The scope of the final product (if they ever get there) will most likely be that of a small $15 indie game (one with a sub-million-budget) on an outdated engine.
Croberts talked about 1 of his dollars equaling 4 "publisher dollars". Means, what a publisher does with 4 dollars, he thinks, he does with 1.
While in Reality it is more the opposite with 1 real game developer dollar equaling 100 Roberts dollars. People who paid $1500 will roughly get the game value of $15. And for people with a $60 package it will feel like free to play with a cosmetic $0.60 micro-transaction.
If SC doesn't fold beforehand, it might set a new benchmark of price/performance ratio. Like if you just paid for a GTX Titan and then got an Atom/Celeron IGP.
It goes back to my box analogy. Backers paid for a $100 box, but will end up with a $20 box - without a lid.
See what happened with NMS over a $60 game. Imagine what happens when, in the end, someone could get both SC (MVP) + SQ42 (prelude) for $45; while you've spent over $6K on worthless ships.
Right now, according to funding metrics, only about 2000 whales are still giving them money. That's assuming the funding chart is accurate (most of us don't think that it is).
From what I am hearing, they are dangerously low on funds, hence the need to continue with concept sales, and the push to get SQ42 prelude out by end of the year. Thing is, even though most backers are already entitled to SQ42 for free; and so far, nobody I know who has seen and/or worked on SQ42, thinks it's going to make even a dent.
At Gamescom2016, they raised over $4m (a little over a month of funding at rumored burn rate) based on lies and pretty pictures. We're hearing that they are set to do the same thing in three weeks at CitizenCon2016.
At the end of the day, once this train-wreck comes to an end, all this chatter is what we're all going to come back to review and debate. That's why I'm
keeping score.
