Given how heavy MSFS is on cloud services I’m wondering why we don’t have the sim as a subscription service.
My concern is the traditional licensing model won’t be profitable enough or sustainable with a one time fee, and occasionally market place purchases, especially after the growth peaks.
This in turn will cause them to cut corners on Azure services or prematurely issue and EOL.
It also offers less incentive for MS to keep the users happy and engaged since they already got the money and we become an ongoing expense that cuts into profits over time.
This may be a little bit of what is happening now given limited speach services and all the sporadic offline events we are seeing.
How about making the subscription for a “professional tier”. I’d probably jump on that. I think charging the main user base would effectively kill off most of it to the extent that Flight Simulator would turn into the biggest mass exodus since Twitter.
I kind of like the model they have in place now, where it’s just huge economies of scale that allow license sales and marketplace tokens to fund what’s really a service model. I’ve been buying add-ons just to support it. I haven’t flown most of the planes or airports in the Premium Deluxe, I’ve never flown a race in Reno, and I’ve been getting my scenery off the Marketplace, but I know if people stop buying this stuff, the 10 year party of new sim stuff is going to come to an end, the photogrammetry and weather spigot is going to shut off, and we’ll be reminiscing about this whole thing like Microsoft Flight.
Even this causes issues though. People love to defend their “free” aircraft from any sort of perceived negative feedback as if they were literally gifted to them. As if something is free unless you hand somebody cash, and in the same gesture get something placed into your other hand. But really, Microsoft is just deciding for you which add-ons you should buy as we’ve already paid for these aircraft and continue to pay for them, some people more so than others. Maybe I don’t want a rushed third party add-on that isn’t up to the standards we’ve seen, and instead would prefer Microsoft spending more on developer hours for the features we were promised a couple years ago that are still missing. I’d rather watch a review and see, “Oh the visual model is not Flight Simulator quality with its texture and decal work, and its missing a number of functional features. I think I’ll pass on this one, and wait for this instead…” But what was supposed to be a commercial third party product was bought by Microsoft, using your money. Will there be the same incentive for continued development on that product, or will it become just a marketing gimmick that’s soon relegated to a dusty corner of the hangar when the next shiny thing is dangled in front of us.
For a long term perspective, It would make sense to have MSFS online service as a subscription.
If I recall, MS already stated that they will continuously improve and provide support for MSFS 2020 for the next 10 years (from release date). I hope the online service would be free at least until 2030.
BTW. By that time, perhaps there would be a brand new MSFS 2030 released and the online service would also be free for the next 10 years… who knows…
I don´t see a reason to pay extra for a service that is already included in the price we paid for the game license. Profitability is not anything customers have to think about nor even worry about. If they start to charge users for that they would most likely face a ton of claims as that service was never advertised to require a subscription.
Agreed. In principal, I don’t have issues with paying a fair monthly price for a service. But if I’m paying for access to something, I had better have premium tier service, uptime guarantees on all dependent services, top tier customer support, and see bugs and regressions fixed in a prompt manner.
Right now, I don’t think Microsoft are able to deliver on any of those points.
In any case, we have what we have. I don’t think they’d be able to legally (in most countries) switch a previously “purchased up front” service to a paid monthly one unless they added something signifciant over the base. So this is not likely to happen.
as others mentioned, they would loose a lot of users… me inclusive.
I hate all kind of subsription models… ( too bad experiances and too expensive mostly )
EDIT: but one note… the Gamepass is also kind of subsription, and I assume ideal for users which want try-out… but users which plan a very-longtime usage of MSFS… I dont know
Given how awful the sim runs at any given moment - excaberated per update. There is simply no way a membership could be successful, under any circumstances - regardless if someone thinks it’s a good Idea.
It bisects the Community into a potential haves and have-nots. That’s not a good plan overall to retain subscription numbers, nor does it foster any sense of goodwill. The way forward is the incremental improvement and innovation on services over time, partly subsidized by other income streams such as Marketplace, Gamepass etc.
We appreciate your concern, but there’s no need to worry. We don’t comment on the financials or business model of Microsoft Flight Simulator (other than what is already publicly available in Microsoft’s shareholder reports), but it’s fair to say we have been thrilled by the way the player community on PC, Xbox, and Xbox Cloud Gaming has embraced MSFS. It’s because of the ongoing support from our players that we are able to continue giving away so much new content for free (such as the many World Updates and all the new planes from the 40th Anniversary Edition) that in previous versions of MSFS would have been sold as paid expansion packs.
