The game Anno 1602, initiated by Max Design and later published together with Sunflowers, marked an important boundary in two respects.
On the one hand, with 2 million copies sold, it became the most successful German / Austrian computer game ever[1] and it laid the foundation for the Anno series.
With the appearance of Anno 1503, there was speculation in the fan base about a continual shift in the balance of power towards Sunflowers.
In an interview, one of the company's founder later declared that, after twelve years of development, the core team was "tired" and needed some time for a re-orientation.
[3] The soundtrack for 1869 and Burntime was written by Hannes Seifert, one of the later founders and CEO's of Neo Software, who also made the music on several other games at this time.