DoveTail Games: Vague, But Hopeful, Details on the Next Flight Simulator

[Guest]

I think noone expected a serious sim, i mean they call their train simulator a sim

 

I agree, your words are full of wisdom and the logic behind your speech is granitic.

 

I just slightly disagree on 2 points, the first one where you say that we are a tiny niche. Ok, flight simmers are not as much as Call of Duty fans but if you think about how many software houses are still successfully producing full throttle addons for a 10 years old game aka FSX, well, I don't think flight simmers are so few. REX, ASN, Aerosoft, Flight One, PMDG, QualityWings, A2A ..etc just to mention a few very prolific software houses.

 

Same speech for HW controllers made for simmers. 

 

Then, the gamers-simmer balance you mention, and the relative possibilities of selling copies was the same also 10 years ago when FSX was released, so, what changed since then in the producers and marketing guys ? 

 

I think the key to analyze all these years is MS Flight and MS attitude towards potential customers. MS strategy failed hard, in fact MS Flight ended its life before borning, I was posting this before Flight was released cause I saw from inside that MS intended intentionally to waste a potentially good simulator throwing it into a recycle bin owned by Joshua Howard.

Edited September 3, 2015 by Guest
Removed the WALL OF TEXT as unnecessary quoting is unnecessary!

[Rimshot 1,134]

It is just like comparing Jimi Hendrix to today's boy bands, convinced to know how to play a guitar....kids...just like Dovetails games persons and products made of PLASTIC. Cosmetic marketing stuff directed and driven by Microsoft.

 

Still the new DTG sim/game/whatever could be a lot of fun! Come on Mark, give us a smile  :wink:

[Guest]

Still the new DTG sim/game/whatever could be a lot of fun! Come on Mark, give us a smile  :wink:

 

I always have smiles for you Rimshot, you should remember when we were used to run on naked feet on the foreshore speaking about MS Flight..... in background was playing this     song 

 

Jokes apart, we had a similar forum approach Rimshot before Flight was released, you remember ?  It was not an ILS one, it was a visual one during a snow stormy evening   :wink:

[Wobbie 938]

Shutting down Flight! was a good business decision by Microsoft. We ARE & was a very small market for them, & it is obvious good business practice to prune non performing items. Remember, Microsoft has a board of directors that they are responsible to! THAT is good business strategy. It is not personal against us simmers & they do now owe us anything.

 

If I recall, no-one wanted Flight!, well, not a substantial number of users, & hey could not even give the darn thing away!

(Must I go & get my poor horse again?)

 

In the greater scheme of things, we are a very small part of the gaming fraternity, as seen by looking at a snapshot of Steam games vs FSX:SE.

 

Yes, it is going to be interesting just to see what pops out of Dovetail.

 

Ideally, what we need is a 3 tier product:

1. The first being a simplified sim, targeted at gamers, to whet their appetite & not scare them away.

2. An advanced sim, for the weekend simmer

3. An Advanced sim for the guys who want something great.

These , in my thoughts, could be upgraded by the usual DLC's from Dovetail.

This way, they can cater for all markets.

 

Oh Well, one can dream!

[TheFlightSimGuy 514]

Dovetail make arcade sims, they always have and always will. And I think it is perfectly fine and the best business outcome for them possible.

 

 

They do? Which one of their titles is arcade like? Maybe you mean the highest rated Train simulator with the largest following of any on the genre among train enthusiasts? 

[alpha12125 213]

They do? Which one of their titles is arcade like? Maybe you mean the highest rated Train simulator with the largest following of any on the genre among train enthusiasts? 

And which one of the addons dovetail released is highest rated ? Its the third party developers that make trainsim the best

[alpha12125 213]

I agree, your words are full of wisdom and the logic behind your speech is granitic.

 

Well see the key thing here is that add-on market is a reoccuring thing, its like new missions for your shooter. Everytime you are bored of one plane you buy another and get another few 100h worth of enjoyment.

 

Another thing is that flightsimmers are old. Dont know the exact stats, but afaik it is 30ish for the average simmer and that means one thing: Lots of disposable income Thats why addons are still successfull. However its still no big market. I read on the PMDG Forum in a thread, that most of their developers are not working fulltime for PMDG. Laminar has less than 10 developers for x-plane afaik and not all fulltime aswell. Most of these studios are small 1-5 people and if you think that is big, every medium development studio has 10 times or more developers. Big AAA Studios have 2-400 developers and more. The Aces Studio was 60+ people afaik at best times ? So you know why it got shot down. The market was simply irellevant for a big company.

 

Think of it, Microsoft made 50$ from you for the sale of FSX, you probably spent 100-200 $ on pmdg alone and in total 500$ or more over the years to different addons. The addon companies made more money than the software developer. Microsoft tried to change that with Flight and their closed ecosystem, so they can continure defend the franchise to the executives that in their eyes only costs money.

 

What changed is simple, Microsoft higher ups changed the structure of the company and put more focus on the xbox and the hardware instead of their game studios. Small things just get axxed and they probably didnt even notice it, i highly doubt that anyone up from medium management even knows that this thing ever exsisted.

Edited September 3, 2015 by n4gix
Removed excessive quote. Again. Please stop.

