12 minutes ago, Chock said:

I can guarantee you there are still way more FSX users than there are P3D users, it's not even close numbers-wise.

You are really missing the point here. Those thousands or ten-thousands of people who buy FSX-SE for 7.99 are not the relevant market for QW. Those people will never spent 70 dollars on an add-on aircraft. Those who will, have mostly moved to P3Dv4 and those are also the ones who are here on the forums.

14 minutes ago, carlito777 said:

You are really missing the point here. Those thousands or ten-thousands of people who buy FSX-SE for 7.99 are not the relevant market for QW. Those people will never spent 70 dollars on an add-on aircraft. Those who will, have mostly moved to P3Dv4 and those are also the ones who are here on the forums.

Not really, Steam have sales frequently for add-ons, and when flight sim products have reached saturation point for the hardcore simmers, then they go on Steam as DLC. That's occurred with loads of FS add-ons, and not just inexpensive ones either, you can buy REX and Active Sky on Steam, and this is exactly why.

The idea that people who use Steam won't pay a lot for stuff is just plain not true; how much is Call of Duty WW2 digital deluxe version? £67.99 (and that's the pre-order price too). And gamers absolutely will pay that for it or they would not have set the price at that level, and it is by no means alone in being that kind of money. The fact that someone picked up FSX on Steam in a sale doesn't mean they won't buy stuff for it, it just means they like a bargain.

Yup, that's right, COD WW2, is ten quid more than the QW 787, and if that 787 goes on Steam for 30 quid in a couple of months and then gets a sale mark down, loads of people who have FSX-SE will buy it, just as many more will buy COD WW2 when it drops in price after the initial early adopters have coughed up full price for it and the developers drop the price to gain many more sales of it.

It is what it is and that is the way it is. 

I thought about fixing FSXSE up and buying this but after trying to make it look good and forgetting where I bought Steve's fixer so I could use that again and then having to install Nvidia Inspector again to eliminate the shimmering I just gave up and will wait for the v4 version. 

 

27 minutes ago, Chock said:

I can guarantee you there are still way more FSX users than there are P3D users, it's not even close numbers-wise. We get a misleading impression looking on flight sim forums which would lead us to think everyone is on P3D V4 and only interested in high end add-ons, but it is simply not the case

I've seen a few other people suggest this ... but if the FSX users aren't "online" and have no public visibility how are you determining there are "still way more FSX users"?  And out of those users how are you determining how much DLC those users are buying per year (active)?  I haven't seen any verifiable public numbers ... I have seen marketing comments from publishers suggesting XYZ platform is much larger when a specific DLC is released for XYZ platform ... but that seems to fluctuate by whatever publisher is selling at that moment in time so can't really rely on that "marketing" of product for accuracy.

And the mysterious millions of non-public users of platform XYZ ... how do we quantify that which we can't account for?

But overall (many web sites not just one), online forum/youtube/etc. activity can give a reasonable relative representation of user base because there is no way any FS user who buys DLC could avoid going online to resolve a problem (and there will always be problems/issues with any platform).

Patients is the best course, this thread and many other dotted about the internet are a very good indications that there is demand for a P3D V4 version of QW's 787 and I'm sure it will eventually make it's way to P3D V4 platform.

Cheers, Rob.

What, pray tell, is a "quid"...?  :-P

1 minute ago, Boomer said:

quid

1 pound sterling (it's British)

19 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

 how are you determining there are "still way more FSX users"? 

Because I've seen some sales data for a few online stores. I can't say which ones because they didn't want me to reveal that info (it was when I was doing some web design work for one or two of them), but as much as I can't say which places it was, I can say that it was fairly apparent from the numbers that there were far more FSX sales than would ever be the case for P3D.

Now of course that is going to change as time goes by, but not necessarily in favour of P3D, because FSW will move into that more visible slot which FSX-SE presently occupies. Notwithstanding the price of the base platform, which also has a bearing on matters, P3D is not marketed anywhere near as broadly, nor is it marketed as a 'game', so it's never going to have the exposure that FSX or FSW will have when they are going through Steam.

To give us an idea of the numbers, there are approximately 11 million users on Steam each day, and Steam has more registered users than the entire population of Japan and Russia combined, i.e. approximately 300 million registered users (not all of whom are current of course, but that is the number, and obviously not all of them are flight sim fans either). But that's a lot of people seeing those adverts which appear on the splash load screen for FSX-SE, and on the Steam main GUI, and those adverts will also do so in FSW, which will even allow you to buy stuff from within its GUI. There is no way P3D's marketing can compete with that, even if they wanted it to, which they don't because we are effectively the beta testers for LM's real P3D intent, which is to have it as a platform for military customers. They are not making P3D because they felt sorry for us flight simmers when MS bailed on the franchise lol.

