I'll place my bets on 450,272.

I would guess a lot more than 10,000. Some of my tutorial flights on YouTube have achieved well over 10,000 hits, and if I'm picking up that number on a detailed look at a complex sim, you've kinda gotta imagine the actual number of owners is consideraby higher (since not everyone is looking up stuff on YouTube every day)

 

Pete Wright

 

It is not a bad way to approach the subject Pete, but I would say it would be very skewed by three factors, first, if anyone uses the tutorial to teach himself, he would have clicked on it more times, second, many people look at such videos pre-purchase decision, three, piracy is rampant, and while it is questionable how many of those "pirate" users would buy the NGX if it was uncrackable (my guess less than 5-10%), and while I think many of those my just try and throw it away, they would still click on tutorials and such.

 

 

 

Anyway, my outsider point of view:

-Legit PMDG sales are somewhere in the low ten thousands. Some of these are people who first pirated the plane, decided they liked it, and bought it. Most of these people would have paid for it, if it was not crackable.

-Active, regular PMDG pirate users are somewhere in the same ballpark area, maybe a bit higher. not more than 20 thousand I would say. A noticeable, but not substantial portion of these users would buy the plane if it was not cracked. 5-10% I think.

-Inactive, try it once or twice and forget it PMDG pirate users are the biggest part of the "userbase". I would say thay make about the same as the former two combined, or more. Of these, there are people who wanted to try it before buying it and found out it is not for them for HW reasons, enjoyment reasons, complexity reasons... as well as people who wanted to try it before not buying it anyway, and found it is not for them for similar reasons, also people, mostly kids, who pirate everything there is, just for the hell of it.

Many times this is the 14yo kid who apparently has tens of thousands of dollars in payware addons, and wonders why his 747 cockpit displays are off (for those of us who remember that one antipiracy measure. I personally think that was funnier than what MD11 did, since they did not know what happened, while in MD11s case it was more effective, but also more recognizable)

Less than 1% of this group would ever purchase the addon if it were not cracked.

It is not a bad way to approach the subject Pete, but I would say it would be very skewed by three factors, first, if anyone uses the tutorial to teach himself, he would have clicked on it more times, second,

Youtube will record one view for every IP address. If you watch a video 5 times on same computer it will only show one view.

IBTL. FWIW, I think it's a perfectly legit company to ask a company for this kind of information. And, maybe the company would want to answer to show how awesome it is compared to everyone else, or to show the strength of its business for possible investors, or whatever. But, its also perfectly legit for a company to decline to answer for any number of reasons, which will almost certainly be the case here.

 

I won't even fathom a guess, mostly because I don't really care. I bought one. That's the copy I like. I am moderately curious how many "hard core" simmers they are, which I would loosely define as anyone who's bought add-ons to the game of any sort. The game sold millions of copies.

Matthijs Kok of Aerosoft recently said in an interview that 15,000 copies sold of an airport was very high. Orbx has apparently once stated in their forums that they estimate the hardcore market at about 40,000 people (though I've been advised this number may have been misremembered, I haven't seen the original source).

Given those numbers and the popularity of the NGX I'd guess 20,000 +/- 10,000 copies or so at most. I'm sure we're giving the PMDG guys a good laugh at our wildly wrong guesses though . Maybe in a couple of decades when they retire and write their memoirs we'll find out the true story.

I was going to say ONE BILLION, but since I just killed off the entire world's population in Plague, Inc, I'm going to have to revise that number down just a bit.

 

Matthijs Kok of Aerosoft recently said in an interview that 15,000 copies sold of an airport was very high.

 

Exactly.... That is why I said below 10,000 copies....

 

People seem to way overestimate the hardcore community. - I've spoken with many reliable developers who have told me that only about 20,000 users regularly buy addons. The ORBX estimate be a bit of a stretch.

 

That said, I highly doubt ALL 20,000 went out and bought themselves a liscence to the NGX.... MAYBE 25%...

 

ONE HUNDRED BILLION COPIES!

 

ONE HUNDRED BILLION COPIES!

 

Hmm, I don't own 16 and 2/3 NGX copies, so I wonder who's balancing out the average.

 

Also the purchase price of 10^11 NGXes would be $7 trillion (assuming no 6/700 expansion), don't have time to wiki at the moment, but I think there are very few countries that have a GDP in that range.

 

All in all I think your estimate might be a tad high. I think 10 billion is a much more realistic estimate .

Without official figures from PMDG, I can only be sure of one thing:

 

They've sold at least one copy. (to me)

Over 9000!

Without official figures from PMDG, I can only be sure of one thing:

 

They've sold at least one copy. (to me)

 

While it's true I can't check, so everyone else may be lying about legally owning the NGX, but given the number of people here and at my VA who say they own the plane I think we can go so far as to say they've sold at least a 100.

These guesses are funny...

 

Needless to say, the numeric amount is not something we're going to be divulging here - we do not have investors / shareholders and there is no legitimate need for anyone to know our internal business numbers. I will say (because RSR's already said it in the past year) that the NGX became the best selling product in our history within just a few months after release last year.

These guesses are funny...

 

Needless to say, the numeric amount is not something we're going to be divulging here - we do not have investors / shareholders and there is no legitimate need for anyone to know our internal business numbers. I will say (because RSR's already said it in the past year) that the NGX became the best selling product in our history within just a few months after release last year.

 

Congrats to you guys! All I know is: you keep up the good work and we'll keep buying your planes. As long as you're able to make money doing so I imagine this relationship will continue.

These guesses are funny...

 

Needless to say, the numeric amount is not something we're going to be divulging here - we do not have investors / shareholders and there is no legitimate need for anyone to know our internal business numbers. I will say (because RSR's already said it in the past year) that the NGX became the best selling product in our history within just a few months after release last year.

 

Ahaa!!! So with these hidden clues I can deduce that slightly over 100,000 copies have been sold. That gives an income of approximately $7,000,000 for the NGX base pack alone. Approximately 40% of the NGX base owners have purchased the 600,700 add on. That is an additional $1,000,000 revenue, for a total of $8,000,000 total revenue. The boss gets a 90% cut. That's $7,200,000 for the big guy. He is spending about $10,000 a day at his tropical paradise in Fiji. That's 720 days. Conclusion: The 777 will be released before August 1, 2013.