If one should try to estimate the total market value of the most popular flight simulator for PC  and their addons, do we reach 1 Billion USD?

The most popular flight simulators are FS2004, FSX, P3D, XP11, AF2, DCS, and IL-2.

 

How big is the market value of the addons?    If the total market value is 1 Billion USD,  I guess that the addons count for 700 Million USD. That is 70% of the total value.   

 

I guess that a company (not a one man developer activity) must do some market estimations before starting up in this business.

 

So what are the values? Like to hear your comments and figures.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 3, 20196 yr by nas123

1 billion? I (seriously) doubt it.

As a group, we've always had a tendency to overestimate our market value.

Seriously?

How on earth do you get those figures? $1billion?

You seem to forget that Flight Sim is a very niche market indeed, and, as said by HiFlyer, we have a tendency to overestimate our useage & value.

In 2018, the Flight Sim market was estimated to be USD 5.46 Billion.

This is only for real & professional simulators, as used by Boeing & other such like.

To surmise that the hobby is worth 20% of that is totally mistaken. Maybe it's worth $1m.

 

I'll get right on this as soon as I finish my count of grains of sand in the Mohave Desert and put the finishing touches on my model for accurately estimating the velocity of a swallow.

Don't wait up, it's gonna be a while...

If we dig into the figures based on Steam that we got in the other thread  " How many are we in the flight sim world"

 

 

 

1

Quote

Aerofly FS2: 50-100K

DCS: 2000-5000K

FSX-SE: 1000-2000K

XPlane 11: 200-500K

Since P3D isn't on Steam, one can only guess. I would say it is a little below the XP region - 100-300K

Owners of the original boxed FSX there are rumoured to be about 2000-4000K as well, and if the Steam relation between FSX and XP 11 holds true (4:1) then there should be 500-1000K XP download/boxed owners.

Alt 1 with low figures

AF2 100 000 * 50 USD   = 5 000 000 USD

DCS 5 000 000 * 100 USD = 500 000 000 USD ( Every user buys 2 airplane models)

FSX-SE 2 000 000 * 50 USD = 100 000 000 USD

FSX Box 4 000 000 * 50 USD = 200 000 000 USD

XP11 500 000 *50 USD = 25 000 000 USD

P3D 300 000 *50 USD = 15 00 000 USD 

Total 845 Million USD

 

Alt 2 with high figures:

AF2 50 000 * 50USD   = 2 500 000 USD

DCS 2 000 000 * 100 USD = 200 000 000 USD

FSX-SE 1 000 000 * 50 USD = 50 000 000 USD

FSX Box 2 000 000 * 50 USD = 100 000 000 USD

XP11 200 000 *50 USD = 10 000 000 USD

P3D 100 000 *50 USD =  5 000 000 USD 

Total  367,5 Million USD

 

On top of these figures are the addon sales for FSX-SE, FSX and P3D  

 

Edited September 3, 20196 yr by nas123
Corrected calculation error

19 hours ago, nas123 said:

If we dig into the figures based on Steam that we got in the other thread  " How many are we in the flight sim world"

You put in most of the "accepted sims"

But War Thunder, with its millions of users and zillions of microtransactions could probably buy them all with spare pocket lint.

Edited September 4, 20196 yr by n4gix
REMOVED EXCESSIVE QUOTE!!!

Flight sim don't bring in anything like the top games example Fortnite  a free game the developer is now worth 2.5 billion dollars.

2 hours ago, w6kd said:

I'll get right on this as soon as I finish my count of grains of sand in the Mohave Desert and put the finishing touches on my model for accurately estimating the velocity of a swallow.

Is that an African Swallow, or a European Swallow?

Not being snarky or rude but you need to check your math. 

An example --- 50 X 100k is not 500k.

 

52 minutes ago, 188AHC said:

Not being snarky or rude but you need to check your math. 

An example --- 50 X 100k is not 500k.

 

Corrected

However, realize that the purchases of FS-SE and FS4 were made many moons ago are not necessarily relevant to the size of the current market.

 

Jeff Callender

1 hour ago, Mace said:

Is that an African Swallow, or a European Swallow?

Well, I don't know.   aaaaaAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

When FS2 came into being, US News and World Report (or was it Time?) that I read on a flight from SFO via JFK to London in '84 said that FS2 between Microsoft and Sublogic was the most popular software title of all time, at that time, even beating out Lotus 1-2-3 and Word.  It was one of the first 3D games in terms of being able to move an unlimited distance in a 3D virtual world, whereas many 3D games of today do not allow you to do that, you can move in a limited way off a pre programmed path, which for me is not so much fun. 

