Do I detect a note of exasperation in you’re words? If so, me too!
Clearly Halo and Minecraft are very successful and popular games. But lets us not make the usual mistake of equating the successful and the popular with being good. Because whilst not mutually exclusive, the one does not necessarily guarantee the other.
I make this - seemingly difficult to grasp distinction - because the notion of classifying MSFS 2020
[or for that matter any flight simulator worth it’s salt] in with the above titles, I find an utter anathema.
So then, using you’re nomenclature, and in an effort to make my subjective position absolutely clear here:
not only do I think that MSFS 2020 should be on a completely different pedestal to the above, but that this pedestal should be relatively higher.
The task of producing software that aspires to mimic, in detail and with high levels of fidelity, the real world, in all it’s minutia, is software of a different order than mere games, no matter how good they
are to play!
Of course, whether MSFS ultimately fulfils this brief remains to be seen.
Addendum:
I do agree with Jason Beaumont and his statement but only in terms of the corporate bottom line.
Yeah, make no mistake. It’s the marketplace that MS is interested in. FS2020 is perfect for the games as a service model and is basically what MS Flight was supposed to be
“The game is offered “free-to-play”; charging gamers for downloading extra content, aircraft or scenery.”
Now it’s included in game pass with lovely margins on everything that’s sold through the marketplace.
And how else would they get the millions of xbox gamers to try out a flight simulator. I didn’t hesitate one bit as well as many others here to buy the deluxe version out right, yet the price is rather steep for casual interest. With Gamepass everyone (subscribed) can try it out and some will buy some stuff from the marketplace.
Hence my parallel to MS Flight, same business model.
That’s a really good observation. Does Halo have a Marketplace? Seems to me games with Marketplaces could be seen as the future direction for growth of gaming. (granted, I’m old, so probably wayyyy behind the times on my observation of Hob’s observation, haha)
This I can wholeheartedly agree with. MSFS is also a technology demo by Microsoft, touting the power of their cloud technology and services, not just a flight simulator / game. There’s a big emphasis on making MSFS successful for the Marketplace revenue, which seems to be working quite well atm.
But the real money to be made here is from advertising what’s possible to do when you combine all of Microsoft’s tech and services vs the sim or marketplace themselves.
Yep, that, too! If played properly by MS, MSFS is a killer business tool/marketing tool for MS on all fronts.
I wonder if they understood this but knew they weren’t ready yet so stopped after FSX until they were ready for the next generation. There are signs around that show both possibilities, 1. they decided after Paul Allen left it was too expensive (dumb money counter thinking; actually causing losses, not really saving money), or, 2. They had plans but needed time to build the infrastructure and tools so concentrated on that first.
