2 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

Just because others don't charge you directly does not mean that everybody else won't either. Many companies have fallen on hard times and/or gone under when they could no longer balance their cost against the freebee mentality of "the Net". It is always the same flame war when a previously free service suddenly starts to charge money...

I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm disagreeing with the fact someone right out of the gate assumes a subscription.

Edited February 19, 20206 yr by n4gix
REMOVED EXCESSIVE QUOTE!!! Please stop quoting the entire post you are replying to!

13 minutes ago, bonchie said:

Yep, and they are doing so because volume of sales beats niche subscribers almost every single time. 

MS is going to make a ton more money selling the game to 2 million people and having a huge player base to sell DLC to vs. having 50,000 people on a subscription service, with most dropping off after the first few years anyway. 

Yep. Valve for example has focused on their distribution&sales platform, slowing down with actual game development. With CSGO they made the game free to play, only relying on ingame sales. This works very well with games that have potential for addons or comsetic items. Flightsim will work fine in that regard as well.

A subscription model on the other hand has a very bad reputation. With ingame sales and marketplace only those people pay who actually want to buy something. Sometimes for a ridiculous price tag, but hey, no one forces them to. And they finance the game for the rest. 😄

Edited February 19, 20206 yr by tweekz

40 minutes ago, b737800 said:

Unfortunately my backside has spent far too many hours sat on those cold floors. The cooling costs is a big reason why datacentres in places like Iceland have become pretty common.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/6/6/17433206/microsoft-underwater-data-center-project-natick

Is still top of my list of half decent MSFT projects in the last few years.

Definitely not free.

"I want one" 🙂

Edited February 19, 20206 yr by mSparks

1 hour ago, bonchie said:

MSFS is not a "gamepass/xbox pc beta game," whatever the heck that means.

It means to play the alpha do you need to install

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-beta/9mv0b5hzvk9z?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

and have a gamepass account

Edited February 19, 20206 yr by mSparks

Interesting discussion around this.

Consider this, though. Fortnite generated $1.8 BILLION in revenue last year after generating 2.4 BILLION in revenue the year before. That's billion with a B. Not bad for a "free" game. And all that revenue is from cosmetic items, nothing that materially alters the ability to play and do well in the game if you choose not to buy anything. I can almost guarantee that game/sim developers are looking at this model vs. a one time purchase or traditional subscription model. 

I don't know if Flight Simulator would ever have the installed user base to support something like a "cosmetic item shop" to make it profitable, but you never know. I do think that Fortnite has altered the current game consumer's mindset when it comes to game purchases and DLC. It will be interesting to see where this goes for smaller titles.

18 minutes ago, snglecoil said:

I don't know if Flight Simulator would ever have the installed user base to support something like a "cosmetic item shop" to make it profitable

Their biggest problem would be figuring out how to lock down their planes to prevent 3rd party repaints. Because I bet a lot of people would drop a few bucks to get that Airbus in their favorite airline's livery as long as someone wasn't already putting them out for free.

I remember back probably a decade ago this newfangled thing called Second Life came out, and I checked it out to see what all the fuss was about. It's basically a 3d world-building platform, and you can build stuff to sell to others. Within 10 minutes of logging in, one guy had offered to sell me drugs - not real drugs, but a drawing of drugs that I could, apparently, put in my inventory to pretend I was a drug addict. And another guy tried to sell me "functioning" genitalia.

Well, that was entirely too stupid for me, so I left. But the company that runs the thing is bringing in over 100 million bucks a year off of people spending money for junk like that in-game, and renting "virtual land" to build things on, including shops where they sell junk like that in-game.

If someone can get people to pay real money for a drawing of LSD, imagine how much money MS can get us sim geeks to give them for flying-related stuff? I mean, many of us already think nothing of buying whatever PMDG releases on release day. There's a great potential income stream for add-on goodies with this sim.

 

 

 

Edited February 19, 20206 yr by eslader

54 minutes ago, mSparks said:

It means to play the alpha do you need to install

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-beta/9mv0b5hzvk9z?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

and have a gamepass account

No. Alpha access is via another process entirely. A "Gamertag" is required as well.

1. Download (or update) the Xbox Insider Hub via this link.
2. Launch the Hub and navigate to the “Insider Content” tab on the left side of the screen.
3. Once there, you'll find the Flight Simulator Alpha page.
4. Select “Join” while at the Flight Simulator Alpha icon.
5. Wait for “Join” to change from “Pending” to “Manage” and “Show in Store”.
6. Select the “Show in Store” icon which will take you through to the Windows 10 Store page.
7. Install as you would any other game.

7 minutes ago, n4gix said:

No. Alpha access is via another process entirely. A "Gamertag" is required as well.

 

 

 

7 minutes ago, n4gix said:

Select the “Show in Store” icon which will take you through to the Windows 10 Store page.

Seems to mean xbox pc beta, which is the future version of windows 10 store for games.

7 minutes ago, n4gix said:

A "Gamertag" is required as well.

A gamertag for which online subscription service? Something new, Gamepass or Xbox live.

 

Edited February 19, 20206 yr by mSparks

A gamertag for free online service far as i Know.

12 minutes ago, mSparks said:

A gamertag for which online subscription service? Something new, Gamepass or Xbox live.

Neither one actually! A "Gamertag" is simply another Microsoft account:

Quote

A Microsoft account is free to create, and your Gamertag is the way we identify you on the Insider Hub and is the way in which we will actually grant access to download the game builds. To sign up simply follow the instructions:

https://account.microsoft.com/account/faq?lang=en-US[/quote]

*facepalm*

@n4gix You're a saint lol

Edited February 19, 20206 yr by Krakin

3 minutes ago, n4gix said:

Neither one actually! A "Gamertag" is simply another Microsoft account:

 

gamertag is the name they give to xbox accounts. They even charge to change it.

https://beta.support.xbox.com/help/account-profile/profile/change-xbox-live-gamertag

Edited February 19, 20206 yr by mSparks

@eslader, you are right. And the add on market for flight sim is significantly different than an online shooter so the advantages of a “Fortnite” model are certainly not universal. But I do think that the generation of gamers (and simmers) coming up now will have a different paradigm of spending money on their chosen games. No predictions from me. I’ll be an interested in seeing the direction all of this takes. 

33 minutes ago, mSparks said:

A gamertag for which online subscription service? Something new, Gamepass or Xbox live

A gamertag is just your username for Microsoft's gaming platform, it's attached to your Microsoft account.

You don't need a subscription in anything to play the Alpha.

  

19 minutes ago, mSparks said:

They even charge to change it.

It's free for the first change.

Edited February 19, 20206 yr by Tuskin38

22 minutes ago, mSparks said:

gamertag is the name they give to xbox accounts. They even charge to change it.

https://beta.support.xbox.com/help/account-profile/profile/change-xbox-live-gamertag

So what? You are really working hard to find some reason to obfuscate things. A Gamertag still has nothing specific to do with any "subscription" service. Every one using MS has to have some way to identify the registrant. In fact. if one already has an MS account, they have a choice of use that account for anything other than access to Xbox. A Gamertag simply takes the place of the existing MS account, as it serves as a link between regular MS account and an Xbox account.

One has the option to either choose their own Gamertag when signing up, or allowing Xbox to choose one for them. I chose to use "N4GIX" simply because it is a unique to me and me alone. It is my amateur radio call sign from the FCC and should not be used by anyone else.