I don't really care for this. He sold the company 16 years ago then left 3 years after - why should Amazon be under pressure from him to keep it going? It seems like they've given it an extremely good run, all things considered - they've owned it for longer than he had.
This is not about pressure to keep some company going, but about the vast amounts of photography and related-gear knowledge that DPReview.com contains.
I have been using DPReview to pick my camera gear for over 20 years. It would be an absolute tragedy for the photography community if it goes away.
Is that the case? I remember being a huge fan of flight sims back in the Falcon 4.0 and EF2000 days. I imagined that by the time I was 50 that it would look incredible and be super performant with realistic combat scenarios. Reality turned out differently. Sure Microsoft Flight is decent, but it's no combat sim.
What you’re looking for is DCS by Eagle Dynamics. Looks incredible and has very good realism. It does need a pretty beefy system to run well with all the eye candy turned on.
I think the implied argument is "you can't safely assume that any market niche will be filled when the big player(s) go away, sometimes the niche just stays empty"
Digital cameras are not a niche. They constitute almost the entire global camera market. There are other review sites, forums, print magazines, etc. One website going away is not going to obliterate the world's ability to review one of the most popular consumer products.
You seem to keep missing the point that many people consider DPreview to be the best site in its niche by far. There is no certainty for its users that the impending competitive opportunity will yield a new option of equal or better quality. Mediocrity often outperforms quality in the market.
Camera sales, which are overwhelming which is overwhelmingly digital cameras, fell 93% from 2010 to 2021. In 2022 8 million digital cameras with a value of $5 billion were shipped.
Based upon those numbers I would say digital cameras are a niche and no longer one of the most popular consumer products.
