Yes! MS should make this a live service simulation

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Yep, I know I know…you hate live service games… we all do, don’t we?!

I am writing this as someone who normally would never EVER buy any live service game. But, I think in this case it makes perfect sense for all parties involved, publisher, developer, 3rd party devs and customers.

This sim has become so big and complex and will become even bigger and more complex and thus very hard to maintain for the developer/publisher while generating a reasonable source of income.

Also it is a simple fact that this SIM is basically an online-only game with 99% streamed content already and this will never ever change back again. And the different tiers are already there with the different packages that you can buy.
So everthing already just SCREAMS “LIVE-SERVICE”.

I would be happy to pay some bucks a months for different kinds of subscription tiers where nice and complex multi-flight missions, aircraft, airports, liveries, biomes, etc. being added and optimized in form of a continuous deployment process.

Just a few reasons why I think it would be benefitial:

I would love to see the the current career mode removed completely. I think people use because they love flighing with an actual purpose, not so much because it is a career thing.

Instead they should focus on smaller mission packs like a cargo delivery mission in south america to serveral small bush strips or a 2-way VIP charter service mission to bring politicians to Davos and back and so on…
Maybe you could also gain some kind of reputation points for each missions completed successfully and there could be a global raking system, maybe they could even award you with some in-game currency for exceptional achievements in missions. Why NOT?!

Such missions could be added on a regular basis with fixed schedules. They would be much better to handle instead of the half-baked career mode with all of it’s features (and bugs).

Also a secured flow of income would enable them to focus on delivering higher quality stock aircraft, airports and all assets in general.

Migration and compatibility issues between game versions is just a pain in the a** for everyone involved (Asobo/MS, 3rd party dev, customers). A continuous delivery and development would make things way easier to handle in an incremental way.

Testing in general could also benefit hugely since the steady flow of cash would enable them to really dig deep and take their time. By deploying things in smaller packages and in a continuous way there would be no need for such MONSTER updates that need to be worked on for MONTHS and then still be half-baked with lots of bugs.

There are so many more ways in that everyone involved would benefit from switching to live service and continuous deployment and I would be really curious about people’s opinions on that and hear about some more ideas where we all could benefit form that, or even not!

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All purchases in the Marketplace make Microsoft 30% of the purchase price. The Marketplace is the largest simulation shop ever. Sales from the Marketplace exceed the sales of external shops (Orbx, SimMarket, etc) COMBINED. So, there is a revenue source.

Once the sim gets in a stable place, people will again start to purchase addons. Making 2024 a live service or subscription based platform will do nothing to speed up the stability, and in fact would drive away people who are currently using 2024 (who wants to pay for a broken or incomplete service).

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Thanks for your comment.
Switching to live service should of course only be done once the game is in a good stable state. Like 2020 was when 2024 launched.

I agree a live service would scare some people off, but at the same time it would bind others who see the benfits and improvements.

Also, once a live service is active the marketplace in it’s current form would be questionable since content should be more bound to different sub tiers.

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The Marketplace is mainly composed of addons created by 3rd party developers who are not affiliated with Microsoft in any way. Most of these addons are also sold at SimMarket, Orbx, Aerosoft One, Contrail, etc. So how is this content going to be “free” for subscription levels? Who determines what a 3rd party gets a month? What happens to these other external stores?

Nothing that you have stated as a benefit is inherent with a subscription service. You talk about making smaller releases quicker. Microsoft could still do that without it being a subscription service. It is just that right now there is so much to be done in so many places, and they want things stable and not add any more instability that we have quarterly updates with beta periods. Once things are stable, maybe they go to 6 sim updates a year, all focused on specific things. If you are talking about increments smaller than that, you are now talking about making changes that 3rd party developers would have to constantly adjust to in their past products.

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I’m gonna be honest, I do not like the current situation with 3rd party development and all the issues that come with it. I think this is getting out of hand quite a bit and needs some more refinement with strict and well-defined processes. I think MS should be in full control here. 3rd party devs should be contracted and MS should be the single point of access to any 3rd party stuff for customers. Incompatibilities, lack of control, different versions between marketplace and 3rd party shops and much more. This is binding a lot of resources on MS side causing a lot of overhead and also dissatisfaction on the customizer side.
That said, I love 3rd party premium add-ons. But it’s too costy for customers, it really is. That is another benfit of live service, these things can get monetized in a better way.

But anyway, I get that you can’t see any benefits from live services and that everything is totally fine as it is :slight_smile:

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I’m very clear about it, I’m not going to pay for a game that has an “expiration date”

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It isn’t a matter of agree with you, or else everything is all fine just as things are.

You yourself said that this couldn’t be done until things stabilize. So your subscription approach can’t take place until after things are stable. Once past that point, then yes, this will be fine the way they will be. Subscription services, complete with tiers as you are suggesting, would wipe out third party development. Currently, we get third party developers doing Local Legends and Famous Flyers. Has the quality of those been tremendous with every one? No. Quite the contrary. That is the type of development that would be done if all third party addons now fall under Microsoft. There is no competition then. There is no innovation. Developers would get what projects are assigned by Microsoft. What you are suggesting isn’t going to increase quality. When things are stable, your suggested approaches aren’t going to offer the benefits you are claiming they will.

