News in recently from the guys ov
er at EB, they have put an announcement on their website stating that they no longer developing products for MSTS, and they have made the active decision to not support Kuju Rail Sim / RailWorks. The EB online shop is still online, offering a smaller selection of items than they used to, it appears to now only stock MML, Great Westen and West Coast Express products for download.
While no announcement has been made, I would assume that previously stocked CD version's of items will still be available from other sources until the stock is sold out. Product support files are still available from the EB site should you need them.
It's probably not news to many customers who have been following the scene for many years, but MT and EB never had the best of relationships (for reasons far to complex to go into at this stage), but on a personal level I hope that the reason for this change is nothing to drastic. I personally would like to wish Ken and Alan the best of luck in whatever path they chose to follow in the future, if MT can be of any help with anything EB related in the future (hosting fixes etc), then please drop me a line directly, and we'll see what we can offer. I know that UKTS would also offer the same.
This does leave MT as "last one standing" I guess, honestly speaking, I'm not sure how I feel about this, any sense of satisfaction of outlasting anyone else is certainly tempered with the concern that we are flogging a dead horse. MT are pinning any future long term plans on Open Rails providing a platform to produce for, it certainly seems to have potential and is going the right way, but time will tell. (It's also possible that EB are simply taking a rest before regrouping for OR work as well.)
MT have a business model which means that we are happy with the kind of sales volumes that I doubt anyone else would consider viable, we simply have tiny overheads and no 'employees', so we can continue to produce products as long after other organisations will have decided they can't continue. It is, in effect down to our customers to dictate how long MT continue to trade.