How to attract more players to MSFS

Discussion Hub General Discussion
41

You should really try Neofly :smiley:.

1 Like
42

looking into it - seems like something I’d like.
This thread though seems focused on what is included with MSFS as a means toward establishing and maintaining the interest of regular players. That impact when a new player opens the door for the first time and can see a lot of options and realizes the experience can be customized or tailored to their individual interests without having to go ‘outside’ the GUI and or download a lot of extra content to get what they want.

43

Good ideas - MSFS should take some ideas from ATS & ETS. Can directly apply them to for example an air cargo operation in the game. Start with a small plane and work your way up doing flying jobs. I know NEOfly does this but Im hoping for something to be built into the game in a future update.

44

Word of mouth, positive attitude and high praise for msfs.

I tell all my friends about it. I post on another forum and made a thread, “your HOUSE is in a video game, I’ll show you”. It got over 28k views and I’d constantly get request to make fly over videos over people’s cities.

I know for a fact a few people purchased the game BC of me talking about it in good light.

The experienced simmers need to welcome new players to the sim. It can get kind if “clique-ish” and what you don’t want to do is act holier than thou or shun new players for not playing the game a certain way.

1 Like
45

I’m not against MSFS adding more content, but I think MSFS should keep being a platform instead of trying to build a complete game.

MSFS can still rely on 3rd parties for this exact experience, they just need to allow more entry point for 3rd party UI (e.g. in the main menu), and better featuring of mission/career add-on. Right now 3rd party dev for career add-on can build their whole add-ons in toolbar panels, but that is limited because you have to load in a flight before you can open those panels.

Instead of Asobo spending resources on building a single experience, spending effort to open up the main menu and the marketplace would allow a huge amount of opportunity. E.g. imagine opening MSFS and see featuring of a career mods; installing any of them will open up a new section in main menu next to world map, where you can do anything Neofly is doing in their own window today. Starting a flight in that section would immediately start a flight without users having to interact with the world map manually. I believe all that extensibility is very possible.

Another great thing about this is that we will have choices, and there will be competition in career mode (or any mode 3rd party dev can come up with), which is always great for consumers.

46

I don’t disagree with you - but the question was ‘How to attract more players to MSFS’ in the context of gaining and keeping xbox players (hopefully for the purpose of converting them from gamers to flight sim enthusiasts) entertained for more than a minute.
In that vein, I answered with the understanding that ‘gamers’ generally come into a title expecting a fully self contained experience
a so called ‘finished product’
not just to open MSFS and say “huh - you just pick a plane, a runway, and W/TOD - then fly around in circles?”
it isn’t like a racing sim, or a combat flight sim with objectives per se - aside from a few landing challenges.
I think MSFS should absolutely be focused more on getting the base and core of their simulator finished before chasing the xbox crowd - but they made THIS decision without asking for my opinion.
If they had asked me I would have said this move is a rather big mistake.
Finish or at least put 18-24 months into getting this right - then copy the essentials and port it to xbox with enough time to make it stable for that platform. Game it up, but do it to the clone separately from MSFS for PC - not this.

47

I didn’t realize this question is about Xbox. If so, yah console gamers are probably not as familiar with mods as PC gamers.

However, I really don’t see why launching a working sim in Xbox would be a mistake. I don’t think MS considers Xbox as the main crowd yet. At Xbox launch, MSFS will still be a PC sim that could run on Xbox, not an Xbox game. Yes many will not like it, but many will (including me). And in the world of Game Pass, people will just come back to MSFS when the sim is updated with what they want; the only barrier of entry in Xbox would be the download time.

Imo, it would be a mistake if MS launches MSFS before they have sorted out all the interaction using Xbox controller. But if the performance and the interaction are all figured out, it’s a complete product. It’s a new genre on console (not the gamey “sim”), so it will attract a different crowd, and if people are interested in aviation, I bet it would last them more than a minute going through the tutorials, trying out aircraft and exploring the world. Even the landing challenges are growing with more mission product in the marketplace, and if they grow the free section right, it wouldn’t take much time for people to have a ton to do.

48

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.