Be interesting to be a fly on the wall during the meetings that lead to the "go" on a model project. Why do companies approach the market the way they do? No small matter because in our day, the differences between brands is getting quite substantial. What would be really interesting to know is to what degree makers pay attention to the boards and reviews. In the book world good reviews help sales (word of mouth is probably better for some genres) and I don't doubt it is here too. Now, I never buy a kit without checking the reviews and the boards. Must admit that many kits in my stash were bought in the enthusiasm of reentering the hobby and were chosen for the wrong reasons. I wish I was reading reviews from day one. But I wish I was reading all of them and checking the boards too. Let me make some points.
1. The gold standard among reviewers (this includes Osprey books and often the reviews in FSM) is detail. Within limits this makes sense. None of us here models space ships or doll houses. (Both hobbies of great sophistication BTW - not to mention railroads.) So if one is going to model a tank, ship or plane it is connected with something real and should represent it. This is especially true if "history tripping" is part of the hobby. The question is "how much" and "what type." No answers to either of these questions. If recreating a real object to in the greatest possible detail is the goal then the road there requires a very high part count. This is Dragon's road and it has many fans. I don't think that a contemporary Dragon kit can be considered expensive if you figure in "modeling per hour." If you're going to score Scharnhorst or Independence (both with over 1200 parts) you won't finish it in a weekend. This gets a little murky with PE. Dragon is claiming that one of their new uber multi-media kits decreases or removes the incentive to get aftermarket stuff. No small thing there. I have Mikasa from Hasegawa with a very reasonable part count of under 500. If you want the Lion Roar detail set you get 300 PE pieces - plus the metal barrels and it costs more than the kit. Add them together and you have a Mikasa with more detail than a Dragon. And a kit that costs a ton of money. And a kit with 300 PE pieces - which might send some sane people running for cover. However, there's a down side here. If you start with a simpler kit that goes together nicely you have the option of paying the extra money and going the extra mile if you want. Dragon sticks you with the mile. BTW: if there is one thing I wish would appear in every review and on every box it's part count. I know that some kits have a lot of parts that are unneeded, but it still tells you a lot about the kit.
2. Detail will get you detail. Does it get you a better kit? Not sure you can generalize. I've only done Dragon armor, although I have their 350 Laffey and it looks good, with it's 400 parts, although not better than my Hasegawa Yukikase with 170. So when I think of Dragon I think of "Magic Tracks." Are they good? I don't think they're worth the effort, and will be worth the effort only if they're done correctly. Here's one of the down sides of high part count. Every part can lead to a screw-up. Fit on Dragon kits in my experience is usually very good - but not good enough to avoid some dicey moments. (Here is why Dragon's sub-standard instructions are a serious negative. I personally would be glad to pay $5 more for a Dragon kit with Tamiya instructions - it would be invaluable when trying to weave through all of the various options available. Also help if you knew where the parts were supposed to go and how a major sub section should look after completion. Complex kits and bad instructions are a horrible mix.) What has struck me about Dragon is that despite the startling detail found in the parts, is that you can run into serious problems with "mission critical" fits. (You get exactly the same thing with Eduard aircraft. They look terrific on the sprue. They have unusual detail. And somewhere, sometime, you will flirt with an ulcer or heart attack because something really important doesn't fit.) This is why I'd take a newer Tamiya tank over a Dragon any day. It's also why I'd take a newer Tamiya aircraft over an Eduard, Dragon or Zvezda. When crunch times come, major Tamiya fits work and usually work astonishingly well. Maybe this will not be the case in the future, and maybe it's not the case for every kit now. But if you're looking for a clean build, you're probably not going to go with a Dragon. Not sure you get it with a Trumpie or Academy either. But at least you've got fewer chances to go wrong.
3. The definition of "good" changes with modeling skills. The folks that want a 1200 part model, by and large, probably know what they're doing. So if they run into a problem, they probably have the skills to cope: they might even enjoy the challenge. This road has some unexpected turns in the world of ship building. Some of the very best ship modelers might well get their jollies out of buying a 50 year old mold and essentially rebuilding the thing from ground up. Ironically, I'm not sure that the real fanatics are big buyers of after market stuff, unless you define resin as after market. A lot of them think nothing is more fun than building a mast out of brass. Or scratch building the superstructure out of Evergreen. And putting in textured Evergreen for a new deck - naturally. Or scratch build a 96 scale Iron Duke and put RC into it (check Ship Modelers Scratch build for an example). So some of the best modelers on earth maybe do three models a year. They're also the kind of models I wouldn't attempt unless someone put a gun to my head. On the other end of the scale, a clean build, even if it has lower part count, still leaves the modeler with a very good canvas for painting, weathering or building dios. All of this should be to the good. In the real world it can cause trouble if buyers are reading reviews and reviewers are judging a kit largely on the "gold standard." A really good example is the Zvezda BF-109F that recently came out. FSM gave the kit a glowing review: many of the boards went along. Many fine modelers think it's the best 109 kit ever made. (That says a lot if you do airplanes.) But if you look at the boards closely (I say this as a Zvezda fan) you'll see that the kit is terrific if you're a very good modeler. If you're not, hold onto the hat.
4. Pushing yourself is good - sometimes. I do get irritated when people on the boards implicitly look down on "shake and bake" kits because the maker assumes buyers want something that assembles properly. But I suppose it's true that you'll never get better if you don't get outside the comfort zone. (The reluctance to do so, methinks, explains why ship modelers exist in smaller numbers than aviation and armor builders. I'm not saying that building a ship is harder, but it is more time consuming than other genres things being remotely equal.) I did that in my last kit when I was employing PE in large scale for the first time, doing major structural surgery and rigging with stretched sprue. It was fun and I'm a better modeler for the experience. But it also told me that I suffer from project fatigue. It took me a month to rebuild the old Iron Duke and I was tired of it at the end. (Same thing happened with my last Dragon tank.) I won't be a candidate for Dragon's Scharnhorst or Independence. Valuable thing to know. And when I do Mikasa, I think I'll stick to maybe metal guns and generic PE - we'll skip the 9 sprues from Lion Roar. And I'm glad my Trumpie 350 San Francisco is sitting there with under 300 parts - looks very good too.
5. Nobody is going to die of boredom, but I companies do a little better at picking good ships with interesting or important records. For a ship to get modeled it really helps that it suffered from a calamity or was simply really really big. (Hood, Bismarck, Arizona, Missouri, Yamato, or, heaven help us, Mutsu.) A lot gets lost in the wash. Maybe WWI is ancient history, but no British Dreadnaughts in 350 scale? The USN has not been well served either. The lack of CV6 is near scandal. But where's the first Helena? Of all the DDs out there had fine records, but the only star Fletcher. (Of course RN DDs aren't there at all in 350.) Where are the guys that did the heavy lifting like Sterret, O'Brien, Maury or Charles Ausburne (or even Saterlee)? Maybe if we've got an Independence we'll get a Princeton. Still I'm glad Dragon's building 1300 part ships. Just hope Academy or others remembers those of us that would like to take off a digit from the total.