What are some of the benefits to buying MSFS on Steam over their in house store?

There's not much difference apart from the convenience of having all your stuff in one place.

However, if you are a sociable type who likes to fly multiplayer with friends who also buy it through Steam, they will see via the Steam interface when you are online and playing it, so this is a potentially easier way to hook up with them, and you can chat to them through the Steam chat if you like too.

Edited August 3, 20205 yr by Chock

Is there any performance overhead by having the steam console running in the background (versus simply launching the Microsoft version from desktop), or is would that steam overhead be minimal?

Whilst I do not know how much hardware usage the steam overlay requires you can disable it if you so choose. As for running steam in the background I would be surprised if it made any more than a negligible difference...

24 minutes ago, KERNEL32 said:

Is there any performance overhead by having the steam console running in the background (versus simply launching the Microsoft version from desktop), or is would that steam overhead be minimal?

Here's Win 10 Task manager showing Steam running. Doesn't use much resources, however, if you have other Steam games/sims, watch out for it downloading updates to that stuff in the background (you can stop these, defer them, etc).

Edited August 3, 20205 yr by Chock

Think I have decided to go via the ms store to incase some developers could not be bothered with steam

16 minutes ago, suchw said:

Think I have decided to go via the ms store to incase some developers could not be bothered with steam

A wise decision on your part. 

 

In my opinion, if a developer pulls a stunt like that, they are hopelessly stupid.

2 minutes ago, ahsmatt7 said:

In my opinion, if a developer pulls a stunt like that, they are hopelessly stupid.

Currently in FSX:SE you can buy content directly from a developer and install it in your Steam version of FSX.  I don't see why MSFS should be different. If there is some requirement to purchase only through the Microsoft Store for the non-Steam version, I'm not aware of it.

Hook

14 minutes ago, LHookins said:

Currently in FSX:SE you can buy content directly from a developer and install it in your Steam version of FSX.  I don't see why MSFS should be different. If there is some requirement to purchase only through the Microsoft Store for the non-Steam version, I'm not aware of it.

Hook

Certainly the million dollar question

3 minutes ago, suchw said:

Certainly the million dollar question

I figure I'll burn that bridge when I get to it. 🙂 

If someone uses Steam for a lot of other games and is part of a Steam community, then having the Steam version would be very useful.  I can get most of the benefits of Steam by adding an outside game as a non-Steam game to my Steam interface.

Hook

19 minutes ago, LHookins said:

Currently in FSX:SE you can buy content directly from a developer and install it in your Steam version of FSX.  I don't see why MSFS should be different. If there is some requirement to purchase only through the Microsoft Store for the non-Steam version, I'm not aware of it.

Hook

You and I are on the same page. I was just saying that if a developer didn't do what was needed to get it to the steam store then they are very mislead. 

if you were to buy it from steam, would you get access on your xbox, too?

The one reason that I can think of is that some "future" content might be on sale through Steam only and not through the marketplace but I'm speculating as usual.

I'm not going to worry about why some developer makes the business decisions he does.  Obviously by offering the DLC on Steam it will be exposed to a much larger audience, but the dev would have to pay a commission to Steam to sell there.  Depending on the mass appeal of a given DLC it may be to the developer's benefit to only sell it directly.

For FSX:SE, A2A only offers the J3 Cub, not the rest of the aircraft they make.  Or at least that was the situation last time I looked.  

There are other issues buying a DLC version through Steam.  At least some of the DLC is DRM locked so that it can only be used through Steam, and some DLC has been otherwise modified, usually simplified.  I prefer to buy my DLC from the developer, even at a higher price.

Without knowing the reasons a developer makes his marketing decisions, I'm not going to fault him for whatever he does.

Hook

17 minutes ago, LHookins said:

I'm not going to worry about why some developer makes the business decisions he does.  Obviously by offering the DLC on Steam it will be exposed to a much larger audience, but the dev would have to pay a commission to Steam to sell there.  Depending on the mass appeal of a given DLC it may be to the developer's benefit to only sell it directly.

For FSX:SE, A2A only offers the J3 Cub, not the rest of the aircraft they make.  Or at least that was the situation last time I looked.  

There are other issues buying a DLC version through Steam.  At least some of the DLC is DRM locked so that it can only be used through Steam, and some DLC has been otherwise modified, usually simplified.  I prefer to buy my DLC from the developer, even at a higher price.

Without knowing the reasons a developer makes his marketing decisions, I'm not going to fault him for whatever he does.

Hook

Interesting stuff about A2A. Did they ever give a reason as to why they didn't offer any other airplanes for the steam version?

I recall someone saying in a different thread....or maybe this one, that the steam version of fsx was tweaked a bit and they required devs to tweak their add ons. With that said, if msfs from steam wasn't any different from msfs from the MS store, then we should be ok. 

Either way, if I have the option of buying a product outside of steam, I'll always pick that avenue over doing it through steam. 

 

Time will tell I suppose.