Without saying anything directly about 2024, can we all just take a moment to consider cyberpunk 2077 release? I think it’s safe to say it was released to early.
Problems may get ironed out over time. But the damage an incomplete release can do to a products reputation is real. This was enough to make the news.
It’s not the only example but the one that came to mind and likely you’ve heard about. If you ride out the bugs until it’s “complete” that doesn’t change the impacts to the non-beta testing community who just want to buy games.
I will add things like autogen buildings populating completely randomly/overtop of other scenery still a core bug in 2020 to this day. Headphone simulation still not working properly in 2020.
But we’re onto a new gen that is showing new bugs. You can have your opinions on whether or not you’ll beta test it for MS until you deem it complete, or whatever you’d like but the public reputation of the product is affected by things like this regardless. It’s not all about you and how you will play it or gatekeep by telling other people to not play it, it’s about the reputation of this product.
Either way it’s launching in 5 days That’s the reality. It’s not getting delayed. They’re moving full steam ahead and the train left the station a long time ago.
Also, if you want to talk about disastrous launches, you could’ve just mentioned No Man’s Sky, a game which completely did a 360 after their disastrous launch and turned itself into something to be proud of.
All with free updates that are substantial I might add.
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The marketing strategy has been not what I expected either. I get they needed to do the tech alpha to stress test server load etc, but in my view they should have kept the NDA on it. Youtube is full of tech alpha footage, and that is the vast majority of what we’ve had to go off as we’ve all understandably been hungry for in depth gameplay footage so close to release to make decisions on whether to upgrade etc.
As I see it the problem with them seemingly being heavily reliant on the tech alpha footage filling the social media gameplay video marketing platform in the last month or so is that it was (hopefully!) a long way off being visually representative of the release version. At least in terms of the new digital twin. Any footage on or near the ground looks unimpressive, with the absence of the procedurally generated grass / rocks / flowers. This aspect / new feature is one of the more significant selling points / upgrades in my opinion.
But then had they not lifted the NDAs, all we’d otherwise have is the footage from the grand canyon event they did, and that was lackluster (with the benefit of hindsight now knowing it was the closest representation we got to see pre release). What I’ve seen of it felt like the content creators were very rushed. Most of them said as much. They were obviously picked for being good at what they do, and yet in my opinion they weren’t able to produce content to their usual standards to represent the best new aspects of the sim. You would have thought that would have been MS’s / Asobo’s intention.
Probably supports part of the point that the OP was making - they just didn’t have a finished enough product in early September to allow it. Suggestive (but I can only speculate) that the last 2-3 months of development had a lot of significant stuff left to complete.
We can only truly judge on Tuesday, but to me there is an impression that some significant parts of the sim have not been ready right up until the very last minute. We can only hope that they and all the associated devs manage to iron out any major bugs in time for Tuesday (I am realistic and accepting of minor ones relative to my own financial investment in them). It would be a real shame to see loads of bad press for them on release given the significance of this new version for the flight sim genre.
Fingers crossed here, but I do have faith that Jorg knows what he’s doing and is good at what he does. I’m also still way more excited than I should be! Roll on Tuesday!
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This would be the correct approach in fact. However to cover investment costs you also need to get money on a periodic basis as well to support the investment you made on your own, and that comes from selling new licences, offering pre-purchase, etc
One thing that makes MSFS different to other games is that MSFS is constantly being expanded and updated. It is an open world sim and not a story driven game that needs to be 100% finished on day 1 for you to actually be able to play it. MSFS just needs to (mostly) work and it’s ready for people to get into it
Well my gaming experience tells me, theres always a vocal minority that brings their fears to the public to be heard.
You might be right, but the key here is - It doesn’t change anything.
Microsoft will see feedback, bugs, and it will be a much better sim in a week. In a month. And in a year.
They need user data. So prepare for the BS and if you don’t want to, simply stick to the older sim thats been polished for 4 years.
So, are you basically saying that they should not release the sim until it is free from bugs and issues in order to not hurt the reputation? That would mean never.
Some people have claimed in this forum that the start of MSFS 2020 was a “disaster”, the product was “destroyed” etc etc. And still it somehow managed to become a huge success. In a time when nobody was expecting a new sim from them. Now, people know and (at least a lot) like MSFS 2020. Do you really think the reputation could be harmed significantly if MSFS 2024 explodes next week on a number of people (which will happen for whatever reasons) while it runs just fine on other systems? I don’t think so. But that’s the fun part, we don’t have to agree.
I enjoyed the limited time I had with the tech alpha and that makes me optimistic. Of course they could have since broken things that make it crash or whatever on my system. But I’m confident that real show stoppers will be tackled quickly.
The world is not going to end if some of the features don’t work or if there are visual glitches.
That’s the reality. It’s not getting delayed. They’re moving full steam ahead and the train left the station a long time ago.
I got the numbers mixed up but you know what I meant 