That's why all the savvy development companies are happy to have their products on Steam despite claims from some that DTG are forcing people to do it for FSX and FSW, which not only isn't true, but wouldn't be necessary anyway, since any company accountant can figure out the value of such exposure when they see the figures, without any need to have their arm twisted up their back.

I doubt QW will ever be forthcoming on which version of their 787 sells more, but they are at least shrewd enough to know that if you can only get it for FSX at the moment, lots of P3D people will give it a whirl when they can have it for both platforms at a discounted price, as is apparently going to be the case, and they'll be in a position to throw it at Steam as DLC after all those sales for FSX and P3D via Flight 1 have tailed off.

A "quid" is the UK eqivalent of a "buck" .... (£1 / $1).   Slang for the main centenary unit of currency.

----------

Things certainly are rather quiet in terms of the 787 release.  But one possibility is this..... think back to the original TFDi 717 release - lot's of bugs and problems, lot's of noise.  Then the FSL .... lot's of initial performance issues in the FSX version.... lot's of forum noise.   AS CRJ .... LOT'S of problem!!  Lot's of noise.

The 'silence' regarding the 787 might just be that most flyers are too busy enjoying it to post about it!  (here's hoping)

Certainly the users flying it on the Twitch streams I've watched have described as 'a beautiful bird' and there hasn't been a lot of talk or visibility of bugs.

2 hours ago, carlito777 said:

Those thousands or ten-thousands of people who buy FSX-SE for 7.99 are not the relevant market for QW. Those people will never spent 70 dollars on an add-on aircraft.

I doubt the price paid for the base platform has much bearing on addon purchases. I bought FSX Gold (boxed) from Microsoft's online store in 2012 for $9.99. That didn't stop me from spending $thousands on addons. 

2 hours ago, Chock said:

...Yup, that's right, COD WW2, is ten quid more than the QW 787...

Seeing as I'm a Battlefield player - the QW787 is even more tempting! 

3 hours ago, Chock said:

I can guarantee you there are still way more FSX users than there are P3D users, it's not even close numbers-wise.

I fully agree! FSX Steam Edition alone has 4000 players every day and around 80.000 players in the past two weeks: https://steamdb.info/app/314160/graphs/

P3D users certainly spend more money per capita for addons but nonetheless FSX is still a very relevant platform. 

 

3 hours ago, HighBypass said:

Seeing as I'm a Battlefield player - the QW787 is even more tempting! 

That's probably because Battlefield is great, whereas CoD sucks lol. And especially Battlefield Bad Company, which is really great.

25 minutes ago, Chock said:

That's probably because Battlefield is great, whereas CoD sucks lol. And especially Battlefield Bad Company, which is really great.

Meh...I think FPS suck in general. :-P

25 minutes ago, Boomer said:

Meh...I think FPS suck in general. :-P

Well they're not something which will appeal to everyone it is true, but oddly enough a lot of them are attracting better screenwriters for the cut scenes and character dialogue than Hollywood does for movies these days, because the big name FPS games make more money than a lot of films do. So they're not all the no brainer rinse and repeat-fests they used to be; a lot of them have really clever storylines and plot twists which most films nowadays don't have any more.

Some of them can be extremely engaging in this respect, Battlefield Bad Company is a great example of that, the dialogue of your AI squad members is better than most movies, and that gives it a much broader appeal beyond simply being a shooter. One of your AI guys in Bad Company even has a discussion with you about a big Russian Antonov transport aeroplane and starts reeling off facts about it as he reveals he's a bit of a plane spotter. It's done with a lot of humour too.

7 hours ago, carlito777 said:

You are really missing the point here. Those thousands or ten-thousands of people who buy FSX-SE for 7.99 are not the relevant market for QW. Those people will never spent 70 dollars on an add-on aircraft. Those who will, have mostly moved to P3Dv4 and those are also the ones who are here on the forums.

Exactly.  People who are drawn into flight simulation by a cheap sim platform are not the same people who are willing to pay a pile of money for a single aircraft, very different markets.  Anyone willing to spend $80 on an aircraft wouldn't blink twice at buying p3d.