15 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

So, Scottoest, as Asobo are still patching the game, they are thus still developing it, then, according to your logic, once all the patches are out, development has ceased, only then does the 10 year support kick in? I think not. Methinks a 10 year contract is exactly that, from initial signing date. But, who knows & it's really not that important at all.

 

Asobo can still be technically "supporting" MSFS with 1 employee.  If there is 1 employee from Asobo supporting MSFS over 10 years, technically, Asobo is still supporting MSFS.

It's very weird that people have to think either all 200 Asobo employees are working on MSFS, or they aren't.  It's doesn't have to be black or white.  It can also be "grey."

What will likely happen is that Asobo will continue to have a large number of employees working on MSFS up to and perhaps a few months after the XBox release (as Asobo mentioned in their latest Q&A, the fixes they make to the PC version also apply to the XBox version).  At a certain point, when a lot of the bugs are fixed, employees will gradually be shifted to other projects.  And it's not like employees working on MSFS are entirely shifted 100% to work on another project.  Asobo can shift 50% of an employee's time on a new project, while retaining 50% of their time on MSFS. 

I suspect over say 1 year of MSFS's release, there will be a reduction of employees working on MSFS.  And the reduction will continue over time. After 5 years of MSFS, I wouldn't be surprised if a team that is smaller than 30 employees are still working on MSFS (and some of them may not be even working full time on MSFS).  In fact, given that MSFS has been a commercial success, when Asobo shifts some of the employees off of MSFS 2020, they may even put these employees on a future version of MSFS (ie. MSFS 2030).

The only exception is Microsoft sees a large potential with selling MSFS commercially. If the revenue stream from selling MSFS commercially is very high, that could keep all 200 employees from Asobo working on MSFS.

TLDR: Supporting MSFS for 10 years doesn't mean all 200 employees are working full time on MSFS for 10 years.  Asobo can still support MSFS over a 10 year period by allocating less employees working on it over a 10 year period.

Edited October 3, 20205 yr by abrams_tank

8 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

Microsoft & Steam will still be selling it. It leaves us with the developers that provide add-ins, just like all the other sims.

Hope you are right.. 🙂

Glass half full..

8 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

I actually wonder as to the actual sales figures... i million.. Mmmmm Neither Microsoft nor Steam has given actual audited figures. 61,829 was the all time high number on Steam Players so far..Microsoft does not release numbers of sales. So, over a million sales of the game, in less than 2 months is, in all probability, creative journalistic marketing.

So, Scottoest, as Asobo are still patching the game, they are thus still developing it, then, according to your logic, once all the patches are out, development has ceased, only then does the 10 year support kick in? I think not. Methinks a 10 year contract is exactly that, from initial signing date. But, who knows & it's really not that important at all.

I'd rather get actual figures from the marketplace than from a developer.. I wonder how many have asked for refunds?

 

Once software is released, you're supporting it - whether that's with bugfixes, updates, or anything else.

"They are probably lying about sales" isn't really a take worth responding to..

10 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

Hope you are right.. 🙂

Glass half full..

 

 

It's not if the glass is half full, or half empty. It's taking what's in the glass & appreciating that! (not the quantity)

 

Asobo has about 16 other games that they are supporting. So I imagine that there are only a few working on MSFS updates & support. 

Future versions of MSFS? I doubt it very much. It will probably end up just like Windows 10, Tech has advanced so any updates in years to come, will be more like service updates, taking the sim to more advances technology, just like W10.

Anyhow, as we do not know genuine sales figures, nor how many developers are working on the game, it's irrelevant. 

Let's enjoy what we have, We have no idea of what we have surmised about!

3 hours ago, Scottoest said:

They also mention that they are apparently working on another project with Microsoft right now, though I suspect it's just a regular game, and thus maybe not that interesting to the crowd here, haha.

Hopefully MS Train Sim 2...

The stated commitment to FS20 is great but as we have seen just these last few months, unrelated events that throw a global curve ball at just about everything can come out of nowhere. Still it is encouraging.

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/586354-omg/?tab=comments#comment-4368134

 

Edited October 3, 20205 yr by Bert Pieke

According to steamspy steam sales are somewhere between 200-500k

https://steamspy.com/app/1250410

3 hours ago, Scottoest said:

https://www.madinfinite.com/news/2020/09/asobo-studio-says-it-will-maintain-content-support-and-updates-on-microsoft-flight-simulator-for-10-years/

The article originates from a publication in France, so I can't confirm the info firsthand, but this article summarizes the major points.

Seb Wloch also confirms that the sim has SOLD over a million copies (not just played via Game Pass).

