I still don't believe that flight simmers were Lockheed Martin's target customer. We're beta testers paying for the opportunity to test their software. Their target market is the commercial customers.

XPlane was first released in 1995.  Over the years it has manged to co-exist/compete with Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.0/5.1 , FS95, FS98, FS2000, FS2002, FS2004 and FSX .  I cannot see XPlane suddenly failing after 26 years just because MSFS has been released.

As for P3D who knows, it may well move out of the mass consumer market and focus more on commercial/professional applications.

At first folks went from FSX to P3D because of the 64 bit architecture.  Now, since the advent of MSFS I think the days are ticking for P3D and perhaps even X-Plane. 

Not surprised regarding their statement.  Just last night I had posted a Beech Baron pic on Reddit...and it had a lot of upvotes (mine usually only get less than 100).  A post just beneath mine was showing a simple user poll (again, it's Reddit, large userbase, but well....it's Reddit lol) - anyway the poll showed MSFS largely in front of XP11....while P3D users were very small....  maybe 10-15 percent of the sims listed in the poll.  I think options were MSFS, XP11, DCS, P3D and FSX.

Maybe upon release MSFS was laughed at by hard core XP or P3D users....  but I think the tables have turned.  Unless you're really working on instrument stuff and you don't care at all about the outside world, it's hard to pass up the views in MSFS.

At FS2Crew, we still sell some FSX / P3D programs, but the shift is clearly over to MSFS.

We expect MSFS addons to represent 90 plus percent of all sales within the next 12 months.

Once PMDG gets their 737 into MSFS and maybe the FS Labs Bus as well, then we think it'll be basically over for P3D/FSX.

FSX/P3D have had a great run and were brilliant in their day, but MSFS is clearly the future.

5 hours ago, MrNuke said:

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.

Yeah, it would be a sunk cost.

There is still a P3D market, although it’s very small now. i think the 3rd party devs that are part done a P3D project need to estimate how many sales of their product they will sell on P3D when it’s released, versus the remaining cost of completing the product.

For example, a product that is 85% complete for P3D may generate a profit for the cost of the remaining 15% that needs to be completed.  In this case, it makes sense to complete the remaining 15%.

For another P3D product that is 20% complete, if finishing the remaining 80% is not estimated  to generate a profit, then the 3rd party developer may have an incentive to abandon this product and stop development of it.

 

4 hours ago, W2DR said:

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.

Ironically, this will probably hasten the decline of P3D for home users of it (of course there are home users of P3D, they are just side skirting the license).  The fact that LM is not allowed to communicate with home users, it will just accelerate the switching of home users to MSFS, because Asobo/Microsoft are allowed to communicate with its user base, and therefore, customize MSFS better for home users.

6 hours ago, W2DR said:

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.

Then P3D users shouldn't be surprised by this shift and also, we totally get the third party developers view here as well. 

Anyway, most likely P3D will survive with its commercial users based and MSFS for sure is already dominating the sim market. The big issue for LM will be, if Microsoft decided to develop an enterprise sim based on MSFS (which I wouldn't be surprised if they are already doing this) that targets the commerical users as well, then I would say P3D will be in real trouble

I think it would probably be more accurate to say that many P3D users who were also customers of JF (since that's the statistic they can go off) have switched their buying habits to MSFS. From this we might infer or extrapolate to say it is a general trend, but if people were not buying P3D stuff from Just Flight, they probably won't buy MSFS stuff from them either.

Moreover, MSFS is great, but with so many really exceptional airliners and things for P3D, it'll be a long while before I'll consider not using it at all. It costs me nothing other than HD space to keep P3D around..

Chicken and egg isn't it...  there are no products being released for P3D so of course sales are down.  The developers are cashing in by selling quickly cobbled together stuff to MSFS users. 

3 hours ago, Chock said:

 

Moreover, MSFS is great, but with so many really exceptional airliners and things for P3D, it'll be a long while before I'll consider not using it at all. It costs me nothing other than HD space to keep P3D around..

It is not "still using it" that is the metric, it is whether you are still buying updates and new addons.

People were still riding their BSA and Norton motorcycles long after the companies that made them were defunct and the factories closed down. That did not change anything about the state of the British motorcycle industry.

10 hours ago, RobJC said:

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

6 hours ago, N11369 said:

At first folks went from FSX to P3D because of the 64 bit architecture.  Now, since the advent of MSFS I think the days are ticking for P3D and perhaps even X-Plane. 

Did you read the linked post by Derek (Jusflight)?
Here's an excerpt for you:

Quote

Likewise, the predicted demise of X-Plane was just that - a prediction - and, as we are seeing in the European Championships, predictions can often be misleading. In contrast to P3D, the X-Plane market is holding up well.

I'm really sorry for P3D users. But don't put X-Plane in the same basket please.

Pascal

12 hours ago, fppilot said:

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.

I only got MSFS 2020 in February, so I guess I missed statements by others. 

9 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

XPlane was first released in 1995.  Over the years it has manged to co-exist/compete with Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.0/5.1 , FS95, FS98, FS2000, FS2002, FS2004 and FSX .  I cannot see XPlane suddenly failing after 26 years just because MSFS has been released.

As for P3D who knows, it may well move out of the mass consumer market and focus more on commercial/professional applications.

Poll after poll over the years has always put XP in 3rd place as far as active users go. I think now that MSFS is out, that gap will get even wider with MSFS taking the lead by a huge margin. If I was a developer guess which sim  I would focus  on. 

Edited July 9, 20214 yr by Bobsk8

Quite weird to read such statements from Justflight. They have abandoned their P3D products all of a sudden half a year ago. Their BAe146 P3D version got the last update December last year and since then silence. The much needed and promised FMC update and other needed fixes never made it. Their external FMS developer is not able to update in half a year? Come on... 

I am certainly not one of these P3D customers  buying their MSFS stuff now. I am done with Justflight.