Will flght achieve this?

[mgh 89]

The Times newspaper in the UK devoted a whole page (15) to the release of Call of Duty - Black Ops - other than an advertisement by a power company. There was also a 9 column inch review that concluded "Overall, Black Ops is a masterpiece of gaming."The body of the article said "Analysts predicted that the game could sell 15 million copies by the end of the year," At a notional price of $50 that's $3/4 billion revenue. Remember Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 was released a year ago in November, and is said to have achieved revenue of more than $1 billion.No doubt it will run on Xbox 360 and Playstation consoles with no tweaking needed.If Flight were expected to achieve all that then no doubt all the wish-lists could be satisfied. As I suspect it won't, we''ll just have to dream.

[Chock 17,769]

I'd take a guess at that being the masked version of linked editorial, which is what I used to have to write quite a lot for the Guardian. In short, the company pays for an advert and they get some editorial space promised, although such editorial often has to sit under a small banner with the word 'Advertisement' up at the top to be completely legal as far as the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK are concerned, which kind of blows the gaff and is not always preferred by advertising agencies because of that stipulation. So an alternative is to do a contradeal with the newspaper's advertising rep under the promise of a favourable review from one of the journos who is their mate, which no paper will ever admit to doing, but it does certainly happen and is often where glowing reviews are born. I got sick of all that and it's actually one of the reasons I left the newspaper industry, although I do still occasionally do freelance magazine stuff for some business magazines. It's also why I like writing stuff for Avsim, because there is never any pressure to be anything less than completely honest with the reviews. That is not to say I know for sure that it is a bent review, just that it seems a bit odd for the old Thunderer to be going onto raptures over CoD, although since it is now an online presence, that might go some way to explaining it.But even if CoD has had a glowing review, and even if it was a contradeal, it doesn't necessarily mean that it wouldn't have got a glowing review anyway, even when completely above board, as it might genuinely deserve one - I wouldn't want to give you the impression that it's always bent as a two-bob note! CoD is a very polished product of course, with a big fan base for the franchise, so it could indeed sell that many copies, although 'analysts have predicted' is often journalese for 'let's make something up', and is on par with the 'an insider said...' as far as in-jokes with journos go, since anyone can say they've analysed something and thus claim to be an analyst.You can have a go at that yourself, just think about flight sims for a second and then come up with a prediction about how many copies Flight is going to sell, in common with horoscopes, so long as you put 'could' rather than 'definitely will', you've covered your &@($*.Al

[Guest veeray]

Chock: for sure... the fact they publish it only a day before release is quite suspicious on it's own. Even though payolas are illegal, its really not that hard to pull off without the two parties ever disussing the situation.

[mmann 72]

"Analysts predicted that the game could sell 15 million copies by the end of the year,"

Windows 7 sold 90,000,000 copies in just over 4 months. I somehow don't think Microsoft is too concerned about Flight one way or the other.Regards, Mike Mann

[Chock 17,769]

Although in breaking news, analysts have predicted that Windows 47 3D - due for release in 2043 and capable of using up to 4,000 Gigs of DDR27 RAM - will sell a mere eleven copies, having been completely ousted from the market by the rival Chinese operating system codenamed 窗口 Al

[mmann 72]

Although in breaking news, analysts have predicted that Windows 47 3D - due for release in 2043 and capable of using up to 4,000 Gigs of DDR27 RAM - will sell a mere eleven copies, having been completely ousted from the market by the rival Chinese operating system codenamed 窗口 Al

I was always wondering how the Chinese spelled Linux.Regards, Mike Mann

[Chock 17,769]

Actually, to get properly serious, I reckon Flight might be in with a shot at doing pretty well. The FS series, and let's be honest, Flight is Microsoft Flight Simulator XI by any other name, has always been a reasonably decent seller for MS, not stellar, but it earned its keep.But since FSX basically took a wrong turn where hardware predictions were concerned, and that put many off making the leap from FS9, Flight might be a repeat performance of when we got FS9, which kind of sorted out the moves they did a bit of a half-assed job with on two preceding iterations of FS, so it's a not too dissimilar scenario, of 'here comes the one we meant to do'.Al

[mgh 89]

Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 was released in November 2009 and the Xbox version alone became the best selling video game of 2009 in the USA in only 2 months according to the independent analysts NPD. In the first 10 weeks worldwide sales topped 9 million with sales of more than 6 million in the Americas.http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_100114.htmlhttp://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/sales/28848/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2/By comparison, the best that Phil Taylor of ACES could find for FSX was in 2007 when it achieved annual sales of 280k.http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ptaylor/archive/2008/06/05/success-of-fsx-and-future-of-the-franchise.aspxhttp://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17129Maybe the runaway sales of Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 last November had more influence on the report than bribery?.

