Frontier could easily fit in more species while still keeping a price of $10.
The thing is, reality is clearly different. If it was really that easy, if it was really that simple, we would have it. Frontier is a large company, they have people who do the math with tons of variables you either don't know, don't care or of don't think of.
If it was so easy to do, wouldn't they have done it?
I know people don't like discussing modders but many, such as
@Nicholas LionRider have proved that 1 person (with some assistance) can push out enough scenery for 2 packs. And don't get me wrong, the scenery from the packs is both impressive and quite useful.
I always hate these kind of comparisons. It's apples and oranges. Sure, from afar they look alike, but there still is a difference. I am both a modder and a developer, the first I've been for longer than the latter, but still.
If someone would ask me to quickly make a website for them, I could probably do it in a day or two. If I were to do it within the company I work for, that would easily take a week. Why? Because companies need to do a lot more than what I need to do. I can just go and do whatever I want, for companies you have to do a lot more extra steps. There's planning, there's sprint planning, there's discussing technologies etc. A lot more players are involved, each with different stakes. Real development is always more complicated than one or two persons doing it by themselves. And I know, because I've done both.
Just for a minute think about all the things you don't necessarily think of here. They need to do market research on what the next pack should be. People need to brainstorm and do research on what animals a new pack should have, and whether they are feasible within the time frame. They need to think about whether new features need to be introduced for the animals to work. They then need to figure out how these new features are going to be made. Do current systems need to be changed to allow it? How is performance going to work? They need to research themes. They need to do concept art. There needs to be planning to see how these themes can be split up in individual items. They need to check how two different items are going to interact. If they're a responsible company like Frontier, they check with artists outside their own team to make sure things work (aka the Aboriginal artwork in the Aus pack). I can go on and on.
All of that work doesn't exist when it comes to modding. I can just think of something, do whatever the heck I want to do because I want it, and I don't have to care about all of these variables. I don't need to do market research, I'll just do what I want. I don't need to think about the bigger implications on the game, I just do what I want. I don't need to think about whether what I'm going to do is going to have to be scalable in the future, I can just do what I want. But a company does need to do that. Because they need to make money (all of us do, there's nothing inherently wrong with it) because they have people that they have to pay as well. And all of those people also need time to do their job.
Besides, as much as I really like the work that Nick and quite a few other modders have done, a lot of it is also based on existing assets. On existing textures. On existing models. They can work fast because a lot of the work has already been done for them, But even in techniques there are differences, a lot of modders do photoprojection which is a lot easier and a lot less time consuming than how Frontier (and modders like Monsoon) do their texture work. That doesn't diminish the work other modders do, and it doesn't mean that modders cannot achieve great quality, but people also underestimate vastly how much time goes into modding. And mostly it's those who never ever modded anything in their life that do this judgement.
I honestly just want to say that there's no "proof" that Frontier can do it as fast as modders do and that they're deliberately not doing it. These claims are just based on a very superficial understanding of both development and modding, and no matter how often it gets repeated, it will never make them true.
