Poll: How do you want to pay for MS2020?

[Dominique_K 10,150]

Let's put things into perspective 😊. Subscription to a game and to utilities are two entirely different matters. The former are 365/24/7 lifelines needed for the whole house to function as a shelter. A game is, well, a game... Freelance domestic aid is also a different model as you don't pay it when you don't use it (when you're on a vacation for instance).

I didn't make up my mind but I tried to do  some rough arithmetics.

Basic assumptions :

- Playing the sim on an average of 6 hours a week which is 936 hours over a typical shelf life of 3 years. The "average" is IMHO on the high side as it includes vacations, sickness bouts, Fallout or Dragon Age or Netflix movies binges, summer time outside activities and so on and so forth.  Your mileage can, of course, hugely vary.

- no additional cost from an overused capped connection

- no miscalculation 😁 !

a/ Buying a 60 "bucks" (dollars, or euros or pounds, etc)  game costs 6.4 cents/hour with the default scenery. 

b/ Adding 500 "bucks"  of 3rd party sceneries (without the airports, just the landscape sceneries à la OrbX Global)  purchased with the game,  the hourly climbs to 59.8 cents/hour. The cost is actually a little less  as we buy the sceneries all along the  3-year period.

c/ Alternatively, buying a 4.99 "bucks" a month subscription to access hires world imagery and photogrammetry goodies costs 240 "bucks" (initial price + subscription) after three years and the hourly cost is 25.6  cents per hour. If the subscription is 9.99 "bucks", 44.9 cents. The break even point b/ vs c/ is 13.88 "bucks" a month.

I cannot stress enough that it is a very rough estimate. Also, it doesn't take into account other services that might be included "for free" in the subscription (weather etc.), the quality of the respective sceneries or the "invisible' cost" of the aggravation of not accessing your shiny imagery in case of an Internet malfunction 😉.

 

 

[G-RFRY 1,712]

Annual subscription addons already exist unsubscribe and it stops simple.   

[Krakin 5,789]

Wait, do people still think there's gonna be a subscription or are we calculating internet costs?

[threexgreen 3,143]

2 hours ago, Krakin said:

Wait, do people still think there's gonna be a subscription or are we calculating internet costs?

At the moment I think it's just subscription in general, not specifically an MSFS topic. But the talk about whether MSFS is subscription based can be put to bed I would say. The hint, even if it's just a hint, was pretty clear I think.

[Dominique_K 10,150]

7 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

 

It seems these days that you read in a post what you want to read. Suit yourself.

 

[G-RFRY 1,712]

Well it`s August we will not haver long to find out more then the speculation may tone down.

[Krakin 5,789]

2 hours ago, threegreen said:

At the moment I think it's just subscription in general, not specifically an MSFS topic. But the talk about whether MSFS is subscription based can be put to bed I would say. The hint, even if it's just a hint, was pretty clear I think.

Yes it was pretty clear cut but honestly, not enough for some people lol.

[bashope 112]

On 8/3/2019 at 3:55 AM, Rob_Ainscough said:

Power at your house, you are subscribing to a power unless you are "off the grid" and generating your own power, then you are subscribing to solar (sun) or wind or wherever you get your power from ... in other words you are never really "done" and will always have a reliance.

Generally I agree with you but you presented really poor examples of subscriptions.

With power you are paying consumption of something. Just because you pay for it monthly it doesn't make it a "subscription" in the same sense as what we are talking about, when talking about Game Pass. If in any given month you consume 0 kWh, your monthly bill will be 0 USD.

This is conceptually very different to a "game" subscription, like WoW, or EvE online, or whatever. These subscriptions basically you pay the same amount whether you play 500 hours or 1 hour in a month. So, obviously, for the person who has the time to play 500 hours (in multiple games), there's an insane amount of value in the subscription... for the person who has limited time and plays a handful of hours in a month, there's much less value.

Anyway, in principle, I agree with you. I've seen the subscription of Game Pass for the PC is around 4 bucks a month... so it would be 60 bucks a year (which is roughly the cost of X-Plane). If MSFS will be good enough that I barely have to pay for any add-ons, this is good value, I would probably be ok with this.

But I also think it would be fine to just make it "purchasable", and charge again for major revisions, like X-Plane. This would be my preferred way of doing things.

Edited August 4, 2019 by bashope

[Paraffin 2,197]

8 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

However, where I disagree is that "streaming geo data" is an "on demand" service with real "costs" behind it ... building the backend infrastructure to manage "per minute" usage (i.e. like cell phones) is costly in itself so I can't see that happening at that granularity but certainly at a monthly level (like a Game Pass).  This aspect of the Flight Simulator is probably is more similar to a NetFlix subscription.

Perhaps Microsoft will offer a $89 purchase gets you core product and one year of Game Pass, after the one year is up, one needs to move over to the subscription model?  I've seen similar offerings.

Another option could be a two-tiered system like Google is using for Stadia. You purchase games at a fixed price, and the "Base" level of Stadia will have free streaming, but the bandwidth will be capped at lower resolution (maybe 1080p?).

You can opt for the "Pro" level of Stadia that costs $10 a month, allowing higher resolution and access to other free games.  

Whether sim users would accept that, I don't know. And it gets complicated with the Xbox Scarlett having 4k resolution as a standard feature. Whatever economic model MS comes up with, it will have to make sense for both PC and the console version of MSFS.

[Deleted 250]

I do not care. I've been searching in Google for news for a new flight simulator for years. And sure every two weeks. The reason was that I was not happy with the outdated graphics of all flight simulators. Now that my long-awaited dream is finally coming, I would pay a lot for it. Assuming, in addition to the graphics fits the physics. I am also sure that very good aircrafts (A350, A320) will be available very soon. I hope!

[Christopher Low 5,363]

On 8/3/2019 at 8:02 PM, rjfry said:

Well it`s August we will not have long to find out more then the speculation may tone down.

LOL!! That's a good one, Ray!

[sightseer 895]

17 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

...  However, even if one didn't use any power for a month, power companies in the US will still charge you for having the infrastructure connected (power lines, maintenance of those lines, etc.) regardless of actual power usage ... there is never a $0.00 bill unless you are solar (or generating energy) and create more power than you use (which was the case for us in our old home in CA).

 

Actually, in Texas, its quite possible to have a zero dollar bill as many electric providers have offerings with no monthly charge.   just for information's sake.

My co-op on the other hand has a $40/mo charge which rakes poor people over the coals comparatively.

Edited August 5, 2019 by sightseer

[famaral 0]

Other: if it has VR support than Sure, what's another subscription, I'll get it.