[Chock 17,769]

Quite possibly, although it is curious to ponder it considering the Times is regarded as the business newspaper in the UK. Since it has the highest NRC ABC1 demographic classification of any newspaper in the land, one can certainly understand it reporting on a phenomenal business success story that is the sales of CoD, but ironically enough, it then seems an unlikely tome for a glowing extended review of a combat game on the XBox and PS3, the demographic for which is a very different to the readership, being males aged 12-17 and females aged 25-34 for the XBox, and an 18-24 year old male/female mixture for the PS3. I just thought that a little bizarre when exactly timed up with the release of the product.Doesn't mean anything is definitely dodgy of course, just kind of off the wall.Al

[mgh 89]

Quite possibly, although it is curious to ponder it considering the Times is regarded as the business newspaper in the UK. Since it has the highest NRC ABC1 demographic classification of any newspaper in the land, one can certainly understand it reporting on a phenomenal business success story that is the sales of CoD, but ironically enough, it then seems an unlikely tome for a glowing extended review of a combat game on the XBox and PS3, the demographic for which is a very different to the readership, being males aged 12-17 and females aged 25-34 for the XBox, and an 18-24 year old male/female mixture for the PS3. I just thought that a little bizarre when exactly timed up with the release of the product.Doesn't mean anything is definitely dodgy of course, just kind of off the wall.Al

May be, just may be, the editor of the Times thought the story was newsworthy?But you may be right - in which case I shall ignore any favourable reviews of Flight as being written by corrupt authors.But let's get back to the original point which is that Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 is now the holy grail of games developers - it became the biggest selling game ever in the UK.. May be Microsoft Games Studios may be looking at its success and considering what they can learn from it for Flight? Flight's success will not be measured by the sales to enthusiasts who frequent these forums.

[mmann 72]

But let's get back to the original point which is that Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 is now the holy grail of games developers - it became the biggest selling game ever in the UK.. May be Microsoft Games Studios may be looking at its success and considering what they can learn from it for Flight? Flight's success will not be measured by the sales to enthusiasts who frequent these forums.

A first-person shooter video game sells more than a simulation game but what a dull world this would be if all game developers were concerned with only making games to appeal to the masses. If Microsoft adapts this thinking for Flight they may create a big seller for themselves but would be doing the simulation community a great disservice.This is only my opinion of coarse and as you can see I like flight simulator games not just flight games!Regards, Mike Mann

[mgh 89]

A first-person shooter video game sells more than a simulation game but what a dull world this would be if all game developers were concerned with only making games to appeal to the masses. If Microsoft adapts this thinking for Flight they may create a big seller for themselves but would be doing the simulation community a great disservice.This is only my opinion of coarse and as you can see I like flight simulator games not just flight games!Regards, Mike Mann

Microsoft isn't a charity. It doesn't make games to serve the simulation community - it makes them to make money.Now that Flight is in Microsoft Games Studios its competition is other games of all types. Microsoft decided that the potential return on investment in Flight is worthwhile. But if it decides that it would get a significanly better return by investing the same amount in a first-person shooter game then that's what it's likely to do. If, for example, investing $X in Flight would a return of $Y but investing $X in a first-person shooter game would give a return of $2Y then where do you think the money will ultimately go?

[mmann 72]

Reading about the history of Microsoft Flight Simulator in Wikipedia, it is apparent that it originated because of Bill Gates fascination with the sensation of flight.Now that Steve Ballmer is CEO it may well put an end to the nonsense (from the shareholders view) of continuing development on a title without realizing its full sales potential.Regards, Mike Mann

[dmaher 0]

Microsoft is already a huge player in FPS market…so mission accomplished :)And that’s a very crowded and competitive market with space for only a few big winners...so well done.But, if developers only made FPS's gamers would get fed up.A developer like MS needs to be diversified.For years the most profitable vehicle in the auto industry has been the SUV.But automakers can’t just make SUV’s.There’s also a demand for variety.

[mmann 72]

Microsoft is already a huge player in FPS market…so mission accomplished :)And that’s a very crowded and competitive market with space for only a few big winners...so well done.But, if developers only made FPS's gamers would get fed up.A developer like MS needs to be diversified.For years the most profitable vehicle in the auto industry has been the SUV.But automakers can’t just make SUV’s.There’s also a demand for variety.

I agree with you 100%! My big hope is that Microsoft also sees it this way.Regards, Mike Mann