Maybe, but that's not really surprising. If you've listened to what they said, space would never actually be as large as they tried to imply. Doing the maths just came up with a very compressed game universe.
What shocks me about this is how downright stupid it is. It's as if they don't understand what they're saying. Ok, fine, Chris does not grasp physics, and that's a fun thing to chuckle over, but this is just so beyond what even he's been capable of.
Well… hopefully. But who wrote this? Who approved it?! How can they not be aware of what they're saying?! How the **bleeeeeeeep** do you confuse distance for area or volume?! What the hell is going on at this company?!
It is mostly marketing talk that is intended to motivate a large demographic to consume. To do that efficiently you have to throw concepts around that are very open to interpretation so many people can relate to them, i.e.
- giving a number of star systems without making clear what size we are talking about (is it real-life size or downsized)
- creating game mechanics that are so vague that it is very unclear what activities are acutally involved (like electronic warfare or working as stewardEss)
etc.
These concepts do even contradict themselves which is actually good for selling the product as long as these contradictions don't challenge each other too directy. if you do it correctly you get people in the same boat whose expectations differ radically, i.e.
- space is huge (will have vast empty areas) vs. space is filled with interesting stuff everywhere
- it will be the most awesome mmo ever vs. the game engine is not able to provide that experience through the limited number of clients on a server
- space ships behave physically correct vs. successor to Wing Commander
- space ships can be bought for real cash (P2W; Privileges for the better off) vs. space ships can't be bought for real cash (egalitarian play-space, no P2W)
There are many, many more of these contradictions and I think they are part of a marketing tactic, that builds on viral marketing a lot, too. They could free everyone from a lack of clarity by just telling people what is actually going on or promulgate that they have no clue and it is just marketing. But they let it go, enabling fan forums to write basically several books on several topics that are nothing but speculation made possible by that ambiguity everywhere. This resulted in a huge narrative where it is impossible do distinguish between fiction and facts in any way (think of all the fan-posts and fan-videos explaining Star Citizen mixing up with official marketing media).
So in my opinion, if you realize that much of the marketing stuff does make no sense if you look closer, don't be surprised, the ambiguity and fleshlessness of concepts is an intended part of a marketing tactic.
