I believe most of them (from what I have read) are reviewing MSFS from a gamers perspective, rather than the type of clientele we have in here at AVSIM. I am not saying that is bad, just merely stating that the perspective from a hard core simmer is surely different. 

Don't know about most sites in the picture.
But IGN's 10/10 Masterpiece..... for a Flight Simulator, is a joke, IMHO.

Edited September 8, 20205 yr by RamonB
Typo

The same reviewers that praised last of us 2.  Lol.

General positive press reviews are a good thing.  More people will buy it, more people will support addons and addon developers.

Metacritic user  reviews (over 1000) average out to 7.1 out of 10 which sounds about right given the target audience. That value hasn't changed significantly since the week of release. It's basically an average PC game.

5 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

It's basically an average PC game.

Come on, cheer up...

19 minutes ago, Turpentine said:

Come on, cheer up...

Just quoting Metacritic. This doesn't affect my enjoyment of MSFS, nor do any "expert" reviews.

I'd be more interested in seeing players' rankings. Those websites always give good ranking to AAA games and get $$$ from editors. 

Only 73% positive on Steam. 

Well... is a business after all, they want what sells

1 hour ago, ErichB said:

General positive press reviews are a good thing.  More people will buy it, more people will support addons and addon developers.

Yep. Don't get the pathetic cynicism of the so-called experts here. The fact gamer sites rated it highly is actually saying something good and it helps cast the net wider outside the cliques which have developed with flight simming.

Here is an important take:

Good reviews and good general word of mouth = Gamers purchasing MSFS

Gamers purchasing MSFS = Money to fund MSFS

Money to fund MSFS = Asobo creates improvements and new features in MSFS

Asobo creates improvements and new features in MSFS = Better platform

Better platform = Better sim experience

Better sim experience = Happier simmers

 

The key here is the more MSFS sells, the more investment in the platform and the better it is for the flight sim community. 

I think MSFS2020 is a victim of the same plight that afflicts many "new gen" or "new genre" games: behind the impressive tech or scope or narrative, there are rough edges that will only get perfected and smoothed out down the road either through updates or by other developers in other games. Kind of makes me think of Skyrim, which was to some degree mind-blowing but in other ways frustrating due to various bugs, vs The Witcher which benefitted from hindsight and lessons learned from Skyrim and other games in between.

I wouldn't be too surprised if a review for a future AAA game in the future reads like this: "In the new Battlefield Global Ops, players can create a battle royale anywhere in the world, in whatever city they fancy. The game generates each map based on actual satellite and/or photogrammetry imagery, a technique that was introduced to much awe by Asobo and Microsoft in Flight Simulator 2020, and has by now been perfected to new heights."

38 minutes ago, alexcolka said:

Well... is a business after all, they want what sells

correct.

im of the belief you have three markets here 

1. to the far left (no political pun intended) you have the "game" market ,  ms2020 fits nicely in the this category, the whole look of it, the marketing of it. jazzy music , challenges to land in Courchevel or Nice in windy conditions.  kids playing with buddies after school , before hoping onto COD or PUBG.   Do they care about doing the rnav onto 27 when the winds are just in limits? whilst sitting on vatsim wondering if youre going to have to hold ?    Nope they can just buzz around flying under bridges messing around.  I think ms2020 has captured this, and will make money on this target group.  Enough sales until the gamers get bored of it.  By that time MS would of made a nice bit of money on it and they will wean the programmers off it and say thank you very much.

2. to the far right you have the need for a professional sim to teach pilots, wether that maybe in flights schools or the military.  Do they care about jazzy music , challenges to land in Courchevel or Nice in windy conditions,  nope of course not.  There aim is to use it as a study aid for whatever reason for professional reasons.  This is where p3d comes in, and its perfect for it.  a well know brand like LM and trust me , they wont have any problems making money off it selling it to the militaries of this world.  

3.  Then you have this group in the middle. This little quirky bunch, Us "hardcore simmers", using payware a/c , activesky type apps, virtual airlines, vatsim, project fly, etc etc etc.   It is my firm believe that its this small group which has put off developers (like MS off)  from the risk of developing a sim because it neither needs to call into category 1 or 2.  There simply isnt enough scope for developers to spend alot time and cash developing it only for it to fall into this category.  I remember years ago on a Matt Davies stream he was saying there was more people playing farm simulator or truck similator than on flightsim (i forget if it was pre  p3d)  I actually believe him and I reckon for a long time there wasnt enough money in  "Simmers" to make sufficent money out of it to make it worthwhile.

Finally there wasnt one person on this planet, this time last year that could of predicted covid and the devisation it has caused, and is going to cause over the next 3 years at least.  To this point, id wager a bet there was a very very nervous bean counter and project manger that said to MS,  youd better release this now, we need to make as much money as possible while ENOUGH people have got the cash,  and we are banking on that first group to make it for us.

RDR2, GTA5 are masterpieces,  ms2020 thats a stretch.