They also surprisingly mention that the technical base for MSFS is apparently derived from the ForzaTech engine, which is the engine underpinning the Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon games.  Apparently Turn10 (developers of Forza Motorsport) gave them a lot of support during development.

Wloch also mentions that the sim has been in development for 7.5 years in total (at least some of that just pre-production I'm sure).

The biggest news item from this, assuming it's accurate (anyone here read french?), would undoubtedly be that they are apparently contracted to support MSFS for at LEAST the 10 year window we often hear cited.  That's not a pie-in-the-sky "we sure hope" best case scenario thing.  Second biggest item for me, is that they've apparently actually SOLD over a million copies, in addition to people curious on Game Pass.

They also mention that they are apparently working on another project with Microsoft right now, though I suspect it's just a regular game, and thus maybe not that interesting to the crowd here, haha.

This is kind of surprising since the engine looks to be sharing some things on the rendering side with A Plague Tale. There are also references to a sequel to that game (APT2) and something called Arapaho in the games executable.

Interesting article and thank you for posting it, though I should point out a few things.

The article is translated, presumably from French, which means that some words like "sold" could be lost in translation. Considering the success of the Xbox Game Pass, I wouldn't rule out a large portion of the userbase playing the simulator with a subscription.

Also, Microsoft corrected the article by stating that they are not working with Asobo on a new game, it's just the Focus Home Interactive title. IGN have posted the correct translation: https://www.ign.com/articles/flight-simulator-studio-working-on-a-new-project-with-microsoft

And finally we have even more conflicting information regarding the simulator's development time, as Jörg Neumann recently stated in an interview that they presented the Seattle tech demo to Microsoft in 2017, and shortly after they were provided the Flight Simulator X engine to expand this demo on a global scale. I guess we'll never know for sure.

For me, the most interesting information was the assistance provided by Turn 10 to adapt the Flight Simulator X engine to ForzaTech, and the plans to bring the simulator to the Xbox One S/X, if all that is translated correctly. They will have to do some hell of memory and multi-threading optimisation to run the simulator on that system, which should benefit the Windows 10 version in return so hopefully they will.

Edited October 3, 20205 yr by ChaoticBeauty

21 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

Asobo has about 16 other games that they are supporting. So I imagine that there are only a few working on MSFS updates & support. 

Asobo does not have SIXTEEN other games they are actively supporting, lol.  The studio in it's entire history has worked on just over 20 games, and a bunch of those were in a supporting role.

As the article states, Asobo is a little over 200 people total, and ~120 of them are working on Flight Simulator.right now, not counting other external partners and contractors, etc.

And we still have Xbox console sales to add to that "1 million", as well as those of us who are trialling it on Game Pass. I, for one, will definitely be purchasing it once my free Gamepass trial ends towards the end of this month. Regardless of the accuracy of the 1 million sales claim (and any deductions for refunds - are there really that  many?), this is surely already the most successful flight sim in one way or another, whether that's total sales, net sales, profit on sales, support or whatever. And being the first flight sim (as opposed to all-out game or "arcade/sim") to transition between PC and console has to make it noteworthy.

Have previous sim releases led to quite such a massive non-availability of flight hardware before? I'd be surprised.

Frankly, as long as the bugs are ironed out, and the sim remains decently useable offline (i.e. without Asobo, MS Azure MeteoBlue etc servers) in years to come, even if we don't get 10 years support from release, I think we'll have been well served. Naturally, losing some or all of that support would be a great shame.

Of course, things could go horribly wrong and leave us in the lurch - it wouldn't be the first time! But let's stay positive.🙂

I'm actually surprised that's it's only just over 1 million. 

We will see another bump in sales when VR becomes available and then when the first DLC drops I suppose.

Edited October 3, 20205 yr by Slides

9 minutes ago, Scottoest said:

Asobo does not have SIXTEEN other games they are actively supporting, lol.  The studio in it's entire history has worked on just over 20 games, and a bunch of those were in a supporting role.

As the article states, Asobo is a little over 200 people total, and ~120 of them are working on Flight Simulator.right now, not counting other external partners and contractors, etc.

Ok, they've been going for 18 years, & they list 20 games on their site, with another just contracted by Focus Home Interactive.

Anyhow..

1 minute ago, Slides said:

I'm actually surprised that's it's only just over 1 million. 

We will see another bump in sales when VR becomes available and then when the first DLC drops I suppose.

Indeed, for a niche game, it is a lot, as quoted.

1 minute ago, Wobbie said:

Indeed, for a niche game, it is a lot, as quoted.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 has sold 6.5 million copies. And that's a pretty niche game too.