Just now, bonchie said:

Given there was a whole thread on the reviews being bad in the first week, I think it’s relevant to point out they’ve rebounded. 

Seeing as though lots of purchasers on Steam couldn't get the sim to run until the patch was released, I'd guess that it's easier to amend an existing / leave a new review that is positive if you can actually install and use it.

More happy users is, of course, a good thing for the sim.

20 minutes ago, SirDan said:

How awesome it would be if they all made positive review

Not possible when there were tons of people that spent days troubleshooting installation issues, and others had to wait over two weeks for a patch to finally get it working.

The simulator will not be perfect until it meets everyone's needs and the overwhelming majority have a relatively stable experience. Until then, the current simulators still have a place and they are far from dead. Things might be different in a year from now, but it's too early to make conclusions.

1 hour ago, SirDan said:

Really is a shame that more people don't use the Steam Review and post positive reviews , If over 1 million units were sold and say just 200k of them were sold on steam. How awesome it would be if they all made positive review

Well then, it is also a shame that the remaining 800k people using MSFS through MS Store are not giving it more stars or positive reviews. (Out of the current 263 reviews on MS Store 36% gave MSFS 5 stars, while 40% gave it 1 star)

In Your OP, You stated that more than 9K users gave positive reviews, but, as of this morning (9:35 AM) that is actually more people than the ones currently using MSFS through Steam. Current stat was 8,174 users.

Most steam users don't ever post a review for any game, and I don't believe that is going to change any time soon. Not even The Witcher 3, who got more than 450,000 +/- reviews (98% Overwhelmingly Positive) and sold over 40 million copies.

Note: I personally want MSFS to succeed, but IMO it is not yet ready to replace the simulators You now seem to despise. (P3D & X-Plane)

Edited September 9, 20205 yr by RamonB

I had a love/hate with FSX, loved XPlane, and am blown away by the new sim.

To be honest I have come to despise the 'serious' flight sim communities in the space of the 2 weeks I've been back reading the forums - having ignored them for years.

Good luck to you all, I'm glad not a one of you had any say how and when this sim got released.

2 hours ago, bonchie said:

Given there was a whole thread on the reviews being bad in the first week, I think it’s relevant to point out they’ve rebounded. 

Nope. Doesn't work like that. 🙃

People are more likely to post a review if they've had a negative experience, it's just human nature. Unless something is truly dreadful, 'professional' reviewers are often inclined to err on the positive side, so as not to annoy the software companies, lest it be seen as biting the hand that feeds them.

The truth is usually somewhere in the middle of all that. In the end, since it can be tried out for a quid, we can assume that most people will make their own decision on it, and at the end of the day that's really the only opinion which matters, since that is where the revenue comes from.

If you trust a reviewer to be honest based on previous form, then great, but as ever, the intertron is not regulated, so we can take a lot of things with a healthy pinch of salt. But having said that, if there are an overwhelming number of user reviews which say it's good, then generally speaking you can believe it. Nevertheless, going off initial reviews five minutes after something is out is not always a good barometer, since these might opinions which were formed too early to have discovered a major problem, or might possibly affected by installation issues.

1 hour ago, Chock said:

Nevertheless, going off initial reviews five minutes after something is out is not always a good barometer, since these might opinions which were formed too early to have discovered a major problem, or might possibly affected by installation issues.

I have learned over time, and for various reasons ,especially in regard to flight-sims and negative reviews, to take a good long look at the users actual time in-sim before they flounced off to give a scathing review.

When I see things like. "This is not a sim, total piece of garbage, don't buy this!!! Get a real sim instead!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And then check and see 25 minutes listed customer use.........

Well. Kind of speaks for itself.

That unfortunately doesn't work for MSFS, because apparently the download time went towards the listed time in game, and because so many encountered hours of errors getting the sim even working, which definitely caused a lot of initial negative reactions.

Nonetheless, the best strategy for me as far as Steam is to give reviews time to "mature" and "ripen" a bit before putting great stock in them.......

 

3 hours ago, RamonB said:

Well then, it is also a shame that the remaining 800k people using MSFS through MS Store are not giving it more stars or positive reviews. (Out of the current 263 reviews on MS Store 36% gave MSFS 5 stars, while 40% gave it 1 star)

I wouldn't read too much into the MS Store rating. From your quote I take it 5 and 1 star are the most common ratings and that shows how little sense it makes. Ratings should be centered around one particular score with a few spread out around that score and a few outliers based on anomalies. But when 76% are divided between the absolute best and worst scores that's a contradiction and doesn't make sense.

Without being cynical, I think many people just don't get how ratings work or don't care enough to leave a useful rating. I guess the 40% who gave it 1 star (which basically equals unusable) are the ones who had to wait for the patch in order for the simulator to run. But instead of using common sense by identifying this as an anomaly where something has obviously gone wrong on release and waiting until it's fixed to rate the product properly, they jump straight to leaving 1 star and that's it. With the current shortcomings in mind, this simulator is still very far from being a 1 star product. It's kind of a knee-jerk reaction.

The same thing of course applies to overly positive ratings as well, even though probably not as much. If you look at imdb movie ratings for example, often the most common ratings are 10/10 and 1/10 too because for many if they liked it it's a 10 and if they didn't like it so much it's a 1. Few reviews are actually somewhere in between and way more objective and useful. Again, knee-jerk reaction without much thought.

Edit: the same applies to many posts I've read about this simulator. For example, when some thought the simulator was "word not allowed" and advised other people not to buy it only because it didn't have a replay feature at launch. As if that's all that a simulator consists of. Yet again, worst rating based on only one aspect without seeing the bigger picture.

Edited September 9, 20205 yr by threegreen

I fully agree with You.
But my answer was to the OP wishful thinking.

Quote

"How awesome it would be if they all made positive review "

Perhaps MS should encourage MSFS users to write more in house reviews. (Good or Bad)

Just now, RamonB said:

Perhaps MS should encourage MSFS users to write more in house reviews. (Good or Bad)

Well, the marketplace only allows you to leave stars, and honestly that's pretty useless (and honestly too easy to manipulate)

My cynical side has a sneaking suspicion that this is quite deliberate.