[Wobbie 938]

+1.

These last posts have been the most sensible & realistic so far.

I quote from above:

'Its the third party developers that make trainsim  Flight Sim the best.'

 

Yes, We got the basic simming engine from Microsoft, but the freeware & Payware developers, the A2A's, the Tacpacs, the Bill's, Milton & teams, & so many more have really made our sim for us. Without these guys, far too many to mention here, our sims, both past & present, are & will be shadows!

 

Thanks guys! (&Rob)

[TheFlightSimGuy 514]

And which one of the addons dovetail released is highest rated ? Its the third party developers that make trainsim the best

 

So you would rather fly the default 737 than the PMDG? Of course add-ons from 3rd parties are the best! That's the merit of any decent simulator, to build a stable and capable core platform and allow the community to enhance it. 

[alpha12125 213]

So you would rather fly the default 737 than the PMDG? Of course add-ons from 3rd parties are the best! That's the merit of any decent simulator, to build a stable and capable core platform and allow the community to enhance it. 

i agree with you that the 3rd party are better, however it was more to the point why i would say its an arcade sim. Why i refer to dovetail as arcade sim is because they have the carrenado style of releasing half botched jobs of dlc that often have things missing or bugs that never get fixed. As long as it is halfway entertaining it is good enough. 

[Haggis 3]

I wouldn't get too excited about Dovetail's next sim.  It's definitely geared toward the casual simmer.  And hey, maybe that's your thing.

 

It's said they want to release it for consoles, if that isn't a Huge red flag of it's intent, I don't know what is.  Xbone babies will get a mission based SIM for their little controller hands.

[TheFlightSimGuy 514]

i agree with you that the 3rd party are better, however it was more to the point why i would say its an arcade sim. Why i refer to dovetail as arcade sim is because they have the carrenado style of releasing half botched jobs of dlc that often have things missing or bugs that never get fixed. As long as it is halfway entertaining it is good enough. 

 

So you want them to do the job of ORBX, PMDG, REX, A2A, and ASN. 

 

But none of those companies can give us a new round world flight simulator.

 

Think about it, you are asking the farmer for bread and not wheat. DTG's job is to create a strong base simulator for these experiences to be had. I would want a sim that comes with barebones planes and scenery but has a capable and stable rendering system, SDK, and solid aeronautical related world functions, such as physics, weather system, etc. So you cant expect them to outdo companies who are dedicated to singular areas of focus at their own game.

 

P3D's F35 is a joke of an aircraft and some of their default planes are Carenado. I guess P3D is an arcade game now. 

[tf51d 284]

 

 

Either way, the only thing we know is that it will use the Microsoft Flight engine (was confirmed on facebook by DTG Martin) and it will be a simulator (while being arcade enough for new players, just like FSX is with the default planes). Time will tell what they are going to actually develop.

 

Actually no it's not confirmed, this has already been discussed in an earlier thread, and Aimee clarified this statement.

 

 

DTG_Aimee, on 10 Aug 2015 - 08:47 AM, said:

Hi guys,

Just to clear things up a little, we do not have plans to bring DFS to XBox at this time.

Additionally, "Flight technology" is in reference to MS flight simulation technology, and isn't specific to any one title.

If you have any further questions, please forward them to our Steam forum where our community team will be happy to help: http://steamcommunity.com/app/314160

Apologies for any confusion,

-Aimee

 

 

[alpha12125 213]

So you want them to do the job of ORBX, PMDG, REX, A2A, and ASN. 

 

Don't take what i said out of context. I dont want them to do the job of them they try to it themselves. You know the difference between P3D/X-Plane and Dovetail, P3D and X-Plane focus on the base sim, the last i checked the vast majority of Trainsim DLC is released by Dovetail. And the vast majority of those are not up to par. Most of them are a mediocre fix for your need and provide some entertainment for you.

 

Now I know they dont develop all of those themselves and hire small studios, but if they would have some interest in high quality they wouldnt release them in such state. Also just to show you the difference P3D or X-Plane embark the extremly high quality add-on makers and even showcase them on the frontpage of their site. Why is it that in Dovetail all of the extremely good addons are 3rd party downloads from their own site? They are too expensive for Dovetail to be sold on Steam, and their contract for letting developer into their ecosystem is something to behold. At the end, sure Dovetail dont actively stop high quality add-ons from running on their software, but at the end they really dont care about them because dovetail is always about selling the next dlc and generating income.

 

And that is what i mean by arcade simulator and tbh you should know that calling P3D a arcade simulator is just trying to cause a stir.

[Wobbie 938]

Lol, P3D an arcade game? A licensed training tool, with the right hardware an arcade simulator?

Frasca ( who build professional sims) sell a refurbished sim with P3D for $60 000.00! Yes 4x 0's!

 

Anyhow, my belief is also that DTG's release will be a basic setup, with DLC's, as per their Train model. It works for that. Why should they do something different for a vastly smaller market? Yes, they do FSX:SE, but that is just a re-release of an existing product, nothing new.

 

So, will DTG use the largest gaming distributor to target the very well established FS9/FSX/X-Plane market to sell their game product to? Or do they want to add a flight "simulator" to their fishing & train simulator markets?