Virtual Pool 4 was so long in development that most fans of that old Virtual Pool 3 game missed the VP4 announcement, unless they were hard core about waiting for 4 to come out. This is the way it is with serious gamers. We did this long wait for Deus Ex 3, Duke Nukem Forever, and and are waiting for others such as Half Life 3, and Thief 4. The thing is those titles and their predecessors were hard core AAA titles.
It seems VP has lost some steam over the years. I was shocked to learn unlike my beloved VP3, that VP4 would not be sold in stores. I and many others would never have heard about VP3 if we had not seen it in a retail store.
I wonder why this is when we take into account the History of Celeris. Celeris is Not just a gaming company who made a few Virtual Pool games - as we see here from this awesome article and interview with Steve Chaplin the founder of Celeris and creator of Virtual pool. http://www.povpool.com/2012/08/08/the-w ... e-chaplin/
In 1984, he quickly decided to form his own company called Celeris Inc., to focus on Aerospace sub-contracting for various companies. It wasn’t long after this that Steve was back at The Lockheed Corporation, this time armed with several of his own employees, developing display applications for radar, weather tracking, air defense systems. For Lockheed, Celeris Inc. also developed cockpit displays for F-22 Raptor fighter jets, command and controls systems and antisubmarine warfare (ASW) systems.
Through the 80′s and up to the height of the Cold War, Celeris Inc. made a big name for itself in aerospace programming. Obtaining contracts with Hughes Aircraft, Singer-Librascope, Northrop, Unysis and a host of others. Celeris CEO, Steve Chaplin was becoming quite successful, partly due to the fact that he always maintained his focus on excellence and innovation. At one point he was overseeing almost 25 of his own employees to handle some of these contracts.
This should be a WOW moment. Not only do we have good history and an interview with Steve we have insight into the company and creator of our favorite pool game. I have a lot of respect for these folks and yet, cannot for the life of me believe they would shoot themselves in the foot by not marketing VP4 through today's retail giants like Wal-Mart. I think of all those folks getting stocking stuffers on this day, December 24th 2012, Christmas Eve and those thousands of missed sales that could have gone to Celeris and VP4. No child, teen or adult is going to find VP4 in their stocking or under the Christmas tree this year. I think it's sad for the world of Virtual Pool. I think it's a bad business decision for Celeris. Perhaps they had good sound financial reasons for opting out of this type of marketing. I just hope they change this direction soon and perhaps get this product on store shelves for next year so they can enjoy more sales and more people can come to enjoy the Virtual Pool experience.