3 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

If I was Microsoft, I would probably be smacking myself on the forehead right about now, and wondering what the hell I was thinking

What would be the metric they would be so disappointed in? I would think they'd be really pleased with how much attention MSFS has gotten so far.

5 minutes ago, Kopteeni said:

What would be the metric they would be so disappointed in? I would think they'd be really pleased with how much attention MSFS has gotten so far.

Sure they are.

But honestly? I suspect all that dedicated simmers do is supply some street cred to the simulation side, and a big loud buzz that attracts the attention of the actual market I would be aiming at.....

Which would be just about anybody else.

If I was MS, simmers would look like a not particularly large baby bird with a huge red mouth that was always hungry and never ever satisfied with anything for long. I would keep feeding it leftover worms just to keep down its notoriously loud peeping, but where I would be pinning my actual hopes would be on the huge overflowing nest of regular Xbox and casual PC chicks where all the money was, instead of on the ungrateful chick with the reputation for biting the hand that feeds it.

19 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

Sure they are.

But honestly? I suspect all that dedicated simmers do is supply some street cred to the simulation side, and a big loud buzz that attracts the attention of the actual market I would be aiming at.....

Which would be just about anybody else.

If I was MS, simmers would look like a not particularly large baby bird with a huge red mouth that was always hungry and never ever satisfied with anything for long. I would keep feeding it leftover worms just to keep down its notoriously loud peeping, but where I would be pinning my actual hopes would be on the huge overflowing nest of regular Xbox and casual PC chicks where all the money was, instead of on the ungrateful chick with the reputation for biting the hand that feeds it.

Wasn't that what MS Flight tried to do?

There's only so much content Asobo can "officially" release. Remember the alpha is incomplete and not optimized, it's basically test software and every build has features added and removed. It wouldn't be a smart idea for Absos to release official clips that might show a feature that might not make it past the alpha stage.

27 minutes ago, Kopteeni said:

Wasn't that what MS Flight tried to do?

And every other new "sim" that's come out that isn't a $19.99 bargain basement wonder on Steam. Because this market alone is simply not worth the effort.

9 hours ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

D) Why should the leaks be ignored. Because we're brown-nosing MS/ Asobo? Forget it mate - you do that.

I've watched the content of course, as I am curious. But I'd not post it or leave it on a public board if it was mine.

To me that's rather a question of character rather than legality.

 

Just now, HiFlyer said:

 

If I was MS, simmers would look like a not particularly large baby bird with a huge red mouth that was always hungry and never ever satisfied with anything for long. 

You were not thinking of my avatar, were you 😂 ? To continue on a bird metaphor, let me quote a saying we have in France "Faut pas prendre les enfants du Bon Dieu pour des canards sauvages -   Don't take God's children for wild ducks". 

You don't  make a huge alpha testing as a gift to the "community", right ? You do it for telemetry and debugging and you know that leaks are bound to happen. No surprise, they are not newbies at Microsoft. So now, why do they make the testers life difficult ? I let you answer the question.

Their PR approach made these leaks happen. They have had a superb plan. They have underlined, several times early on, that they had in mind the hardcore (whatever that means)  simmers. Their remarkable Feature Discovery series was in line with that goal. But what do we see these recent months, besides the EP, to cater to the hunger you spoke of. A lot of uninteresting screenshots, 10 second worthless clips. PR is all down to day to day execution. It seems that their PR team has never, in their gamer life, open a flight sim.  People on this and other forums have requested small movies made by simmers. As MS doesn't do them, the leakers  have done them with a tremendous success. As Ryan noted 47k views for this thread ! A great physicist said once, 'Nature hates Void'. PR too.

But you will tell me, the market goal is not the simmers but the Xbox crowd who loves DoF and bloody sunsets ? I am not convinced of the common wisdom which says that the ultimate FS20 market is the gamers. MS people are not idiots. Simming has always been, is and will be an elitist passtime. Small market. Nothing wrong with that. Elitism is good and It does not mean that simmers are in anyway better. Just that it is a game which requires some dedication, a willingness to learn to enjoy, an attention span a little longer than the one you need to crash your 747 a couple of times into your house and your friends house.  MS has obviously other projects in mind for the Earth's twin.

I do understand Avsim's position on the matter even if I don't like it. When MS with its formidable lawyer strike force hints that you are "fencing" copyright infringement, what do you do ? 

9 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Their PR approach made these leaks happen.

I would say people publicly breaking their signed word (NDA) made the leaks happen.......

10 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

A lot of uninteresting screenshots, 10 second worthless clips.

So.... essentially more than we get from anyone else, ever. (plus you forgot the discovery series)

12 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

But you will tell me, the market goal is not the simmers but the Xbox crowd who loves DoF and bloody sunsets ? I am not convinced of the common wisdom which says that the ultimate FS20 market is the gamers. MS people are not idiots.

Well, PMDG (for instance) supports about 8 employees for its "elitist" market, and likely, for all its name recognition in enthusiast circles, probably has an income Microsoft would associate with unwanted navel lint. In fact, our whole market, enthusiast or not, is self evidently not attractive enough on its own, judging by Microsoft not only shuttering Aces, but quickly abandoning MsFlight as well after a few months; not to mention DTG running away, Aerosoft retreating from its once-upon-a-time sim plans and nobody else entering this excitingly attractive market in the last decade or so. 

We are apparently legends only in our own minds.

I would judge MS not only idiots, but borderline insane if they have have used the gigantic manpower and resources on evident display in the last year only to capture the tiny sub-genre of a sub-genre that styles itself as elite simmers.....

26 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

I do understand Avsim's position on the matter even if I don't like it. When MS with its formidable lawyer strike force hints that you are "fencing" copyright infringement, what do you do ? 

