They aren’t going to leave the servers on for free though. The game will look worse than FSX if you can only play with the 60gb default fallback textures like permanent offline mode 
I seriously doubt that will happen.
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Extreme pessimism is such a drag on my positivity.
”.what’s with all the negative waves, Moriarty ?”
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I have a feeling you do. Myself, I spend over €200 on airports and scenery alone with the last 2 sales( 40th Anniversary and Black Friday). That’s on Xbox. My fellow Xbox simmers I know did about the same. I don’t know if me and my group are representative for Xbox as a whole(don’t think so), but I think it’s wise to not underestimate the amount of money people on Xbox are spending at the Marketplace.
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I think another way. They will keep update untill make a vivid world. Just immagine what u want in the sim world in future, they will give us as long as hardware can stands. For they are MS & Asobo !
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Microsoft and Asobo continue to make tons of money on FS and it was scheduled as a 10 year project.
I don’t know what percent it is, but they make a substantial income from all the products sold in the Marketplace. Plus Microsoft/Asobo and also add paid content to the MarketPlace. Think about the Reno Air Race Expansion pack, that wasn’t free. And there are also some other planes that they have built that are payware. Can’t name off the top of my head, but check the Marketplace.
I have literally spent thousands of dollars on scenery and airplanes.
And when they added FS to xBox they receive a huge new large audience, many of which use GamePass which is a substantial amount of players and good steady revenue.
Many developer have left Papar3d and xPlane and now only develop for MSFS.
So they will keep improving it for a long time. Rest assured, I don’t think they will stop improving it anytime soon.
And when they stopped developing FSX, I continued flying it for years. Actually right up until I started using FS2020. Which I will also do when they stop developing FS2020.
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Assuming the servers stay up, it’s all online nowadays!
When Microsoft closed their flight sim group there was such a hue and cry from the flight sim world, I am sure Voyager I got that signal!
It ended up going to Steam not long after and people have been pacing the floor waiting for the new sim to come out.
I can’t say anything about Microsoft’s mental competence, but (IMHO) it would be unspeakably stupid for them to bail on this. Managed properly, this could be a cash-cow for many years.
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Good point, but if that ever happens, I’m sure we will end up with something better than the current offline.
I did looked at xPlane 12 this weekend, and it actually looks really good. A huge improvement from xPlane 11. So maybe that would become my alternative. I actually own DCS, xPlane 11&12, but only use FS2020.
I really don’t think I have to worry about MS shutting their servers down anytime soon and I will be using MSFS for many years to come.
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Correct, which they won’t if things go badly. And, when the servers are down, nobody plays as we all saw during that outage. It’s not like DCS which will let you play for a couple of days offline. No matter what happens, the innovations they make here will live on past the sim. We have all seen what can be done, and that genie won’t go back in the bottle.
Me neither, my remaining life expectancy is in single digits, I’m sure MSFS will outlive me!
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Had they forced this with PC, there would have been some serious backlash. That’s not how the sim community operates and never has. And it would have stifled innovation. Some of the best mods out there came out of the freeware / download from a 3rd party site ecosystem. We just have to look at Working Title’s work as the prime example. It was so good that MS contracted them as 1st party devs to work on the sim.
That said, there’s a reason they pushed this to Xbox and XCloud so aggressively. Those users are locked into the ecosystem, and MS makes a killing off the Marketplace sales as a result. It’s what keeps the continued sim development happening.
Also, we can’t forget that MSFS is not only a product of its own. It’s also a showcase for what’s possible using Azure. This is as much a standalone product as it is advertising for what can be done combining MS’ various cloud services into a single piece of software. Sure in this form it’s a game / sim, but over the long term, enterprise customers can leverage some of these cloud services into their own applications.
That said, MS will keep this going as long as it’s profitable to do so.
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It’s clearly a very profitable model. It’s an active platform in the same way Fortnite, League of Legends, Call of Duty or PUBG are. They have a constant revenue source via selling their own add ons on their market place plus a percentage of third party sales. It’s an integral part of Xbox gamepass.
They pump out new content to keep the playerbase high and money coming in from add ons and accessories.
I’ve spent well over £500 on add ons since I bought this in December 2020 as will have many others.
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I expect that I will live well over singles digits, but I too am up there in age and truly expect that the sim will most likely outlive me.
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I agree. Many of us have invested substantial four figure sums into this sim, counting all add ons and hardware, and we want to secure these investments into this serious hobby for a long time to come.
I would MUCH rather pay a reasonable yearly subscription fee, than the product being abandoned at some point, due to lack of revenue potential.
There is still so much potential to grow and get better for this sim, e.g.
-better more realistic modeling of physics of all phases of flight
-better rendering 3D to 2D (atrocious atm with the enormous pincushion distortion on wide screens)
-better weather and environment modeling, integrating realtime data
-better flightplanning integration and implementation of 3rd party tools
etc. etc.
which could be realized with the revenue from the subscriptions for many years to come.
P.S. with such a subscription scheme then also 3rd party contributors to the Marketplace need to get their fair share, much like youtube or apple music pays dividend to their content creators.
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Couldn’t agree with you more…and I hope that it doesn’t go that way. Guess it will all depend on the income they can generate. I do think things like game of the year and 40th anniversary will generate booms in profit with new players coming on board so fingers crossed whatever the future holds they support it until they see fit to replace it with a newer version
I added up all my Addons and the total is: $0.00
I am still waiting for them to fix ALL of the missing bridge spans in my Photogrammetry city of Pensacola, Fl (KPNS). and, waiting for them to fix several short comings in the core programs. Good thing I didn’t hold my breath while waiting.
…
But, I have so many airplanes to fly and the whole world to explore . And, they keep adding more free ones every so often… Happy Flying.
Was going to give that a like then realised that would be like giving a thumbs up to your death so long may you live and enjoy it my friend
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Amen, Well said !
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They already did that within a couple of months of the release of MSFS. My opinion is, no, there’s not much room left for price drops if Microsoft lowered its cut. A quick google will tell you what their cut is. I think it’s 15% or something like that?