That’s a number I saw in an article 2 days ago suggesting this is the number of people who are expected to buy MSFS.
It also suggested that MSFS would kick start a surge in purchases of high end machines and peripherals to run it.
Great! Or is it?
If the core SIM community (PMDG, Aerosoft, Navigraph - you get the drift) is 100,000 I’d be surprised but happy to be corrected. Whatever that number is, and I count myself as one of them, if the 2.27 number is correct, our voice is tiny and of little consequence to the returns MS hope to make from their investment.
So my question. Will this impact development of the SIM as a true next generation “flight” simulator or will the emphasis be where the big money is?
And please, I’m not suggesting for one moment that any group of users is better or superior to any other. I still hope this will be everything to everyone.
I have faith that where “the road map ends”, that 3rd party developers will “go offroad”…Even if Microsoft JUST provided the tools, it seems like the development platform has been built robustly so that things can be altered and created pretty easily. I mean, it’s clear to see this creative ingenuity with a quick glance around the forums. People correcting coastlines, people tweaking planes for things like fuel flow, repaints by the dozen, not to mention products being created or ported. On YouTube last night I seen someone had imported an MD-11 and a 777 into the sim…we are not long into this and already the platform is learning to walk.
MS Flight sims have always had a broader appeal but how long do you think they’ll be using them? The novelty will wear off for most, especially by the time the complex $100+ addons start dropping.
Microsoft’s sales revenue also peaked in FY2020 at 143.02 billion U.S. dollars.
MS is worth over 1 trillion us dollars.
add Bing and Xbox plans , don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon.
Intersting numbers would be to know how much people converts somehow from casual to long-term flight simmer. That is, how much this sim help increasing FS community.
A lot of us we once were only “gamers”.
I wonder if they are counting Game Pass downloads of the sim as sales?
I would expect that many of the Game Pass downloads will get played for an hour or two and then ignored.after that.
If you look at the Xbox achievements for Forza Motorsport 7 (available on PC and Xbox) it’s apparent that many players never played any further than the intro.
only a word…money.
Simmmers dnt count, only arcade gamers.
I guess this depends on what you mean by ‘flight’ simulator, are you comparing to PDMG 737 in P3D? Or to a Class D full flight simulator? I’m expecting the PDMG experience in P3D to be available in MFS as well.
Microsoft have pretty much done 90% of the job. There mission statement was to produce a platform which can support core simulation and not close any doors. Ok we’ve yet to see various integration like Navigraph and study sims hitting the platform but there’s nothing I believe Microsoft or Asobo have done which can limit this, and if there is I’m sure that will be rectified in the next 12 months.
Asobo have created this opportunity with the lessons learnt from MS Flight so I don’t think you have too much to worry about and the question you are asking probably is largely irrelevent as it’s out of Microsoft’s hands and into the 3rd party developers.
Microsoft has publicly stated they will support this game/simulation for the next 10 years, FWTW.
If you disagree with me @FunkyHut I’m sure Microsoft and Asobo would love to hear your thoughts on how to make this a better simulator. Jorg Neuman has always spoken of this as a sim for simmers so any suggestions would be welcome by the team.
Remember PDMG planes are not for everybody so as a default experience I think what they’ve done is about right, I’m not counting bugs as I know they’ll get addressed and they’ll bring the FMS and AP up to a decent workable standard for default aircraft.
there will be many like me who will buy once VR is up n running.
That sounds like a please please fix
Did they? They might have said “it’s a 10 years project”, counting from when it first started internally.
Nah. It’s a sim. They extensively communicate with third parties to create something big. Navigraph is a paid add-on for hardcore simmers and thus not comparable to buying the base sim. Not every person that flies virtually wants to invest big time in add-ons, and if, then rather in aircraft, occasionally or a scenery pack, in Msfs2020’s case not even that necessarily. To many, the freeware services for charts are enough, so keep that in mind. Given the number of pilots in the world I think the number is very realistic, and don’t forget the huge hype that was built in cooperation with known streamers/youtubers. I think they easily will sell the first million in the first year alone, the excellent multiplayer experience will also help.
I had not played Flight Sims since a few years ago with Xplane, did not like it even though I had around 2000h in FSX.
I am back now, this sim was just too good and does not feel on rails. Some bugs? Yeah, to be expected, and a lot of development is still needed for the dreamliner to work at all, but this has been the best flight-sim experience I have had in… ever.
I just can’t wait for VATSIM to not make my fps fall to 20 once they fix the simconnect issue