Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
OHN

FSW and its future

Recommended Posts

Not been back on FSW for several weeks now, have settled back into FSX or occasionally FS9 when it comes to flight simming time.

I think for me it will take a "wow" factor or significant upgrade to the current package (passenger jet) to even make me want to try it again.

Share this post


Link to post

Well FSW is an early access program like AF2. Orbyx has already released a couple of sceneries for AF2, and I am looking forward to sceneries for this one. I am not offloading my FSW  and going back to FSX despite all the money I spent on that over the years. FSW runs smoother and feels better to me IMHO.

Share this post


Link to post

Just checked Steam Spy and that lists for yesterday a grand total of 93 concurrent players on FSW. If I was DTG I would be supremely worried about those numbers, especially given their flagship new train sim (TSW) performed even more dismally with 84 concurrent players. That is not the stats a multi £kkk business survives on.

They need to do something (and fast) to get those numbers and sales up. For me, that has to be passenger jetliners.

Share this post


Link to post
3 minutes ago, Elvensmith said:

If I was DTG I would be supremely worried about those numbers

They need to do something (and fast) to get those numbers and sales up. For me, that has to be passenger jetliners.

Fortunately for the rest of us you're not DTG. The reason why it's a good idea for DTG to currently only have GA has been repeatedly explained on this forum e.g. it simplifies the development of core features. DTG have made clear that they intend to have larger aircraft at a later stage, just not RIGHT NOW. If you really need to have your fix of airliners then there's P3D, FSX-SE, FSX or X-Plane.

  • Upvote 1

Give people power to really test their personality.

Share this post


Link to post
1 hour ago, Elvensmith said:

Just checked Steam Spy and that lists for yesterday a grand total of 93 concurrent players on FSW.

Was that the total number of users playing FSW globally over the whole 24 hours, or only the maximum number logged onto the multiplayer server at one time?

Share this post


Link to post

I'm not sure how Steam spy works but would think that's the maximum number of players (as logged in to Steam as you must be to play) not the total daily usage.

1 hour ago, SamYeager said:

Fortunately for the rest of us you're not DTG.

Maybe, but if I was I'd still be worried that my flagship new flight sim - regardless of its WIP state and future promises - was attracting such a negligible amount of attention. By contrast I just checked the figure for FSX SE (which doesn't include people like myself running FSX Boxed) and the concurrent figure was 3483. Rather a sharp contrast I would say. Even XP11 managed 553 concurrent players.

So I would repeat, the jetliners and functionality of FSX can't come soon enough to FSW :) .

Share this post


Link to post
2 hours ago, Elvensmith said:

Just checked Steam Spy and that lists for yesterday a grand total of 93 concurrent players on FSW. If I was DTG I would be supremely worried about those numbers, especially given their flagship new train sim (TSW) performed even more dismally with 84 concurrent players. That is not the stats a multi £kkk business survives on.

They need to do something (and fast) to get those numbers and sales up. For me, that has to be passenger jetliners.

As ever, one has to be careful how one interprets statistics, and particularly for a title which is still only in early access, meaning it attracts the curious early adopters and is not a reliable figure for anything other than that. So, an early access title which has been out for almost two months, and which is currently limited in content, is not going to be getting huge amounts of play, particularly on a Wednesday (as your stat relates to). A large number of people, and certainly the people DTG are interested in (i.e. those with a disposable income) are working and wait until a weekend to check things out. But, the figure is what it is, so we'll go with it. So, let's analyse things a little deeper..

Initially, people will have 'hammered it', playing FSW a lot, to check it out, but then as each Community Update comes out with a small change, they will probably just fire it up and give it a quick 'progress check'. This is typical behaviour for an early access title buyer.

Steam Spy lists four pages of games trending now on Steam; Flight Sim World makes it onto that list in a comfortable mid-table position, which confirms the notion that people check it out once in a while. In total, FSW is listed as having 34,824 owners, which, whilst not a huge figure and one which of course is skewed given that it was granted free to some by dint of owning Flight School, is still respectable for an early access simulator.

But check this out (again, the source of these numbers is Steam Spy): There are 24,416 owners of Flight School (actually 24,591 if we count those who've not gone onto FSW), so we'll go with the lower figure of those who have both sims, just to err on the conservative side of the stats. There are 34,823 owners of Flight Sim World. Since those 24,416 owners of Flight School got Flight Sim World gratis, this means 10,407 people have bought the early access of Flight Sim World without having previously had Flight School. At a cost of 24.99 (US dollars), this means even in early access, Flight Sim World has a turnover of 260,071 dollars.

Yup, that's right, an early access flight sim has pulled in over a quarter of a million Dollars in sales. Add to this the sales of Flight School, which as most people know, was a thinly-veiled early test run at creating a 64 bit successor to FSX, and you've got an additional 368,619 Dollars in sales, which of course means a grand total of 628,690 dollars in sales of Flight School/Flight Sim World (the real figure is, as we've seen ever so slightly higher, but we'll stay with the lower number). So that's nearly two thirds of a million Dollars in sales for a foray into creating a 64 bit successor to FSX which isn't even out of early access yet, and you think Dovetail should be 'supremely worried'? Damn, I wish my own software training business had those kind of worries lol. That figure is of course not profit, but turnover, nevertheless, it is not to be sniffed at for a product which isn't even officially 'out' yet.

