There’s no such thing as a gaming machine. Everything is a computer
Just wait… soon Nvidia will announce their 3000 series.. they will run this like it’s a mobile game lol (rumors say at least 27% more powerful than current gen)
Average Hardware for a typical potential customer is a Dell, Lenovo or HP they bought from a big box. Even the high end Ryzen and I7 machines don’t come with a good enough GPU.
There’s the rub. Many people aren’t going to upgrade their PC just to install a “cool program. Look I can fly a jet… I like it but the video is choppy… ‘throw in a new graphics card’. Oh, okay… really cool” That is the hook to sales to a wide market vs a more limited one, and expanding other markets as a result.
That is not average hardware for a flight simmer or for a gamer. That is average hardware for Excel.
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If you google, you will find out that a business analyst report has forecasted sales of 2.5 million copies of Fs2020 and that Fs2020 will generate billions$ of additional hardware sales. That does not agree with your opinion that people will not buy new hardware to run fs2020. I think you underestimate how much people will spend on their hobbies.
You could always buy a bigger case and move all of your components into it. The biggest problem is that HP and Dell often use proprietary form factors (non-ATX) to fit their proprietary cases. However, if your MoBo and power supply are standard then it’s a pretty easy move. Actually, you’d probably have to replace your power supply anyway to support a real video card in which case it’s even easier!
But, as I said, you’d have to verify the form factor of the MoBo first.
Mike T.
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I spend (often waste, lol) money on hobbies. It’s hard to attract new users to something they can’t try without $$ investment.
Find a good friend with a flight sim interest, buy and share an Xbox seriesX with him. He get it for a week, then you get it for a week. That way mum, girlfriend, wife can’t complain your are spending all your time playing with FS2020. If you are married, you can then even avoid a divorce. 
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That is the average hardware of 10’s of millions of consumers that walk into a store and buy a computer. That same consumer doesn’t understand why they can stream HD video but can’t install a game on even a pricier box they just bought.
To achieve 2.2 million units in sales requires a really large potential audience.
Excel runs just dandy on my throw away $149 lenovo tablet that can’t do much else. 
Is that based on first hand experience, lol?
I could easily get away with buying a box (aw, really need it for work since I have to work at home so much) but the tough part would be wearing the headphones and joystick. I should probably start doing that during the day now to get her used to it!
- That is the average hardware of tens of millions of consumers that walk into a store and buy a computer to run excel on. No one buys that kind of computer and thinks: “Yup! Triple A gaming here i come! This baby will run any game in full details for decades to come!”
- Just because there are a lot of ■■■■■■ computers around, it doesn’t mean we have to nerf graphics so that every potato can run them.
Like it or not, you need an upgrade, and you can’t blame it on the developer.
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Your right, they want the largest market share possible of “average” users, and they will get access to that, via the xBox release.
They want the average user to see the fun they are missing out on, look at an xBox, and see a solution. It is marketing 101, provide a need/want to upgrade. MS will make money when people buy the hardware from MS vs build it yourself. The xBox will have system specs that will blow most “average” peoples computers out of the water and beat most “average” computers cost.
Most houses in the world are shacks with leaky tin roofs. That’s the “average” house. What is the value in selling and installing fancy woods floor into these houses? Better just to sell someone a new house with a wood floor.
BTW, the 1660 Supper (as mentioned above) runs this game very well assuming you have the rest of the boxes ticked. Otherwise, wait for the xBox version. However, you will get a nicer house if it is custom built to higher standards.
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Maybe I’m out of touch with hardware requirements for mainstream games these days, but historically my PC upgrades tended to be driven by new flight simulator releases precisely because they were so demanding compared with most other games. The first graphics accelerator I ever bought, back when 2D and 3D were handled separately, was for Flight Unlimited II.
In fact I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how well MSFS2020 runs on my current PC, which was blistering-edge back in 2013 (bought for the Elite: Dangerous alpha) but is quite long in the tooth by modern standards. Aside from the GTX 1080 I bought when my old GPU went up in smoke, everything in this machine is 2013 vintage. And yet outside of large cities I’m getting great performance with most settings on High and a couple nudged up to Ultra. Even the urban areas are playable, albeit at less than optimal frame rates.
Compared with low-slider-fest that was FSX at launch, this version seems much more forgiving of relatively modest hardware.
I only hope the developers can find a way to cut down on the loading times, which are absolutely bonkers even by flight simulator standards.
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How has that changed at all? Twitch streamers that aren’t traditional flight simmers have been playing around and enjoying MSFS2020. Flight sticks are selling out because of the release.. There is undeniably still mass appeal.
And as far as all of your “Most people don’t have hardware that supports it” gripes.. I think you’re just well out of touch with the times, my dude. People who play games have rigs to play games. People who sim flights have rigs to sim flights. People who are into neither.. are probably not in the target audience.
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Yep dude, I’m old. My first flight I remember was on a 707. That said, I still develop commercial software in VS2019 so I’m not yet senile or that out of touch.
It might be that ‘stock’ PCs in the “old days” had relatively better GPUs than what’s on the shelf today. Underscore relatively. Granted I never had a real low end box, but I never needed to buy a GPU to run MSFS either.
Last time I bought a stock PC was 1998.
Then you never ran any FS at launch.
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Probably diminishing returns like trying to put a Corvette engine in a Buick regal. You can do it, but just buy the Vette
Yes - I remember Radio Shack stores (USA) in the 80’s and 90’s selling the Tandy line PC’s with a demo of Flight Simulator looped. I still run that FS3 demo for kicks on occasion.
Can’t say I did or didn’t honestly. I know I upgraded a couple pretty quickly though. But as I said, the mid class PCs of the day did tend to have GPU cards of some type.