My first non sim title I got into was "Captain Blood" because the graphics were amazing and so fluid on the same PC where FS got only 7-10 FPS.  And for the life of me, I still cannot understand how Aerofly FS2 is so amazingly butter smooth on the same 3D graphics shown in FSX so long ago, but better--but it might have to do with it having no AI, AI can really drag down a sim though it does not in my Xplane11 and P3DV4 sessions any more--I say any more because with the latest Nvidia driver upgrade, it has seemed to give my overall simming experience a steroid or adrenaline boost, my performance as I perceive it has doubled, or I tweaked something recently to help which I believe has to do with turning off all Nvidia tweaks but threaded optimization and Vsync and adaptive tear control, followed by removing vsync and fps locks in my sims.

But that is another story.

As for the value of simming, I would say it is the value the original FS2 sim gave to all gaming, Reagan's trickle down theory worked in our hobby and gaming.

It was also said, to get a PC in almost every home, something would have to happen, because PC's were not catching on fast enough.  The something that happened is the WWW we have today, and Avsim was one of the earliest and most popular forms of social media that got the web rolling, many other websites and boards and forms of social media followed Avsim, which I feel is an amazing contribution all of us have given to the world.  So if you want to have meaning for your lives, think of what your participation here has helped do for our world, bringing more people together, and giving people more freedom to voice their opinions so the government behind the scenes can focus on what it has to do for the nationalities we come from.

John

Edit: I forgot to mention, the WWW followed America Online which was preceded by Prodigy, but both were good parts of the foundation that makes the web today.  In geometry I learned about it, because three points make a perfect plane, in any sense, but that plane can be curved by mass, which means the past can be bent a little, but not changed.  That foundation of Geometry and initial understanding of our Universe came in the BC era, that was the vs. of enlightened thinking and stoicism, which helped  shaped the future we have today and the future we will have forever, vs. the "end of the world" conspiracies theories that people fall into.  That foundation is what allows those of us hear who enjoy flying and simulation, to have no fear of flying whether in the daytime and especially at night.

That said, if they ever remove humans fully out of the cockpit, they better perfect the automated systems on aircraft first.  In Phoenix we tested automated taxis which were supposed to be foolproof, and fatalities happened right away, they did not perfect the software.  That is why our hobby is safe, but when it is applied to real world situations, humans still edge AI and always will in terms of reflexes.  Intelligence is the fundamentals of fighting artificial intelligence, because it introduces a non human, perfect world order into our society--problem is, what happens when the Creators of it pass away?

John

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid's_Elements

Edited September 4, 20196 yr by John_Cillis

Orbx is just one developer of add-ons and recent Statements by JV indicate almost 200 employees

They may not be full time - but with the skills required in Etech - the wage bill can't be cheap - and might indicate

for just one part of Flight Simming.

I'm sure I also read somewhere  that the Orbx community amounted to 6.4k??

John Cillis just said----- "that FS2 between Microsoft and Sublogic was the most popular software title of all time"

and --- "As for the value of simming, I would say it is the value the original FS2 sim gave to all gaming".

Lose not the sight - that FS 1 was for the apple and FS 2 created for the Commodore 64 as well as other boxes

My son ran a Commodore shop - and flight sim was the biggest seller in the "Games" range - and Commodore was the worlds biggest seller

I wonder How many FS 2s were sold - it must have been quite a few for MS to go to producing many  more flight sims up to FS X Gold 

They gave up the ghost in 2008 - but their research - better than ours - must have indicated what a mistake they made - now is the time to correct it

I started my flight simming then in 1984 as did many others - and I wonder How many more of us - owe our thanks to Commodore and Apple?

and Microsoft - and maybe the wheel is turning again via MSFS 2020 - and not only for PC - but also a few million Xbox owners - via subscription

 

P.S. @ 85 YO - I have the latest 4k HDR TV and Xbox One - and T/master Hotas - xbox - Joystick - already for extra enjoyment - and Fsim readyand am a monthly subscriber - eg - for $A 10 per month - I can make use of 100s of games - as often as I like - games that are in stores on disc - or download - for anything up to $85 - and now they are making the same offer to PC users $5/m.