Distributed simulation, more specifically the HLA standard, is hardly applied in industry. We have conducted an extensive survey with COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) simulation package vendors and simulation experts, both from defence and industry, that focuses, amongst others, on the question what the reasons are behind this phenomenon. In this paper we analyze the reactions that we obtained, categorizing them into arguments related to distributed simulation in general, arguments related to HLA and arguments pertaining to the embedding of HLA concepts in COTS packages. These answers will lead us, we believe, to insights that can serve as guidelines to make distributed simulation more attractive for the industrial simulation community.