X-Plane 11: Where Have I Been All Your Life?

[tonywob 4,768]

10 minutes ago, peroni said:

Interesting, I wonder if @tonywob sees a similar thing over at Orbx?

There's no doubt that MFS currently has a bigger market for any potential developers wanting to make scenery, however there are still users who want P3D and XP products out there and probably any developer who stays exclusively on these platforms would have less competition but also less users in the short-term.

The SDK is still quite limited compared to P3D and X-Plane, but it hasn't stopped an explosion of new developers appearing recently (and others switching from X-Plane and P3D). I expect competition to get tougher for developers, especially for those wanting to stand out in the crowd. e.g. I noticed yesterday that there are two developers working on TNCM, and I think we can expect more of this moving forward. 

[leon310 26]

WOW! This will never end. Comparing Microsoft FS to x-plane. I spent a lot of money on FS9 and FSX add ons. I have spent less than 500 USD on X-plane 11. I do not buy any airport scenery or terrain mesh. I have bought x-plane 11 and some aircraft. The default scenery in x-plane is great. 10 times better than FSX or FS9.

I have been using x-plane 11 for just over a year and love it. I will not switch ever again. Long live x-plane.

[BigDee 119]

So, 4 pages of discussions for a simple point, freeware airports XP vs FS. 38 to 42 posts. This is how the discussion has ended on one side:

"What a bunch of..."

Ongoing discussions followed by that for defending FS:

-helicopters -online streamed scenery -the leader of flights sims in the future -marketplace...

Great, so everytime there is a FS user present, we will have to cycle all the points, if a discussion has begun concerning only one point?

 

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/1250410,269950#3m

Thank you Jan for the link.

Wow, I never imagined I will see any time such numbers. The user base is falling like a stock-market crash. 61775 to 4942.

Can I start dreaming of FS becoming bankrupt? After all there are millions of GTA players that would love this pseudo sim.

Edited October 21, 2020 by BigDee

[tonywob 4,768]

18 minutes ago, BigDee said:

Wow, I never imagined I will see any time such numbers. The user base is falling like a stock-market crash. 61775 to 4942.

I'd take these stats with a grain of salt, as I imagine most people have purchased their sims elsewhere, however it does show a trend, and that is that people get bored quickly and this I think was fairly predictable. Just like with any game, it's popular for a few weeks and then usage drops when people move on to newer and shinier things. The important thing is how many actually stick around and turn it into a hobby. I suspect we'll see similar when it comes out on the xbox, with a large peak of users and then a drop as they get bored a few weeks later and move on. MS will try to keep it interesting with new content updates every few weeks, but I feel this will only go so far to keep the momentum going.

Another thing to consider is that MFS is marketed more to the gaming crowd, and naturally will attract more users. Look at the efforts MS took to get certain "influencers" to use their sim, including some oddly-chosen Youtubers who had never touched a flight sim in their life and really did the sim no favours. X-Plane and P3D certainly aren't marketed in this way, and people who purchase these sims likely were already simmers and were either switching sims, upgrading or actually using it to supplement training. I can't imagine many gamers just buying X-Plane or P3D because it's fun 🙂

 

 

[Greazer 1,320]

4 hours ago, Janov said:

MSFS currently getting about 4x as many people flying it than XP (8000 vs 2000)

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/1250410,269950#3m

XP numbers are inflated because MSFS is the new guy on the block and is only starting to gain traction in terms of addons, especially complex airliner sims.  When these come, the gap will be widening. Which is unfortunate for XP but developers need to step up and fix all the known bugs and issues and improve the world environment and implement proper world winds etc. Until then it's not a realistic sim.

Edited October 21, 2020 by Greazer

[mSparks 2,086]

2 hours ago, tonywob said:

and this I think was fairly predictable.

It seems to me OrbX (correctly imho) threw some of their reputation to the dogs on that prediction.... 😛

[Bjoern 1,153]

So what's you people's favourite activity in X-Plane at the moment?

Mine is crashing the program with some self-made Lua scripts.

Edited October 21, 2020 by Bjoern

[Janov 2,383]

9 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

So what's you people's favourite activity in X-Plane at the moment?

Mine is crashing the program with some self-made Lua scripts.

I am firing it up several times a day to check in-game progress on my LEBB Bilbao revamp.

[mjrhealth 820]

8 hours ago, Janov said:

My take is that the bottom line will be the users suffering from the fracturing of an already small base number which will curtail studios ability to invest in resources to further the development (or withdraw altogether because corporate board predictions don´t materialize).

Cheers, Jan

As I have being saying all along. The investors wil make the decision.

[mSparks 2,086]

9 hours ago, Janov said:

So effectively the new competition is just cutting into each other´s profit...it remains to be seen if the new competition is driving the studios to new heights in achieving new realism for the users, some people think that LR and LM have been doodling away not doing much just because they could

maybe...

To bring this point acutely back on topic, I suspect that the msfs market researchers never looked any deeper at XP than the XP11 demo, and decided winning over the fairly sizable XP11 crowd would be easy because out of the box the XP11 demo, - especially pre vulkan XP11 - makes roadkill look like an attractive meal.

