It seems to be consistent with what Aerosoft reported last year.  Here is the quote from JustFlight:

Quote

We are now in that position with P3D. The size of the P3D market has shrunk considerably over the last 12 months.

We are not really servicing a new target market. It is our existing market but their demands have now shifted. Those customers also want to be benefitted by commerce and a large number have switched to MSFS. The new sim has certainly attracted some new (to PC flight sim) customers, but, based on what we have seen so far, they are not going to be the typical purchasers of an F28 and it is mostly our existing customers (the long-standing base) that will buy the F28. We know this from the business we have done in MSFS so far, the feedback we have seen for other developers' products and also what we have seen happen to P3D sales.

The full comment is here: https://community.justflight.com/topic/2415/is-the-f28-dead-for-p3dv4-5/4

Not too surprising. I've always felt that P3D was going to suffer the most in terms of development focus after the release of MSFS. While it still beats X-Plane in terms of quality """"study level"""" aircraft, it's exorbitantly expensive to get to an acceptable level of graphical fidelity. X-Plane has a few very committed devs and blows P3D out of the water when it comes to the amount and quality of freeware. 

7 minutes ago, liamp51 said:

Not too surprising. I've always felt that P3D was going to suffer the most in terms of development focus after the release of MSFS. 

Yup, pretty much.  The consensus I get from 3rd party developers is that if they have a new product for P3D that they have already sunk a lot of time and development into, they may continue with the product until it is completed, to try to recuperate their costs.

But for new products, it seems that most 3rd party developers are mostly developing for MSFS only.  For some scenery developers, it seems it’s not much work to also release their scenery for P3D but I think there is a case where FlyTampa yanked a scenery from P3D to focus it on MSFS instead.

As I said in the other topic in P3D fourms, the blame goes to LM for really not marketing the platform and thus losing out new users and disconnecting itself from the community. Anyway, as JF mentioned, XP is still holding up, partially I think is because X-Plane is entirely different ecosystem with different set of third party developers and still has its loyal users. Meanwhile, MSFS is viewed in my opinion, as the natural successor of P3D since they are both born out of the same FSX platform and thus, the add-ones developers whom were developing for P3D will naturally develop for MSFS as well. 

 

3 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

As I said in the other topic in P3D fourms, the blame goes to LM for really not marketing the platform and thus losing out new users and disconnecting itself from the community.

Potentially not even LM's fault for this. The license restrictions P3D is under could very well be the main problem they are facing. From a purely marketing standpoint, P3D is in a completely different ballpark to MFS and due to their licensing can never even enter the MFS market. At least "technically".

2 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

As I said in the other topic in P3D fourms, the blame goes to LM for really not marketing the platform and thus losing out new users and disconnecting itself from the community.

 

If I were a P3D home market user, I would be very annoyed that LM doesn’t really communicate with the community for the home market.  I suppose most P3D users realize that LM is prioritizing the commercial market for P3D so maybe they are used to silence from LM.

Conversely, I really like how Asobo has engaged the MSFS community.  I like voting on wishlist items and also voting on pressing bugs to fix.  And then Asobo will talk about the most voted topics at the next Twitch Q&A.  I remember we never had that level of interaction with the devs for FSX (albeit, there was no Twitch during the FSX era).

Well for the type of flying I do and where I fly I was fully loaded up on aircraft, avionics, weather textures and engines, and photoreal scenery, so despite still flying 70% of my hours there I have no planned purchases for just that reason.  I am transitioning toward MSFS albeit somewhat slowly, spending several hours a week gathering or keeping up to date with aircraft mods, avionics mods, and freeware scenery.  More than I do flying it at this point.  So if the title of this topic said transitioning instead of switching it would apply to me.

Welp...so much for the F28 purchase😒

I think a lot of people like myself decided to wait out MSFS to get things fixed.  Now, it seems closer than ever that we're going to possibly have a complete (or nearly) complete sim in the next 2 or 3 months.  With the flight plan manager, VNAV (3PDs and WT), and weather being the biggest things that are nearly fixed, or at least to a VATSIM flyable state.

**Edit** I'll take it one more step.  If PMDG outs the 37 by end of summer or even early fall, then I predict it's MSFS for 99.9% of simmers, with the exception of a couple of holdouts.

Edited July 8, 20214 yr by Jeff Nielsen

My recent experience of having to return to P3D while my PC was being repaired, made me realize that after experiencing MSFS 2020, there is absolutely no way that I could ever return to P3D. I think that anyone that is exposed to MSFS, is going to feel the same way pretty quickly. 

2 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

My recent experience of having to return to P3D while my PC was being repaired, made me realize that after experiencing MSFS 2020, there is absolutely no way that I could ever return to P3D. I think that anyone that is exposed to MSFS, is going to feel the same way pretty quickly. 

I will not disagree now, but that statement was made by others as early as late last August or early September, and countless times since then.

The day MSFS was announced the writing was on the wall for P3D and XP. It only gets tougher for them moving forward. 

2 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

Yup, pretty much.  The consensus I get from 3rd party developers is that if they have a new product for P3D that they have already sunk a lot of time and development into, they may continue with the product until it is completed, to try to recuperate their costs.

I understand that this may indeed be happening, but an economist would argue the time spent on developing that P3D product is a sunk cost and should be considered irrelevant to future plans. I totally get there are well reasoned arguments and cases to be made to ignore this i.e. a small developer needing cash flow to hold them over. With that being said though, any developmental time on P3D is a potentially wasted opportunity cost for time spent on developing for MSFS; and whatever projected sales the developers had for P3D projects when creating them are likely out the window. I'm thinking of a certain Concorde/A320 series developer that could be in this situation right now.

Edited July 9, 20214 yr by MrNuke

12 minutes ago, MrNuke said:

... I'm thinking of a certain Concorde/A320 series developer that could be in this situation right now.

Me too. This discussion always makes me think of FSL.

I find FSL a bit stubborn and perhaps being stubborn is what makes their products so good. It might be quite some time before FSL moves to MSFS.

I'll be following FSL with interest. I sure was looking forward to the Concord.

 

2 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

If I were a P3D home market user, I would be very annoyed that LM doesn’t really communicate with the community for the home market.  I suppose most P3D users realize that LM is prioritizing the commercial market for P3D so maybe they are used to silence from LM.

There is no "home" market for P3D. LM is precluded by licensing restrictions from providing P3D for recreational use. Hence the perceived silence to the home user.