I have been bemused by Avsims tolerance for this thread, and have speculated to myself on possible reasons....

Meanwhile, for myself..... Not really moved by the notion of passing the buck/blame for our own impatience/insatiability back to Asobo.

12 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

Those of you reporting the increased amount of watermarks, are you Alpha testers? The build has existed for more than a week now and the latest batch of screenshots did not exhibit stronger watermarks. I guess we'll find out in the next update, unless the new watermarks are so obstructive that it's not worth posting screenshots anymore.

While this is unfortunate, I guess there's not much you can do when there are people deciding to break the NDA and leaking plenty of footage in places where Microsoft cannot issue a copyright claim. All this could only go wrong.

I am not an alpha tester (yet), but MSFS released a new patch Friday I believe, and that's where all the new watermarks got added.

Edited June 22, 20205 yr by nxther

2 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

And every other new "sim" that's come out that isn't a $19.99 bargain basement wonder on Steam. Because this market alone is simply not worth the effort.

So which story do you believe more, that MS is developing the sim for good will for flight simmers and not expecting profit or that MSFS is first and foremost a console game?

Edited June 22, 20205 yr by Kopteeni

Just now, HiFlyer said:

would say people publicly breaking their signed word (NDA) made the leaks happen...…

 Agreed on the trigger but the PR team created the environment, the need for it to happen knowing that it was bound to happen anyway. 

 (plus you forgot the discovery series)

 No, I idn't. I spoke of it in my answer, you missed it " Their remarkable Feature Discovery series was in line with that goal."  

  In fact, our whole market, enthusiast or not, is self evidently not attractive enough on its own, judging by Microsoft not only shuttering Aces, but quickly abandoning MsFlight as well after a few months; not to mention DTG running away, Aerosoft retreating from its once-upon-a-time sim plans and nobody else entering this excitingly attractive market in the last decade or so. 

This market has survived for more 40 years, to all the Doom, Quake, Half Life, Halo  etc of the gaming world sale successes . Maybe market size is not what only matters ? The decision you refer to, like the shutting down of the Aces Studios and MSflight, were not specific to the flightsim franchise. MS closed then across the board all its game studios. 

Venema, few months back, assessed the entry ticket to be a simulator designer, to a minimum of 30 MUSD (if memory serves me well).

I would judge MS not only idiots, but borderline insane if they have have used the gigantic manpower and resources on evident display in the last year only to capture the tiny sub-genre of a sub-genre that styles itself as elite simmers.....

And they are not, as I said they have something else in mind and it is not the Xbox gamer. This is what is fascinating in FS20. 

 Meanwhile, for myself..... Not really moved by the notion of passing the buck/blame for our own impatience/insatiability back to Asobo.

Asobo has nothing to do here IMHO it is a  Microsoft issue. Asobo is a sub-contractor. 

 

1 minute ago, Kopteeni said:

So which story do you believe more, that MS is developing the sim for good will for flight simmers and not expecting profit

I would say more that developing for flight simmers exclusively would not be profitable, therefore.....

2 minutes ago, Kopteeni said:

MSFS is first and foremost a console game?

And for pc. For a much broader market than Flight simmers only

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

Their PR approach made these leaks happen. They have had a superb plan. They have underlined, several times early on, that they had in mind the hardcore (whatever that means)  simmers. Their remarkable Feature Discovery series was in line with that goal. But what do we see these recent months, besides the EP, to cater to the hunger you spoke of. A lot of uninteresting screenshots, 10 second worthless clips. PR is all down to day to day execution. It seems that their PR team has never, in their gamer life, open a flight sim.

Errrrrr.

Im not sure how much game development youve been involved in or followed.  There PR has been outstanding and i would say on par if not better than with any other game at a pre release stage of the development cycle.

Since announcing it there has been weekly announcements, road map updates, screen shots and discovery series videos.  How many other games do you know of in an alpha state that are releasing stuff weekly.

Why release videos of things that are obviously still in development? That's bad PR

 

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

Their PR approach made these leaks happen.

MS / ASOBO have the right to promote their product however they want. I can't have it my way so screw them? That's a bad excuse. Especially as they really show transparent efforts. Sure, I was also curious and watched those vids and will provide my friends with a link.

But to me it's a sign of respect to not post it publicly, to acknowledge MS / ASOBOs' great work till now.

Edited June 22, 20205 yr by tweekz

2 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

would say people publicly breaking their signed word (NDA) made the leaks happen...…

 knowing that it was bound to happen anyway. 

Not quite so blatantly. The closest thing I can think of recently is the leaking of the Last Of Us 2 scandal that's causing such an uproar currently in gaming circles, and you can betcha (and confirm easily) that Naughty Dog/Sony went all out to squash the leaks flat. I would expect Microsoft/Asobo to do no less, if possible.

7 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

This market has survived for more 40 years

Comparatively, its scrapped along with two broken legs and a head injury, while amazingly enough, being quite concerned about keeping its pigs supplied with lipstick...... 🐷 😏

16 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

I would judge MS not only idiots, but borderline insane if they have have used the gigantic manpower and resources on evident display in the last year only to capture the tiny sub-genre of a sub-genre that styles itself as elite simmers.....

And they are not, as I said they have something else in mind and it is not the Xbox gamer. This is what is fascinating in FS20. 

I think they have many things in mind, and that dedicated simmers are almost certainly on the list, somewhere in there.... Especially from a PR perspective..

21 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

 Meanwhile, for myself..... Not really moved by the notion of passing the buck/blame for our own impatience/insatiability back to Asobo.

Asobo has nothing to do here IMHO it is a  Microsoft issue. Asobo is a sub-contractor. 

You think they are not annoyed as well by the leaks? And just as determined to stop them?