FSX has actually sold quite well. 1 million copies have been sold in the US, and while there's no data for the rest of the world, I'm sure that total sales have exceeded 2 million.

FSX has actually sold quite well. 1 million copies have been sold in the US, and while there's no data for the rest of the world, I'm sure that total sales have exceeded 2 million.

 

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is reported to have sold 6.5 million copies on its first day.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is reported to have sold 6.5 million copies on its first day.

 

A game can be deemed successful if it has reached at least 1 million copies. It doesn't have to be commercial like CoD.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is reported to have sold 6.5 million copies on its first day.

Yeah, but COD is one of the best selling game brands through history, not average game. Quite funny actually how its developers really don't need to make any real new effort from previous games, just update graphics a bit, make another stereotypical bad storyline and add a few new guns and then you are done, big masses who enjoy brainless shooting will buy it... BF and others at least usually involve some amount of team work and tactics which makes them more playable.

 

offtopic yes

well if i could have a dollar per every guy/girl/ kid that ask me questions on their way out of the plane and end up telling me they use FSX at home i can asure you i would have a nice pile of singles at home, over the years that tell me that we are not a small number at all. I had also learn that there is alot of simmers that only use what fsx has to offer out of the box and never even spend money on nothing else . some even tell me they do visit avsim and other sites for years now but dont post or even register at all......

I agree, flightsim is not as small as people sometime make out.

 

I would say FSX is the number one 'game' in terms of third party software availability. There's nothing else out there that supports the same size of ecosystem year after year. Go look a Aerosoft, Orbx, PMDG, Avsim etc. etc.

 

Yes, there are console shooters that sell a lot more in a short time frame - but in terms of PC gaming FSX is pretty respectable.

 

The problem is we need a modern flight simulator that is 1. stable (FSX was never really this - buggy software that makes MS look bad) 2. Takes advantage of modern hardware 3. Open to the unique and vibrant 3PD community that FS has.

 

Xplane has never managed to acheive widespread market acceptance despite 20 years of trying. Flight could have filled this role.

 

Coulda, shoulda, woulda...

A game can be deemed successful if it has reached at least 1 million copies. It doesn't have to be commercial like CoD.

 

Deemed successful by who? Obviously not Microsoft who deemed that FS11/Next would not be a success.

Deemed successful by who? Obviously not Microsoft who deemed that FS11/Next would not be a success.

Well what about X plane, it obviously keeps making enough money as it continues to get new versions every couple of years even though it still surely sells way less than MS FS versions have done. FS11 would have been just as big success as earlier releases have been, Microsoft obviously just thinks that they can get more money by spending those workhours to something else. That doesn't mean that new FS couldn't have been successful.

But success by what measure, is the question?

 

I actually think Microsoft kinda agreed that there was/is a market, but the insular and specialized current market is probably not attractive on its own. The numbers are simply not there, and there is a simple reality check to support that. If we are an attractive market, I would ask why, after all these years, has nobody else felt the need to enter this market and compete for our money?

 

Instead, we have only silence and crickets chirping.

 

As for Xplane, I have always believed it has a future and said so. The problem is that it's a super-specialized sim aimed at a very very narrow audience of extremely technically oriented flyers within the larger genre. I made a quick visit to the product pages at Amazon for the sim, and its still getting absolutely hammered in the reviews. Only very obvious longtime sim veterans and people getting their ppl, etc had any good words. :unsure:

 

I don't think we are attracting many new people.

 

This does not mean the sim is bad, just that its narrow focus makes it a very tough candidate for success (I believe) beyond a small slice of potential users. It will probably be here forever, because those that do use it are extremely dedicated, but I think the only real avenue for growth is drawing users from the existing fsx market if it should ever really begin to falter.

 

Flight and now perhaps Prepar3d were/are the only commercial aviation sims that I believed had a fighting chance at a broad consumer audience, and Prepar3d may be blocked from that market by legal concerns. which leaves Flight; a potential gift horse that we looked directly in the mouth, and which no longer exists.

