Oh the good old days when the hard copy of MSFS only lasted a couple of years or so before a “new release” came out (MSFS95 was the first game I ever played on the good old W95… Over the years I ended up basically getting every single release…)
This one is different though…
Even mentioned by the Asobo/soft team itself when they distanced themselves from the term MSFS “2020”
Infact…
This game being a 10 year commitment that, in this weird and wonderful Cloud/digital online world" this game will constantly be updated and evolve for 10!!! years!!!
One wonders…
Just how much will this game/simulator last exactly… Just how much within the realms of this digital age can you grow this game… Could this very well be one of the very first games of this generation where there is infinite universe regarding constantly updating and growing…?? Or is there a finite timeline that does have a bookend… (not including a zombie apocalypse of an alien invasion…)
Microsoft is a company that has to answer to shareholders. They are not going to give anything away for free. I am sure once they stop making money on MSFS then it will go away just like they did with Flight. The economy in the game to keep development and server dollars coming in after the initial sales die down is the Marketplace. So the real question is how long can the Marketplace keep the game afloat.
For me, the problems with the Marketplace means it is the absolute last place I go to to get add-ons.
A whole lot is gonna hinge on how the chip shortage issue works out. The longer and more severe the shortage, the longer it’s gonna be before consumer hardware has advanced enough to justify a next-gen successor to MSFS. Right now it’s looking like nothing is changing soon. A crypto bubble pop could help, but bad stuff happening in Taiwan could make it worse. I think the former is more likely, FWIW.
In any case, for the time being, most people have to compromise quality or performance to run the current version. 10-15 years seems entirely reasonable for this incarnation of MSFS.
As long as development is going on and cash is coming in I think that it will go on as now.
However in a distant future I could certainly imagine a mature and stable MSFS where you would be charged a fee for being able to stream data, much like spotify’s or the likes.
Remember you have not bought a game, you have bought a right to use the software.
Personally I would not mind paying a modest fee for access to streamed data.
Another scenario is ofcause that a new superior version emerges and you would just have to pay for an upgraded version just as with FSX if I am not mistaken, or its predecessors.
Of course like any for profit company, Microsoft’s first priority is money. As long as they see monetary value in the game, it’s likely to continue. Now, does that mean solely profit? Maybe. But it can also have value in other areas. For example, as a way to demonstrate their cloud business. Microsoft’s cloud business, be it Office 365 or the monstrous Azure platform, is a major part of their business. Along with the cloud comes Software As A Service, like Office 365. A fully developed, stable MSFS can be a very nice, understandable way to demonstrate the power of their cloud infrastructure, including services like Bing Maps, to the world.
As we know another area where they’re investing heavily into SAAS is gaming. Their Xbox acquisitions, such as Bethesda and the pending take over of Blizzard Activision are all part of their drive to bring gamers into their Xbox ecosystem, which to them includes gaming on Windows. In tandem with Xbox goes Gamepass which they recently claimed to have 25 million active subscriptions. A title like MSFS sitting in Gamepass is certainly not going to hurt. I know I only signed up for it get MSFS and I’ve kept the subscription going to keep having it, while also then enjoying loads of other games. I don’t own a console, but given the value I get from Gamepass if I did buy one it would be an Xbox.
I’m sure they are also working to try and get the Market Place to a point where releases for MSFS are easy and work well, so that it creates an additional revenue stream. Personally I think that’ll still take some time, in my opinion the Market Place wasn’t prepared for the type of demand, both in terms of volume as well as type, that MSFS would put on it. But I do also believe they’ll fix it.
MSFS will exist as long as Microsoft sees monetary value, and I think that at least with the current way Microsoft is going, that monetary value isn’t solely tied to how many add ons the market place sells. Unfortunately given that so much of the sim is cloud based, when they stop seeing that value the sim goes away. Unless of course the model changes and they say “hey, if you want to keep playing, the subscription to MSFS 365 is $10/m and you’ll get continued support and updates”, or something along those lines.
I sort of see it like Microsoft Office now…its here to stay…I tend to only buy from marketplace now because I have both xbox and pc versions… which for me is buy once get twice. although tools and utlitities I get from places like simmarket or freebies from flightsim.to for the pc moddable version. Its many things at once now… a game a simulator a geography lesson a cloud service a virtual world to travel in during covid times or in 2050 when we all have 16k wall screens, a place to travel in because its too meterologically risky to venture outside…
Also, worth watching how MS first party titles are handled now that Game Pass is a success.
It seems like more titles have long term strategies and are planned for evolution over years, so people stay subscribed and old games keep giving subscribers reason to stay.
I am noticing this with Forza titles, Halo, Gears… etc.
MSFS is a Game Pass showcase with no competition on console, and limited competition on PC. It is here to stay. It brings in an unique kind of gamer to the Game Pass subscription service.
And this is why we get neat freebies, like World Updates, the GOTY edition, and the upcoming Top Gun expansion.
For those of us who grew up with the “hard product” and for the next update, we had to purchase the next new game update and with this new era of gaming that allows you to stream games online.
In this case.
This game has gone through many updates. Could this new platform allow infinite continual flow from one software platform (they distanced themselves from that tag line 2020…) Through extensive updates, this weird almost unlimited world that is a global flight sim and the fact that this is not a hard product… Could this last forever in a very loose sense…
Some games such as World of Tanks have been continually updated and played around the world for over 10 years. The game has multiple servers around the world. The North American server usually has 10 to 20 thousand online users during evening hours.
The game does well because the company attracts new users, hosts many events, introduces new content, updates the technology, and has lots of info on their forums and video channels. They also have a very clear roadmap of what new features are coming and what bugs or less desirable issues are being fixed.
Yeah I know.
But you could keep the game code decoupled and only use the “world” as a common place to show the visuals. I believe Microsoft has released several simulators in the past.
If this is a game, there is a finite time when it will be done. If it is a flight simulation, it will go on to infinity (and beyond) because you can always get closer to reality but never quite get there.
John
Don’t shoot the messenger but it’s not infeasable that in ten years time commercial airline pilots will no longer exist and just how that would affect MSFS is a rather massive question.
