Flight post mortem.

[Simmo W 24]

Hey Jose, that really is a coincidence! Great news, and I'm jealous of your new i5 PC :lol: . I'm doing a big post on this 're-emergence' of FSX in a few hours, and you've given me some choice quotes!

 

I really think that the latest fast CPUs are giving FSX a major boost, in both performance and popularity. Planes that might have handled strangely, due to the new smoothness, actually feel pretty good! See you online one day, not that I have any idea how to do that in FSX yet!

 

Here's the playground I take my son to at Moorabbin, possibly the best playground in the world, for me anyway!

[Guest]

I removed a few posts about the P3D EULA: it's not allowed to talk about that here.

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/359308-important-please-read-eula-notice/

[Mountain Man 142]

It's a good working hypothesis that's belied for me by the literally dozens and dozens of young people I spoke to in multiplayer. The vast majority identified themselves as under 15 and usually self described newbies. (for some reason exchanging ages seemed very important to them)

 

The problem with anecdotal data is that it's incomplete. The question is how many of these "newbies" stuck with Flight and spent money on DLC, and how many of them quit once the novelty wore off and never looked back? The fact that Microsoft has pulled the plug on Flight seems proof positive that a majority of them were the latter.

[jcomm 5,939]

Here's the playground I take my son to at Moorabbin, possibly the best playground in the world, for me anyway!

 

Whow!... There is still no ORBx scenery area for Portugal :-(

I was waiting for a FLIGHT DLC covering Portugal... phoned Steve Ballmer asking for it, but he didn't answer.. bummer!

[RoboRay 126]

There is still no ORBx scenery area for Portugal :-(

 

Well, they're working on the UK now. Maybe they'll shift to the Continent next. If you're lucky, they'll even start on the "left side" and work their way across. ^_^

[HiFlyer 9,362]

The problem with anecdotal data is that it's incomplete. The question is how many of these "newbies" stuck with Flight and spent money on DLC, and how many of them quit once the novelty wore off and never looked back? The fact that Microsoft has pulled the plug on Flight seems proof positive that a majority of them were the latter.

 

But at least anecdotal evidence has something to back it up besides complete and total conjecture, which, considering the dozens of possible reasons for flights failure is where your contention lies at this point, since there is absolutely zero public data available to support it. Yes, many of us suspect that the numbers did not add up in the end in some way, but to jump from the obvious fact of failure to the concrete conclusion that the problem was retention is unsupportable at this time.

 

Non sequitur.

[Glynn 405]

So, I am back flying over Lisbon, and Portugal as a whole, with lots of detail even using the default scenery,

 

Hello Jose

hopefully there might be something to interest you at this link

http://www.freewares...x/portugal.html

 

TropicalSim seem to be having a bit of a sale at the moment on their Portuguese sceneries.

 

http://secure.simmarket.com/portugal-%28en_403%29-page-1.chtml

[jcomm 5,939]

Hello Jose

hopefully there might be something to interest you at this link

 

Great! Thx for the links ;-)

[Mountain Man 142]

But at least anecdotal evidence has something to back it up besides complete and total conjecture, which, considering the dozens of possible reasons for flights failure is where your contention lies at this point, since there is absolutely zero public data available to support it. Yes, many of us suspect that the numbers did not add up in the end in some way, but to jump from the obvious fact of failure to the concrete conclusion that the problem was retention is unsupportable at this time.

 

Anecdotal evidence is really no better than "complete and total conjecture". You say, "Based on my experience, Flight was really popular with the younger crowd." Microsoft's closure of Flight says otherwise and is the fact we have to deal with. The most likely explanation is that the majority of customers who tried Flight didn't stick around long enough to bother with DLC.

[DarkstarF16 72]

Sometimes the decisions that large corporations make, don’t appear to have a basis in reality or logic unless you have been the fly on the wall in those board meetings.

Personally I find it hard to believe that sales alone have dictated the path that they are currently following. My reasons are as follows.

Before undertaking a project of this immensity, they must have researched the playground and understood the market, After all, it’s not like they have ever had a foothold in this area!

Secondly, in order to re-light the flames on such a project, justifications and key performance indicators will have had to be cast.

A roadmap and a projected timeframe on returns will also have needed to be created, submitted and approved. I believe that this project was never going to make a quick buck!

With the expertise that had been gained from previous exploits in this field, the project itself, which Kevin has eluded to will have had a mission statement. A set of guidelines, that everyone on the team would follow and be proud off.

You only have to look at the history of this hobby to understand that is was never going to be a quick return, It was always going to be a long term project. To have misunderstood that is a schoolboy error which I cannot believe is a possibility.

Perhaps… maybe, the reasons for the U-turn have little to do with sales and more to do with ego and the way the project was steered towards it launch date. After all, when travelling down a difficult path it is easier to justify why you should turn around and take the easy safe option, than admit mistakes were made and carry on to an uncertain future.

On the other hand, it could be that in light of all the ‘noise’ in the wide wide world MS decided to make a statement to the community! I cannot believe the latter is the case, I simply add it for completeness.

I really don’t know, I’m just sitting here thinking up reasons, and those reasons ‘I think’ are purely economic and ethical.

After all, it’s very easy to make assumptions and create conspiracy theories.

The only facts I am aware of, is that they have stopped active development. They are, committed to keeping Flight available for our community to enjoy. They are, realigning their core strengths and that what is already out there will still be available for purchase. They have also covered any future changes in course by saying that if any further information becomes available they will communicate it.

Having gone through many such re-alignments with my present company, which is the largest player in its field here in the UK then, the key driver does appear to be economic. This should give us some hope for the future. However, I foresee a bumpy ride ahead for MS. When company’s cut potential revenue, the vision and initial decisions of the management comes into question. This is even more questionable when the timeframes have been so short. When the good times do return, those long term returns will not be fulfilled. It’s about not placing all your eggs in one basket, but relying on diverse revenue streams.

I would like to think that they are continuing their research and gauging their next move from the reaction of their customers.

[Mountain Man 142]

Before undertaking a project of this immensity, they must have researched the playground and understood the market, After all, it’s not like they have ever had a foothold in this area!

 

I suspect a large part of the problem is that the key decision makers really didn't understand the market. They probably looked at FSX sales and the number of sales to 3rd party developers and thought, "If we monopolize DLC then our new profits will equal total sales of FSX plus DLC. We'll make a fortune!" I really do think they expected every fan of FSX to jump on board Flight and immediately start buying the overpriced DLC.

[basic ils 0]

In terms of Microsoft, this was not an immense project. MS has revenues of about $9 million AN HOUR or $20 billion a quarter. How many hours of revenue do you think the budget of Flight was? My guess is no more than 5 hours of revenue spread over 3 years. The project was immense for the team working on it but for MS, not even a blip on the radar.

[LHookins 3,103]

Conjecture is nothing more than someone's opinion. In this case, there is no evidence whatsoever to support it. The information from HiFlyer is based on observed evidence. We know it exists.

 

For those who don't subscribe to the belief that everything has to be purest white or darkest black with nothing in between, this means that Microsoft was indeed attracting its target audience. We know they were there, we saw them in multiplayer. It is not proof that Microsoft attracted enough of this audience, just that it did bring them in.

 

In this case we have someone who has some observed data points, and someone else who made something up out of whole cloth and is presenting it as fact. Which one are we going to put more credence in?

 

Hook

[n4gix 4,947]

I would posit that the prime reason for Flight's current static state has more to do with internal office politics than performance...

 

...which as it happens is precisely what ultimately killed ACES and FSvNext.

[mgh 89]

Nothing at all to do with the possiblity that neither were commercially viable?