatch" affairs. I can't find any mention of co-op, though I can't find any mention of multiplayer either, so obviously that doesn't mean it's not there.
That said, I'm highly doubtful there's a co-op campaign.

SM0k3 wrote on Jun 7, 2010, 22:25:

Bumpy wrote on Jun 7, 2010, 22:07:
How about they just junk the tired, soleless, Driver series and make a stylized, funky Interstate '76 clone instead.

YES!!!!!

Very yes.

So, Cliffski,

Are you getting the response you expected?
Are you getting the response you hoped for?

(It's great to see you interacting directly and honestly with the community.)

Aganazer wrote on Jun 6, 2010, 09:23:
I gotta laugh at the folks that want to control the battle. If it were like that then GSB would have been nothing other than a badly designed and shallow RTS.

I find this quote humorous, because it seems to boil down to: "If this game had more features, it'd be badly designed and shallow."

(For the record, I disagree.)

Well, all this talk earned a demo download, since I happened to have some free time this evening.

I stuck with it long enough to "get it", I think.
I won't buy it because I don't think there's enough there for me beyond what the demo offers.
I can see the upgrades and the honor points and the "goal" of beating larger fleets with smaller fleets and unlocking more "stuff", but I didn't really feel any compelling reason to pursue it.
It might be something as simple as setting tiers for completion of a mission - Bronze, Silver, Gold-style affairs to give some sense of how successful your success was, comparatively.
Beyond that, the demo simply doesn't allow a person to get into the groove of progression, since nothing's unlockable, and no enemy presented requires unlockable content. That is to say, "Oh man, they keep annihilating me, I need some new trick up my sleeve. Oh, hey, this EMP weapon is just 3000 honor points - that might do the trick."

However, even if I was "hooked", the price point is higher than I'd be willing to pay. $9.99 is a pretty good point, and you might see a lot of takers. Heck, you could even do one of those "pay what you want" campaigns. I know there's this concern that pricing your product at a value point could paint it as "cheap", but this far out, every new sale is probably a sale you wouldn't have ever had at the current price point.

That said, would I buy it at $9.99? Would I buy it at any price? Probably not, because it doesn't seem like the sort of thing I'd rather play than the other things rolling about on my hard drive or available for free on, say, JayIsGames.
So, again, probably not your target audience. At the moment, I'm more into FPS, sandbox action, adventure, room escape, and retro-platformers.

Unrelated to the question you asked:
I liked the tutorial prompts that get you far enough into the experience to get started.
I felt like the audio tapered off too steeply when zooming out.
It was difficult to tell which ships were having certain effects. (For instance, someone in the tutorial mission kept hitting me with an EMP device and I was never entirely sure who.)
It's fairly straightforward to see how damaged an enemy ship's hull is, but difficult to know how much (if any) damage is being done to the shields.
I could have done with a few more lines at the top dedicated to my team's chatter.
Sometimes I wanted to keep watching a ship's stats, only to have them disappear as I clicked to move my view. (Eventually I got in the habit of moving the view by mousing to the edges.)
It seems more like a toy than a game. (This is not necessarily a bad thing.)
I think I get the idea behind simply observing battles, and I think it's a fine decision, but yeah, I guess it does seem a little like a whole bunch of foreplay only to watch someone else have the sex.
Perhaps a change of title to more accurately reflect the gameplay, say, "Gratuitous Space Battle Manager" or "Interstellar Battle Fleet Tycoon".

The name piqued my interest enough to give it a look, but once I saw the screens\video, I realized it wasn't my thing.

So, I'm not the target audience.

BobBob wrote on Jun 5, 2010, 02:27:
What are the enemies like? Is this game even challenging?

Shhh...the adults are talking about gimmicks right now.

Hopefully by "more authenticity" and "belonging to a real world" they mean "let you stay in the cockpit".

The problem I had with the forced 3rd person was how badly it broke the immersion. That was the deciding factor that kept me from buying the game.

Achievements?
Bastards.
They KNOW I can't resist.

According to the update, LucasArts stole the quote from SOE in the first place, though I'm having trouble confirming their claim that John Smedley made the attributed statement at "FanFaire 2004".

frag.machine wrote on May 4, 2010, 08:20:
With this money you almost can buy a real minigun.

Actually, with this money you could buy one of the custom-tooled cartridges Sasha fires at ten thousand rounds per minute.

The mouth open statue is $244.99 and the mouth closed variant is $229.99.

Actually, no.
The Mouth Open statue is $229.99. The $244.99 "Exclusive" version comes with an extra head with an alternate expression (mouth closed) and comes with an add on that changes his signature mini-gun Sasha into Natascha (an ammo feed belt, it appears).

Jackplug wrote on Apr 23, 2010, 11:34:
Now activision have lost all the main staff of IW and now only have the name left and the Cod IP, which is useless cos noone will buy a CoD game off Activision after what they have done.

I'm pretty sure you're wrong, unfortunately. The last CoD was a slap in the face to gamers, and PC gamers in particular, yet it sold like hotcakes.
The vast majority of consumers will have no idea that this even happened, and will buy whatever has "CoD" on it next year.
It will take a while before "Call of Duty" goes the way of "Medal of Honor". (Which, you'll recall, was developed by 2015 before a bunch of those guys split to form Infinity Ward - seeing a pattern here?)

Drezden wrote on Apr 22, 2010, 22:42:
I like how he's "confused"
To some people loyalty and working in a healthy environment is more important than Activisions money. How does he not get that.

When all you care about is money, all you'll have to offer is money.

It's not about the games at Activision anymore - it's all about profit.

I had to give up when it tried to force me to choose between the Interrobang and Conan O'Brien.

It's not bad, but the default keyboard control scheme is wonk-tastic. Of course, the expected response is "you shouldn't be playing a flight sim with a keyboard."
I'm tempted to bust out my Steel Battalion controller, as I think it could be perfect for this.

I'm a pretty dyed-in-the-wool conservative, and even *I* wouldn't begrudge someone pulling their advertising dollars out from under Glenn Beck. He is, as has been indicated elsewhere in this thread, possibly crazier than Rush Limbaugh.

Their press release definitely makes it clear what they think about the OFLC's rating system.
Namely: "Your lack of an 18+ category is preposterous."

I have to agree. Suggesting that the most mature content allowed in the region is fit for 15-year-olds is absurd.