Some have been wondering how Microsoft is making sustainable cash with Microsoft Flight Simulator with all the money they are investing in world updates and such.
Today Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (and I mean the CEO of the whole corp, not the head of the gaming business Phil Spencer) mentioned the “vibrant” marketplace for Microsoft Flight Simulator during the financial conference call.
" Creators have generated over 350 million for more than one billion downloads of mods, addons, and other experiences in Minecraft. This is not counting and including activity outside of our marketplace.
We’re also seeing a vibrant marketplace emerge in Flight Simulator, with partners now able to sell content directly within the game."
For those not used to financial conference calls, this is extremely significant. Nadella basically never mentions games by name during those conferences, which aren’t specific to gaming. That’s usually a honor reserved exclusively to Minecraft, which is Microsoft’s main cash cow on this front. For him to name-drop MSFS, the marketplace must be doing really well.
This is just an awesome news for all MSFS fans. Satya Nadella being a big supporter of MSFS means Microsoft will continue developing it even after the proposed 10 years.
We shall see, Microsoft has history as reference of pulling plugs, reorganizing and changing directions. We can expect their attention until the Xbox version comes out because that is the main goal with this game at the moment.
Incidentally, you’re talking about a very different company. Microsoft has changed a whole lot in the past years, organizationally, in its leadership, modus operandi, and corporate culture.
It’s the company that launched Sea of Thieves to very mediocre results and kept improving it, and now it’s a very successful game 3 years later.
The “History” you’re talking about is irrelevant.
They have announced 10 years of development and there is absolutely zero reason to believe that it won’t happen.
I’ve worked in large enterprises (including Microsoft, as it happens), and there’s roughly 10,000 things the CEO of Microsoft could mention on an investor call… but they only have time to mention one or two - Satya saying this about MSFS is a major signal to the market.
Funny that there’s always someone who has to drop some unwarranted and off-topic negativity on any thread, no matter the topic.
But anyway.
Indeed. A corporation as big as Microsoft has a giant mass of topics that need to fit in the CEO’s 10 minutes of prepared remarks. Windows, Linkedin, Github, Office 365, Azure, and many, many more.
The part about gaming is usually 1 minute and a half or so, and lately, it’s about Xbox Game Pass, Minecraft, and reaching games across all platforms with Xcloud. I absolutely did not expect to see MSFS named, as successful as it can be.
Curious. These investor call scripts are a big deal. Divisions have to sign off, as do PR and investor relations, the CFO, and most of all, legal. Every word in them is scrutinized, and none are off the cuff.
The word “vibrant” would be classified as puffery. I’m not being critical, that’s an actual word, with a specific legal meaning. It means to seem good, but not say anything arguable nor with meaning that can be checked…like “it’s great!” or “quality ingredients”.
So why the shoutout? No way to know without inside info. Could be that they’re above plan, but don’t want to be quantitative, and someone scrubbed real info down to “vibrant”.
Could be that everyone knows there are problems, and he wanted to let someone know that it’s not bad in his judgement…without specifics.
Could be just that after talking about the Minecraft juggernaut, his ego wanted to mention that a major release under his watch is doing well also.
Or it could be that he intended to signal that consumer entertainment as a category is important to Microsoft, either as a current or future source of revenue. In other words, “Minecraft isn’t a one-off, this category is strategically important to us.” You’re right that no results are reported. Probably wouldn’t be, at the product-line level. But he might be laying the groundwork for some future initiative, or setting expectations for results down the line.