A&A42 will be sold on the market, if it will be unsuccessful then it will be a bad move. No one is forced to buy it no one is forced to like it. At same time every one may express his/hers opinion about the game. The only thing required is the respect for the work other people did.
Also Anniversary has been criticized in several ways. The Japanese have a too much high income after a couple of turns. Allies can not win. No Axis can not win. China rule are stupid. Sub are useless. Supersub are BS. etc.
It seems that all the copies made has been sold in a small amount of time. If it will be reprinted it will be sold in great quantity, even if it cost about 100$.
Now, numbers of copies sold is not an absolute index of quality in a game nor is an index for us strategy-wargames fans. In fact, for me, Settlers of Cataan or Puerto Rico are for sure less interesting of A&A. So, from a business point of view AH and Wizards have an objective: selling the boxes. They try to obtain this goal with their strategy. They are not a brotherhood for the diffusion of A&A or other similar initiative. They are a business company on the market.
According to me they may sold more boxes with an alternative and at least decent marketing and advertising campaign but these are theirs problem.
What care for us is: A&A42 is revised with SIMPLIFIED and CORE Anniversary rules, with the same map with a new graphics, and new (and useless) russian ships miniatures, without money (I have several tons of IPC money at home if I need I can use them) no paper and no pencil (but also anniversary come without table and chairs and they are NEEDED to play the game).
Ok, it is accetable for me. Not the A&A of my dreams but accetable. Moreover the real requirement about boardgame is: having friends to play with.
My Revised is usured and I am already playing it with Anniversary rules and I never use tech (even in Anniversary). At same way in the past I played Europe and Pacific with LHTR rules. In fact, spending half an hour before a game for checking and rememebrign to alla players the defense of the tanks, when sub may submerge, etc., is a waste of time. Using the same ruleset avoid this waste of time.
Having a family of games requires having same basic rules to be applied to different scenarios. So if A&A42 had introduced a NEW SET or rules different from Anniversary I had considered more problematic than having the same ruleset. So this is ok for my and my playgroup.
The map and the setup are the same, this is a missed occasion for sure (another, also in Anniversary there are a lot of missed occasion). They could have “adjusted” the set up adding, for example, a sort of bid to the Revised setup, moving some of the units around, and could have made some modification to the map. They have not done, an it is a pity.
Finally, I will buy A&A42 for replacing my usured Revised. I am not going to go in ecstasy for this game but it will see a lot of play in my playgroup, and this is an important thing.
I agree that maybe they should have reprinted Anniversary, leaving to us the task of adapting our Revised to Anniversary rules an units. They have the idea that they could make money making such adaptation officially.