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Prediction: How many copies of FS2020 will Microsoft sell?

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FSX sold 1 million copies. But since then the gaming world has grown. What was surprising to me was that Euro Truck Simulator 2 sold 6.5 million copies. What's your prediction for FS2020? With Xbox game pass subscription, I'm not sure if this is the correct metric anymore, but still curious.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games


FSX | DCS | X-Plane 11 | MSFS 2020 | IL2:BoX

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Just now, Slides said:

FSX sold 1 million copies. But since then the gaming world has grown. What was surprising to me was that Euro Truck Simulator 2 sold 6.5 million copies. What's your prediction for FS2020? With Xbox game pass subscription, I'm not sure if this is the correct metric anymore, but still curious.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games

I’ve mentioned Euro Truck Simulator round here before when people claim that the flightsim market is to tiny. It’s not, but the simulation market overall is potentially massive.

MIcrosoft flight sim was always a ‘AAA’ title back in the olden days, as were Microprose’s various sims.

So, i think it will be a “slow burn” seller, but I could see it selling the equivalent of 10 million copies, though as you infer you’d need factor in the gamepass usage/additional sales as that will be the way that a lot of people use it.


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29 minutes ago, Slides said:

FSX sold 1 million copies.

In reality, it is many more copies than that, because there is also FSX-SE. Having said this, it is difficult to be accurate about how many people that equates to, because personally, I've bought FSX twice (once boxed and once as a digital download) and FSX-SE once on Steam, meaning if you count the original FSX and FSX-SE as one thing, I account for three of its sales just on my own, and I daresay I'm in no way unique in having done this. I bet loads of us have similar tales.

But, that's a bit apples to oranges in some respects, not least because the market has changed. FSX was sixteen years ago and it was not only battling for sales, it was also battling against itself for many years, as FS2004 had only come out a couple of years earlier and many people stuck with that for years, then bought the Steam version of FSX from Dovetail, effectively skipping the MS version of FSX. The digital effort at FSX on from Dovetail via Steam doubtless breathed some new life into FSX by means of the massive exposure it got by virtue of being on that platform. What is it these days? 125 million active regular Steam users?

That's a massive shop window for MS, plus the XBox market, and the normal PC users too of course via several web store links and the MS store too. All told that is a huge and varied virtual shopfront, but it is at least partially offset by the fact that when FSX came out, we were still in the days where each new FS release had a big window presence in actual bricks and mortar store windows, and that was a lot of exposure on each high street in pretty much every major town and city.

So really, it's anybody's guess as to how many copies the new MS sim will sell, but I would venture to suggest that it will probably blow the previous FSX sales record out of the water.


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This has buzz that I’ve not seen before, for an FS title.  Quite a few of my friends are asking about it, and they have zero flight sim interest otherwise.

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Don't worry, it will sell in large enough numbers to warrant 3rd party support.


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5 minutes ago, ajaybala said:

Don't worry, it will sell in large enough numbers to warrant 3rd party support.

My concern is more continued MS/Asobo support 

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FSX | DCS | X-Plane 11 | MSFS 2020 | IL2:BoX

Favorite aircraft currently: MSFS Savage Cub

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Unless it shatters sales expectations, I expect we'll never even know the numbers.  Microsoft prefer to refer to "total players" or "active users", because all of their games are on Game Pass - so sales numbers aren't really representative of anything anyway.

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I think farming simulator is one of the top selling sims, Flight and Train sims tend to be niche titles used by people that have an interest in the hobby.


 

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I got Farming sim 19 free from the epic store. Installed, played around for a bit. Uninstalled.

Basically got tired of watching grain grow.


Colonel,Indian Army.

My rig : z370  i9 9900k RTX 3090 MSI, 32 gb Ram, m2 nvme 1tb, sata ssd 1tb, 4tb hdd, 850watt smps antek bronze

my sims : DCS world, IL2 Battle of kuban, Stalingrad , MSFS, P3D 5.1, X-plane, Elite dangerous, Star citizen

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7 minutes ago, ajaybala said:

Basically got tired of watching grain grow.

If "watching grain grow" was what Farming Sim was all about, then farming sims wouldn't be as popular as they are. 🙂 

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It's difficult to say how many copies it will sell, as the gaming industry has changed a lot since the release of FSX. With services like Xbox Game Pass and Origin Access for EA coming onto the market and either other a monthly subscription or a one of payment for access to the catalog of games on the service.

A better indication from total sales would be active player count, to judge the success. If you look at FSX:SE, which is clearly out dated and surpassed by other flight sim platforms. It still manages to average  2471 players per day over the last 30 days. That's higher than steam version X-Plane 11 which only averages 2063 players per day. In compassions Euro Truck Simulator 2, averages 19,476 and Farming Simulator 14,154. Of course this is just looking at the steam numbers and people still play the boxed version of FSX and X-Plane can be owned outside of steam as well, but I don't think anyone would argue that all the them titles are a success. X-Plane especially which has seen its monthly average grow on steam from 200-300 in 2017 to  being above 2000 every month since March of this year.

About the future of the game. This title has alot of people excited. My Brother who doesn't really play flight simulators has gone and got a new PC and HOTAS just for this title. He best friend who was a big FSX player but never moved onto X-Plane or P3D and casually plays sims has done the same. The trailers have over 2 million views on youtube so I don't think there will be an issue with the game not having a long and well supported player base, even if the more casual players drop off.

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The gaming industry has been gradually reducing public access to sales figures and also to the number of active users. My advice is to not worry about these numbers, because they are incomplete. And game reviewers have become so biased by their YouTube income and the free "screeners" that they receive, that even "expert" reviews shouldn't influence your enjoyment.  It's equivalent to being in the market for a new mattress and searching with Google for, "The Best Mattresses of 2020.". All you'll get is a bunch of "review" websites that link to online retailers.

Either buy MSFS or read a wide variety of online information about it once it is released and then make your decision. If you are lazy, go here once MSFS is released:

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/microsoft-flight-simulator

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