but to me one of the hooks was that it ISN'T X-Wing. I really enjoy X-Wing, but there are other ways to do starfighter combat.
I meant hooks in the IP sense, but yeah, point taken. Having a different but still fun mechanic can do huge if properly handled. Witness Warmachine's growth out of GW's very long shadow. The foundation of that is the mechanics coupled with company attitude. But the extra spice, the extra closer was the steampunk-fantasy mix feel. NO ONE was doing that back then.
Bab5 is another good example. Their Sci fi when it came out was neither Star Wars nor Star Trek nor boring (for the most part). And with the added spice of political overtones and a meta-plot (which really weren't even DONE back then). But that difference of having something new to offer beside different names and vaguely different designs...THAT is what gets people in the door. Mechanics and game health/maintenance are what keeps them playing.
It's all about the cards baby. As long as they continue to produce cool cards that do slightly different things they can continue to fuel the game. With that said they will likely go back and reproduce a number of the ships that they have already made with different paint jobs. We've seen this done quite a bit already.
Competitive play is useful to get a game to a particular stature, like growth spurts when you're a teen. But past that point, its often a negative, driving away new players and creating negative play experiences for all levels (another thing we've seen with Warmachine). Regeneration becomes the better business model, not growth.
To address Greg's points too before I clarify, X-Wing has PLENTY of IP to explore still. They can totally mine the Clone Wars, and by extension, the prequels. And they'll do so. And there's even the Sith Empire stuff and Mandalore, etc, ...all there to produce ships and character cards from. And that's before we even hit the fact that a Star Wars movie every year adds options from here til Underverse comes...
But at some point they have to hit the big fat reset button. They'll do repaints, yes, and probably update and rebalance cards when they do so. They might do yet another starter box set in the REBELS era.
But the biggie will be when they revamp the mechanics and start everybody back on page one. Sure, you'll shed veterans who just can't handle change...but (again as Warmachine proves) FAR more people will be overjoyed to have a BRAND NEW GAME to relearn from scratch, and soon to have doubles of every ship. :-) Or perhaps decks of just the card revamps to buy for their existing collection.
X-Wing is here for decades to come. SV? It's just a baby right now... so none can know.
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