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Everything has an expiration date, no matter how you pay for it and you already did. MSFS2024 is dead the moment they close the streaming servers down.

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What’s ‘secure’ about the income from a live service? I’d consider it the opposite.

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Secure in terms of subs that have a minimum running time. Of course it is only a temporary security. But that is why corps try to sign a sub with you, it is income that can be calculated with for a certain amount of time and it binds people (and their data) to your company. That’s why game pass, Sony playstation network, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. are existing.

The discussion is probably obsolet anyway in a couple of years, gaming will mostly become streaming and online-only very soon. Nobody will be willing or able to pay premium prices for hardware anymore. Everything you see is heading into this direction.

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I’d agree that for many the cost of hardware and time needed to maintain MSFS 2024 in order to run it and future versions of MSFS consistently well will more likely be the determining purchase factor than the base cost of the product.

I see this mirroring the move of corporate data into the cloud. In the 1990’s, corporations spent significant sums building and staffing their own data centers. As the cost and complexity of running them increased, starting in the early 2000’s they gradually moved a significant amount of that work into “the cloud” as the global Internet was built out & bandwidth increased. It simply became too expensive to run their own data centers, and CEOs questioned the rational behind having a hugely expensive IT department that was not core to the company’s product(s) & that could now be outsourced into the cloud at lower cost.

Looking at the continuing increasing costs of hardware (particularly GPUs that now can cost well over $1,000 US) and cost to run the hardware (the annual cost of electricity to run MSFS 2024 is 6x the cost of the Std edition for me), many consumers are likely to want to follow the same path.

In the flight-sim world, there already fledgling efforts at this - e.g.:

Like it or not, the long-term direction is (IMO) pretty clearly moving to a pure cloud-based environment.

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In the first few weeks of sale, MSFS 2020 sold over 1 million copies with an eventual sales prediction of somewhere in the region of 2.25 million copies. Final data was not released.

We could expect that MSFS 2024 performed in a similar manner. And if it did then by now, over a million people own and have paid for a copy of the game, spending anywhere from $70 - $250. You cannot tell that many people that they now need to pay a monthly subscription to play the game they paid for.

Microsoft have repeatedly said they have no plans to charge a subscription for MSFS 2024, and that any suggestion otherwise is fear-mongering by the community and nothing to do with their policy.

Why do people keep trying to bring this topic up? Do you think that a monthly subscription will suddenly give you working ATC, flawless performance and a fully functional Marketplace? It won’t. MSFS 2024 is in a bad state because it was released before it was finished. Regardless of how much money you throw at the problem, it will still take the same time to fix it. You need experienced developers who understand what they are working on. They can only be working for a set amount of time each week.

Patience and time is required to get 2025 into a happy place. Internally, there will already be discussions about whether the next instalment should be MSFS 2028 or MSFS 2030. If you want to support development then buy things in the marketplace, we do not need or want a subscription.

Star Citizen has had over a billion dollars in funding and it is still in an awful state. Money on its own is not a fix and never has been.

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The other thing about a subscription service, it would then cut out a lot of people. One of the things we keep being told is that we want MSFS to motivate a new generation of pilots. Right now it is on Game Pass. Kids can get access if their parents decide to pay for Game Pass. People from low income neighborhoods or countries can get access if they just have Game Pass (and that can be funded through Rewards). By suddenly imposing a subscription service, and if what you were suggesting it being a tiered subscription service, you are cutting out a lot of people who just couldn’t do it.

And truthfully, I think that is what is at the heart of these suggestions. If we cut out a large chunk of the current member base, it will just be the dedicated simmers who are willing to pay the “tiered subscription”, and then development will be catered towards those folks. This suggestion wouldn’t bring Microsoft extra income, they would lose. It wouldn’t increase quality, we see what some third party developers do with their contracts for LL or FF. All it would do is weed out all but the devoted simmers, and then those people can better direct the sim in the direction they want.

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Yes I do agree, and surely I do not like it(long term direction), nor do I like the idee to pay monthly rent to fly/play. My younger 30year colleague does not like that kind of change neither. I got lots of white old “hair”, that you can get a visual.

Unfortunately the country where I am right by now in the EU, does not offer a good reliable internet for a reasonable price(~50$ to max.150$ range). Even paying a exaggerated nearly 4 digit huge bill with Starlink will not save you when you need a couple of TB download! To my understanding, where I am right now it would cost me roughly around a 2.500$ per month to get a decent reliable internet connection service in. What on earth!

Even if I got reasonable bandwidth, I am totally largely dissatisfied with my internet provider, and there is many folks around me(with largely bigger pockets), which do not like to get restringed service on our “apparent no limit lines”. The providers anywhere here will cut your signal to diverse most used sources(MSFS server) if you go over “their” ridiculos limit.