And most "normal people" dont want to spend time modding stuff and making it their own anyway. 

It was always obvious they got that bit badly wrong.

MS still have the xbox crowd to wow, they do have a new game engine asset to start leveraging, neither will command the prices being charged so far, but the xbox market exceeds desktop tenfold at least.

Just like mobile has been funding XP desktop dev, MSFS may well limp along for a long while yet once series X hits the store shelves (assuming Sony dont destroy them like last time, which is a big assumption)

Edited October 21, 2020 by mSparks

[jcomm 5,890]

I would rather prefer to see us users spending our energies on finding ways to better feed the developers, on whatever platform we're using / supporting, with information / feedback about what we like, what we don't like, what we find really a must have for future releases / updates, what, even if not prioritary, we would like to see making it's way into the new version...

I don't think any arguments / theories about the number of potential users, based on statistics or effective sales numbers should condition either LR or MS / ASOBO.

Each on their own appear rather resilient, LR because it's a small company, has some niche users that are probably more than sufficient to make their earnings, and will continue to get their support from users that are true fans, or use X-Plane for real trainning, don't want to use MS OS, etc...

OTOH this turn around, MS has made a completely different type of investment. Basically they gave ASOBO access to data sources that they already own, the Azure technology at the core of their modern business, Bing for World coverage, and handed development to a small / medium software house in Europe which AFAIK is not only involved in MFS, and will have time, and I strongly believe enthusiasm enough to keep supporting their "creation" and try to come as close as possible to all of the major 3pd requests.

Contrarilly to what most think, I really don't believe LR is under any pressure, and on the MFS side, MFS is built on a completely different model from the one that ruined MS FLIGHT, to my dismay in 2012 😕

A totally different situation is that of the many 3pds that depend on XP and now prospective MFS add-ons development. I believe XP add-on producers have seen their sales strongly affected in the last few months, and while things can change in the future, MFS is still driving many users away from investing in XP at the moment. OTOH there being yet no commercial add-ons available for MFS with the level of sophistication that is typical of the so called "study level" add-ons available for FSX / P3D because the MFS SDK is still rather crude, developers wanting to jump, or also cover MFS together with products for other platforms will have some difficulty at least while the SDK doesn't grow into something more extensive and better documented.

Actually, it's from Free MODs that the best offers in terms of aircraft and systems are reaching the user community, pretty much like what was typical of each new platform when released ( fs4, fs5, ... fsx... and some XP versions ). I believe that just like before this will continue to grow, but sooner or latter commercial aircraft and other types of add-ons with an higher level of sophistication will make their way into the scene.

To sum up, what I want to pass is the idea that trying, from the XP or MFS sides to throw stones at the other side, based on the success or the decay of the other platform with time, due to this or that reasons, is a simple waste of precious time and energy, better applied in concentraring on passing the message to the core developers of XP, MFS, P3D, AEFS, ... about what we as users want to have for future updates.

Edited October 21, 2020 by jcomm

[Greazer 1,320]

4 hours ago, Bjoern said:

So what's you people's favourite activity in X-Plane at the moment?

Trying to pull off a perfect smooth approach at NZQN RNAV-Y 23 in the Toliiss A319.

[BigDee 119]

9 hours ago, tonywob said:

I'd take these stats with a grain of salt, as I imagine most people have purchased their sims elsewhere, however it does show a trend, and that is that people get bored quickly and this I think was fairly predictable. Just like with any game, it's popular for a few weeks and then usage drops when people move on to newer and shinier things.

There is a spike when something new gets released, but the graph curve on FS steam just looks like a glide slope that is going rapidly down. I just cannot imagine FS gamers are paying 70 to 130$ just to abandon FS after 2 months. 

Of couse FS was likely primarly sold in the MFS store.

But still.

1 hour ago, jcomm said:

better applied in concentraring in passing the message to the core developers of XP, MFS, P3D, AEFS, ... about what we as users want to have for future updates.

Of course user suggestions are always good, but having watched the Feedback Snapshot of FS and the reality, personally just for me, I think LR solely does now what is right for X-Plane 12, because they are the ones that produce X-Plane and have the skills to develop a complex flight simulator. 

Edited October 21, 2020 by BigDee

[mSparks 2,086]

1 hour ago, BigDee said:

 I just cannot imagine FS gamers are paying 70 to 130$ just to abandon FS after 2 months. 

like any reputable law abiding store/company, valve/steam gives refunds if you are not satisfied it was what you expected.

Normally after two hours game time, but this has been greatly extended for msfs because the installation process counts as steam play time and takes hours if not days.

Edited October 21, 2020 by mSparks

[tonywob 4,768]

8 hours ago, BigDee said:

I just cannot imagine FS gamers are paying 70 to 130$ just to abandon FS after 2 months. 

I can imagine it.... even for myself, there are many times I've dropped $70 for a game, played it a few times and moved on. Nothing against the games, just better things come out or I find something else to do. The last game I picked up was Red Dead Redemption 2, and that was expensive, but it was a masterpiece, but even that didn't make me stick much to it once I'd completed the main game, or use the online mode with DLC.