Probably no collector's edition for a while. The first order of business, as far as our retail partners are concerned, is conservatively deciding whether or not they can make a return on selling AI War. Several have already decided yes, which is great, but there are a few (like the US) still pending, given that market. Then most likely what you will see in some of these territories is a Jewel Case edition of the game, most likely not a full DVD Case box, at first at least.
The expansion is going to be a whole new round of negotiations and planning with these partners, afterward, and if sales are going well (sales are reported from retail channels on a quarterly basis), then I expect we'll see an increased manufacturing run of the base game in addition to the expansion(s) that are coming out. If the game continues to grow and blossoms into a much larger audience through solid retail sales, then I would expect to see a collectors edition with two or three expansions included, a year or two (or more) from now.
We shall see exactly what happens, but that's my thinking at the moment. As an unproven entrant into the retail market, we're working with smaller publishers that are making fairly conservative manufacturing runs to start out with, and then if it really takes off then things will increase. But that's on a quarter-by-quarter schedule, so generally it's going to take a lot of time to get that to really happen, if it does. Given that most publishers see the "shelf life" of any game as being less than 6 months (patently untrue with a game like AI War, or Starcraft or Rise of Nations or Empire Earth for that matter, even if it is true for the big AAA titles), that may create some challenges for the base game itself, which might lead sooner to some sort of "boxed sets" with the expansions, or something like that. It's hard to say for sure at this point, but things are percolating. I'll know a lot more in the future, based on how both negotiations and retail sales actually turn out.