 

Not sure where we go from there.

Well what about X plane, it obviously keeps making enough money as it continues to get new versions every couple of years even though it still surely sells way less than MS FS versions have done. FS11 would have been just as big success as earlier releases have been, Microsoft obviously just thinks that they can get more money by spending those workhours to something else. That doesn't mean that new FS couldn't have been successful.

 

Exactly - developing FS11/Next wasn't a profitable use of Microsoft's money - it's not in the business of subsidising hobbies.

Exactly - developing FS11/Next wasn't a profitable use of Microsoft's money - it's not in the business of subsidising hobbies.

 

I don't think "subsidising" is the correct word. MS would still be making money, but less than it could by investing the same recources in a different, more profitable project. In economics terms, "profits" from MS Flight (Simulator) would be "opportunity costs" to MS.

Flight with cockpits and guns on those warbirds would have been a better option. Every other sim is just to complicated for the general public to get a grasp on. it needs to be "out of the box ready".

 

Multiplayer could have have been with or without gun fighting.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is a segment of the industry that thinks that desktop computers, and even laptops, are on the way out. They're all going to be replaced by portable devices, the "computer appliance" which has been a sort of holy grail even since there have been personal computers.

 

I thought that Flight would be a perfect application to be bundled with Windows 8, but apparently it would take more than a year to get it running on portable devices (this was in response to a question on the beta forum). My first thought is, "Um, what about all the laptops and desktops out there what will be running Windows 8?" Someone, somewhere, seems to think that they won't be a big part of the market.

 

I think back on my programming career how many jobs could have been done on anything but a desktop, and there just aren't any. While at least some of my work was on various embedded processors or hand held devices, all the development was done on desktops.

 

My wife was looking for a birthday present for me at a local GameStop, and they had a very small handful of PC games and the salesperson wasn't optimistic. WalMart went from an entire aisle of PC games to an end section, to one row on an end section. MicroCenter still has PC games, but not an enormous number, maybe two sides of an aisle. Lots of off-the-wall stuff now, like the truck and bus simulators. Diablo 3 and some shooters.

 

Where does that leave Flight? Well, I guess we know. It's really sad.

 

Hook

Well one of the reasons for no games on the shelves is that they are all downloadable online nowadays. Steam and its counterparts, etc.

Flight with cockpits and guns on those warbirds would have been a better option. Every other sim is just to complicated for the general public to get a grasp on. it needs to be "out of the box ready".

 

Multiplayer could have have been with or without gun fighting.

 

I'm relatively new to flight simming. When I started with FSX I think It was "out of the box ready" atlest more than flight or X-plane. It had good selection of planes, easy enough GUI interface. AI, real live weather and I could start flying from whatever airport in the whole world that I choose. Didn't mind the graphics then because there where no alternative(Tried Xplane demo and at that time I think It was way to complicated for me). And then I grew as a simmer and alot of possibilitie opened up with adding 3 party addons and such.

Can't say flight offered any of that. Allthough graphics where nice It had no life, the world felt like a post apocalyptic world where I was the only survivor flying around with invisible passengers like they where voiced in my head.

If I had started with Flight and lets say FSX didn't exist I would have gotten bored pretty quick, and I think I wouldnt have been simming att all, and just continued with ordinary games. Like a friend of my who is not a simmer commented when he saw me trying out Flight, "Where the hell is the other planes, that looks just boring". He is a hardcore gamer and It didnt attract him att all, but It may have if he could see the passengers, some traffic, listened to ATC chatter, and seen people flow. Then I fired up FSX with A2A cub with Heidi in Orbx, took a flight from Harvey field to Monroe. And he was saying: WOW!, Cool, that moving train looks amazing the scenery looks so real, and those balloons looks so cool, and he loved People Flow WOW!! Is this really FSX?