So, let's extrapolate those figures a bit further. The conversion rate from Flight School to Flight Sim World Early Access would appear to be around 66 percent, which is not bad for an early access title and we can fairly safely assume tha it will be a greater figure when the thing goes to full release. Since we cannot use anything other than historical figures of similar products for a prediction, we will use the Steam version of FSX as a rough benchmark for projected sales. So, we take the approximately 767,000 owners of the Steam version of FSX (and remember this is only the Steam version, there are still many players of the original boxed/download versions of FSX, some of whom would potentially increase that projection). This should translate into total projected sales of Flight Sim World, of (approximately) at least 1,916,313 Dollars, i.e. just shy of about one and a half million quid. That's for the base simulation platform, which as we know, is a means to an end for Dovetail Games, since their core business strategy (the one which MS stuffed up on, but which DTG are demonstrably past masters at), is ongoing revenue from additional donwloadable content, and this from very little effort on their part in terms of programming and content creation, since at that point they would merely be enhancing the base platform, patching it and ensuring compatibility, security etc. They have stated this is a long term strategy of theirs.

Of course much of this is a projection rather than a figure one could take to the bank, and it's only from the stats I have available. I'm pretty sure DTG will have access to more accurate figures and projections, and they will have based the decision to greenlight a 64 bit sim platform's creation on those more accurate figures which they will undoubtedly have crunched the numbers on.

 


Alan Bradbury

Check out my youtube flight sim videos: Here

Share this post


Link to post

On the positive side, FSW Peak Concurrent Daily Usage (PCCU) appears to be in uptrend. It dropped into the 60's after the initial release spike, but has been climbing up. PCCU of 93 is nearly triple that of AFS2, the other Early Access 64-bit sim that's been getting a lot of attention (and is a bit more of an apples-apples comparison). FSW's Steam reviews are showing 75% positive for the last 30 days. DTG has been pushing out a steady stream of updates which have resulted in some nice improvements making this product very playable as-is, though everyone agrees there's a lot of work to do, but the results of all these improvements are having a visible positive effect. Users are having a lot of fun with the Pro Mission Editor and there's a very active DTG forum.

As a software developer who has taken quite a few projects from inception to end-of-life, I think DTG is doing a lot of things the right way and the GA focus is a smart approach as they flesh out the core engine. I know they are also working on an SDK but my understanding is there's too much core code churn happening and releasing it too soon would just lead to frustrating and alienating third parties. They are well aware that devs are eager to get their hands on the SDK, but rushing things would be counter productive. Unless they are in some financial difficulty, and I don't see any reason to assume they are, why would they deviate from a sound development plan?

  • Upvote 1

Barry Friedman

Share this post


Link to post
On 05/07/2017 at 8:12 AM, AOB said:

Well FSW is an early access program like AF2. Orbyx has already released a couple of sceneries for AF2, and I am looking forward to sceneries for this one. I am not offloading my FSW  and going back to FSX despite all the money I spent on that over the years. FSW runs smoother and feels better to me IMHO.

Early Access:laugh: FSW is FSX..........Early Access ended over 10yrs ago.

  • Upvote 1

Share this post


Link to post
1 hour ago, FSXSEPilot said:

Early Access:laugh: FSW is FSX..........Early Access ended over 10yrs ago.

FSX was 64-bit all this time? Damn I wish you'd told us all before now! LOL

  • Upvote 1

Share this post


Link to post

Yes and there some paying hundreds of dollars for FSX all because it has a P & 3 in the title.

Ray Fry.


 

Raymond Fry.

PMDG_Banner_747_Enthusiast.jpg

Share this post


Link to post

The only thing I know about about what Steam thinks versus reality is that Steam thinks Ive been playing FSW for about 20 hours (last time I checked) but FSW says Ive been flying more than twice that.  I usually fly off line.  I guess that accounts for it.

  • Upvote 1

|   Dave   |    I've been around for most of my life.

There's always a sunset happening somewhere in the world that somebody is enjoying.

Share this post


Link to post

Guess we can run the numbers game all day, but the reality is I'm unlikely to touch FSW again until it offers significantly more than it does now (pootling around at 150 knots in a GA prop just isn't my bag) and - more importantly - they need to get the usage up into the 1000's so the third party developers who make those jetliners I crave after see it as a viable platform to build for.

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  
  • Tom Allensworth,
    Founder of AVSIM Online


  • Flight Simulation's Premier Resource!

    AVSIM is a free service to the flight simulation community. AVSIM is staffed completely by volunteers and all funds donated to AVSIM go directly back to supporting the community. Your donation here helps to pay our bandwidth costs, emergency funding, and other general costs that crop up from time to time. Thank you for your support!

    Click here for more information and to see all donations year to date.
×
×
  • Create New...