The article does say 1 million unique players, which could mean literally 1 million different players. But the word unique is frequently misused and this was a marketing piece.

The release has obviously been successful in terms of numbers, but many would be gamepass users checking out the flavour of the month. Some of those may not continue when they realise they can't drop bombs or shoot down other aircraft.

2 minutes ago, G-RFRY said:

FSX sold over a million copy`s with less investment and again nearly another million on steam.

Mr Negative.

FSX relied heavily on the advancement done on prior FS iterations. Took them 3 years to release it despite that.

And FSX-SE was introduced on Steam 6 years ago, and at a 80% discount. Off course people bought it, even I did (several years after my initial DVD purchase) since I could get it for USD 5(!). Dovetail was basically giving the game away FOR FREE.
OFF COURSE IT SELLS!

"Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition, which launched yesterday, will be initially available for $4.99 for a limited time, then moving to $12.49 for the remainder of the sale, which still represents a 50% discount on the game's full price."
 

That ForzaTech engine is insane. I am so glad that it is being used in MSFS. Those of you who have played Forza Horizon 4 already know how gorgeous that game is. No wonder msfs looks breathtaking.

By the way ForzaTech will support Raytracing in Forza 8.

 

I've got a question on this. I just learned Forza Horizon is developed by Playground Games (and published by MS as is MSFS). How can Asobo use the engine developed by another developer? Obviously they had to license it? Plus, further development will depend on Playground Games.

Kind regards, Michael

50 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

Is this 1M fact, from Microsoft, or heresy from another? 

I sincerely hope you meant hearsay <whistles>

17 minutes ago, pmb said:

I've got a question on this. I just learned Forza Horizon is developed by Playground Games (and published by MS as is MSFS). How can Asobo use the engine developed by another developer? Obviously they had to license it? Plus, further development will depend on Playground Games.

Kind regards, Michael

Forzatech is a combined graphics and physics engine developed by Turn10 and Microsoft for the Forza franchise.  The developer of the game is just using that engine..  it is very rare for a dev company to also write the game engine..  independant engines such as Unity, Big World Games, Unreal, ForzaTech  etc are just tools.

Forzatech engine specializes in high-speed collision detection and physics simulation, and  was also developed for the new XBox when it comes out, so being a MS development, it makes sense that Asobo used this game engine for MSFS2020.

It's development will be down to MS and Turn10,  not the developers of Forza.

Graham

Edited October 3, 20205 yr by Moria15

13 minutes ago, 109Sqn said:

I sincerely hope you meant hearsay <whistles>

I was thinking the same, there's a big difference.

 

Wobbie, are you always this negative?  Or have you been saving up to use it here? 😉

2 minutes ago, Moria15 said:

Forzatech is a combined graphics and physics engine developed by Turn10 and Microsoft for the Forza franchise. 

....

Graham

Thanks, that makes it clear.

Kind regards, Michael

18 minutes ago, 109Sqn said:

I sincerely hope you meant hearsay <whistles>

Me bad.. Spellcheck on Android.. Hearsay it was meant to be, for clarification 

I'm not being negative, it is nice to know actual facts. 

We need a French speaker with access to the original article to know for sure what was said.

I hope that this puts a cease and desist order on those asking how long FS2020 will be around / supported.

Sheesh

bs

1 hour ago, Wobbie said:

So, if 50 thousand people played 20 times each, in a month, that's 1M users. OK, far from 1M sales. 

So, every time you start or restart the game, it counts that as a use. You reboot 5 times during a session, that's 5 uses. That makes better sense than sales of 1M. 

That... isn't even close to how the measuring of "players" works.

It means one million unique accounts downloaded and launched the sim, whether it was for five minutes or five hundred hours.

22 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

I'm not being negative, it is nice to know actual facts. 

It's both nice to know facts, AND you're being weirdly negative to an almost-conspiratorial degree.  I hesitate to call it concern trolling, though I'm not sure what to make of the assertion that each time a person reboots their computer Microsoft are counting that as a "player", for example.

The original article from La Tribune is behind a paywall, but the beginning of the article is available and I read there that when Asobo talks about 1 million copies sold, they are referring to Plague Tale Innocence and definitely not FS2020.

I can see how that could be confusing at first glance because FS2020 is mentioned earlier in the same paragraph.

After mentioning a million copies sold, Sébastien Wloch is then quoted as saying that considering the excellent reviews they got, sales should keep going at a good clip, and that is mentioned with a link to a review of Plague Tale Innocence. So there is not doubt he was not talking about FS2020. At least in that non-paywalled section of the article.

(edit: I found the complete article on pressreader and confirm the above)

Other tidbits from the full article:

- About 20 pilots in the team, half of those learned to fly during the development of the game. So they spent a lot of time developing the game around that pilot school experience.

- Planning ("à priori" meaning that's the plan) to release new free content once a month on average, and bug fixes regularly. New content will generally be focused on a large new area (continent or large territory) to incentivise pilots to discover it.

- Then each quarter new more extensive content (such as airplanes) will be released, but not for free.

- Helicopters and gliders coming

- "Flight Simulator is going to keep us busy for awhile. At least 10 years, certinaly more. We will keep our 120 employees on this project and expect to even increase that number."

Source: https://www.pressreader.com/france/la-tribune-france/20200917/281934545372753

 

 

Edited October 3, 20205 yr by Machdiamond