I am now 10years in the same corner of this warm peaceful country in the Western EU, the area looks like nearly (the better side of) Saint Tropez in France with leisure boats(floating nutshells) and privat aircraft, but internet is still a huge issue here, except if you can afford to pay huge bill for a bit of reliable internet.

So I do see big problems for the future in my area for only the FS2024.
You can make it run the hungry beast, but just a couple of days, than forget about it, even on a tiny Xbox X, which runs really good for my couple of games.

As direct consequence to the (national as international)providers, hungry MS Flightsimulator 2024 is having the ever worst reviews in my current area.

Having a look on the mayor complained issues: Number one: download speeds. You cannot play/fly this game, forget it, except if you can pay with ease my estimated 2.500$ monthly bill, just for internet connection. I am talking about EU in the West, not East(!), which there will be surely premium Prices.

Last year my area got massive equipped with optical fiber, the guys did not have to open a trench neither(pre-installed,supplemantary available pipes), I hope they got at least paid for their work(…) till 4AM in the morning several nights for the ones making final adjustments which stood there in the cold…

I do not know things are running quite impair.

Last one, my best colleague at work(he used to fly intensive FS) just keeps this nonsense internet for his son, football gaming a bit on a PS5.

Who is going to fly in MSFS in future, I mean things are not opening up here since a decade in most Western EU.

If anyone disagrees and I do apologize, never had the intention to disturb.

I always got this one to say within the rules: This is a general conversation, ladys and gentlemen.

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(Old man rant first to get it out of the way): When Microsoft Office went subscription, I stopped using it and switched to Google. When Photoshop went subscription, I stopped using it and switched to GIMP and other tools. If MSFS were to go subscription, I’d likely switch to XP. I cannot afford the world we’re building, where literally everything has a subscription fee. I do enjoy the discussion here, but my stance on it is fairly firm*

*(My less old man shaking fist at the clouds opinion): Three ways I could see myself being okay with it:

  1. If the live service stuff is optional and is catered to the career mode, live events, etc. If I could continue to use free flight without ever paying for that other stuff, I’d be happy. If the stuff was really truly good, I’d even consider paying a fee for it.
  2. If you got access to payware addons with the subscription and otherwise had to buy them normally, I could potentially see myself doing the math to decide if it was worth it. As one day every sim dies, I don’t need to take my addons to the grave… all of the license keys I own for FSX, P3D and older XP addons have no value to me today.
  3. If I was certain it would keep the sim alive longer than some theoretical sunset date. Let’s not forget, Microsoft let ACES go, and we were in flight sim limbo on that front and looked to Lockheed Martin and Laminar for hope. Microsoft could one day let Asobo go too, so I’d be willing to part with money monthly if it meant they’d keep the lights on, so to speak.
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I don’t want to pay more ever unless it’s something I want to add.

Other Potential Income Streams outside & inside the MSFS Community that leverage the Microsoft Earth Digital Twin?:

  • MS Combat Flight Series
  • Microsoft Golf ( World )
  • Microsoft SIMS
  • MS PASSENGER ( take a flight as a passenger in FS )
  • MS Train Sim
  • Advertising: Hand Crafted Commercial Assets for MS Digital Twin
  • Etc.

So you’re in charge of the MS Earth Digital Twin MMO.
Brainstorming. How many other ways can you come up with to use it for more income streams?

Can Titles tie-into one another in a Digital Twin?

  • If I had MS Golf and MSFS 2020/2024, could I use UNICOM frequencies to play the ‘Nearest Golf Courses’ solo or as a group ( Provided everyone has MS Golf )?

How many others are ALREADY using the Digital Twin we do not know about? Already covering all the expenses to support MSFS?

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What OP does not take into account is something that cannot really be described in $$$: data and experience.

For Microsoft MSFS is nothing more or less than a pretty big proof of concept. They use MSFS to generate a digital twin of our planet in first place by connecting technologies they already own and feed them with data from providers. This has many benefits for them as I wrote also in other topics:

  • weather simulation and forecast as a service which could be sold or used
  • a reason to gather new aerials with higher resolution beyond “maps” which could be handy for other commercial or military applications/simulations
  • data visualization (like traffic) which also could be useful for other applications
  • ai training

The simulator itself is more some kind of a side product. The data collection and handling has way more business value than anything they could come up with if they’d make it a “live service” title, so it’s likely not worth the effort.

“Live service” would also pretty much act as a gate keeper for add-ons which is in general against the MSFS concept as a open platform. People who don’t want to use the market place and instead use third party stores or freeware would kinda be locked out as this is basically against the live service idea.

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Wanna bet on that? Storage is cheap on PCs - $25/tb. The more that’s stored locally, the less the load (and cost) of running the servers.

Also, many people don’t have fibre-to-the-home internet connections.

Also, stream-everything is terrible for 3rd-party developers - they’re stuck with cockpits that slowly stream in, airports that slowly stream in, and garbage visuals like nearby airplanes floating in the air because the landing gear hasn’t streamed in.

Read the threads - everyone wants to be able to download their assets.

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