I have an option on a particular game to buy it outright for $120 which requires a dongle or pay a monthly subscription of $10 which does not.  It's unlikely I'll play it for a whole year.  No dongle and less money makes this an easy decision.

For something like MSFS I expect to put a lot more than a year on it, but we don't know about the pricing yet.  

Hook

Well if they want to appeal to a mass, including xbox audience, the game won't certainly cost $120. I would expect less than $100 for sure. 

13 hours ago, Kopteeni said:

I would really like to believe it but at the end of the day they're out here trying to make a profit for the share holders and might easily decide that the sim is good enough at v1.0 and focus on something completely different with more revenue potential.

This always sends a shiver up my spine. Most shareholders couldn't care less about the end product. All they are concerned about are the dividends.

For XBOX Gold members it may be free to play that's where the real revenue stream will come from not the one off sale of the product, and that's why some developers are now more focused on console and streaming platforms 5 years development and then hope you sell enough to make a profit.

I would think they are using the sim as a way to showcase and further develop their Azure technology, possibly also to develop other software making use of the AI and perhaps photogrammetry. I therefore think it's likely there's a good amount of funding for this project behind the curtains, especially since they have confirmed way before the actual release it's at least a 10 year project. That seems pretty courageous to say at this point if that were based solely on the premise that the sim will generate a lot of profit. There appear to be people working on the sim who are actually passionate about what they do, but that's, in my opinion, probably not all of what's ultimately behind this. The older MS sims were also a way of showing off progress. This could be why they don't need to go with a continuous subscription model.

In any case, it's been confirmed there's no subscription involved, neither to buy the sim nor to use weather data or streamed data.

Guys, think about the potential of an ingame shop / marketplace. I can clearly see it going down that road.

It's the financial concept of a lot of games. It would work perfectly with a addon-heavy franchise like flight simulation as well.

Look at how much teens are spending for cosmetic items in other games. Flight sims can offer cosmetic items (liveries) as well as full grown addons (aircraft, scenery) from MS themselves as well as third party devs. Plus flight simming has a more adult userbase (more money to spend).

Edited January 29, 20206 yr by tweekz

One solution to make money : advertisement !

Huge billboards in cities and along approaches, small planes dragging a banner, making Delta, Lufthansa, Air France etc pay to have their livery as an AI aircraft,  rent space in virtual airports to real FBO,  fuel trucks with a Shell, Exxon, BP livery etc  The potential for profit is limitless 😂 !

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

This always sends a shiver up my spine. Most shareholders couldn't care less about the end product. All they are concerned about are the dividends.

Brand is of huge value to companies. That means, in turn, that shareholders care about the end product at least to the extent a good/bad product benefits/harms the brand and therefore the price of their shares.

Let's also not forget that "bad" products don't tend to be very profitable for their producers, either. It's not as though they (generally) have a financial incentive to put something bad out. And to the extent other concerns force their hand -- deadlines, external market pressure, unexpected competition, etc. -- well, private companies face all those same pressures, don't they?

James

2 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

This always sends a shiver up my spine. Most shareholders couldn't care less about the end product. All they are concerned about are the dividends.

  The shareholders are the owners of the company. The product exists because they take a bet on it, investing a money which is theirs, through their delegates (CEO, CPO, CFO etc.). That they are concerned by the return on their money doesn't seem illogical to me (dividends). 

 

What I mean is that shareholders will be more interested in what is going to make them more money, rather than what is best for the end user.

37 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

What I mean is that shareholders will be more interested in what is going to make them more money, rather than what is best for the end user.

It's true. But the two are not always incompatible. I know that given Microsoft's history, doubts and mistrust are natural. But the size of the company has nothing to do with the choices.

Big companies can sometimes make good choices, here, we can see that they communicated first to the simmer community, to the gamer community, they organize feedbacks, alphas, are transparent in videos and screenshoots. It's all intention, of course, and not yet fact.

In a completely different area, SOE resold and rebranded as Daybreak Games, they take away from their games everything that makes the gamers happy and keep only a tight community, which finances the games by PtW (I'm talking about astronomical amounts ($700) for each virtual object, objects that have a lifespan of 10 months at the most.) And it's a small studio.

By that I mean that the size of the company doesn't systematically mean that the choices will be guided only by the dollar rules.

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

What I mean is that shareholders will be more interested in what is going to make them more money, rather than what is best for the end user.

Yes. What should make them more money than something that can be easily sold, that the end user considers good for him 😏 ? 

Greed is alive and well in the WORLD!

5 hours ago, threegreen said:

I would think they are using the sim as a way to showcase and further develop their Azure technology, possibly also to develop other software making use of the AI and perhaps photogrammetry. I therefore think it's likely there's a good amount of funding for this project behind the curtains, especially since they have confirmed way before the actual release it's at least a 10 year project. That seems pretty courageous to say at this point if that were based solely on the premise that the sim will generate a lot of profit. There appear to be people working on the sim who are actually passionate about what they do, but that's, in my opinion, probably not all of what's ultimately behind this. The older MS sims were also a way of showing off progress. This could be why they don't need to go with a continuous subscription model.

I totally agree.

For sure MS is not developing the MSFS to please simmers but to make money.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that they have to get their investments returned directly by sales (or subscriptions) of the sim and its addons itself. It's also about building a base for future applications that will use a kind of "earth simulation", showcasing their competence in software development with MSFS as their "flagship", customer retention, market penetration, promoting their brand and public relation in general, and probably a dozen other economic reasons.

As that it is a long term project that is not directly dependent on return on investment by sales of MSFS and addons.

Edited January 29, 20206 yr by RALF9636

6 hours ago, tweekz said:

Guys, think about the potential of an ingame shop / marketplace. I can clearly see it going down that road.

I hope it does..

I’m no longer interested in this hobby being a “wild west” of other App stores and random third party installers (and update hassles) or potential malware/spyware being installed by such installers and third party Devs (as we know this has been a real thing in FS community)