MSFS download numbers

[Theboot100 404]

Austin does have an untouched userbase of mac and Linux.  He has stated before that xplane mobile is driving the revenue.

I hope he does not stop developing for desktop.  Competition is good, and he is very passionate about xplane.

From what I can gather xplane 12 will have a massive graphical upgrade.  Most of the autogen is getting redone.  Keeping the 3rd party devs on board is very important because that's what drives the longevity of the sim.  I think he missed out on the opportunity off having an official xplane store - and take a cut from the sales, as that will drive revenue for the desktop version.

Having competing sims is what pushes innovation, rather than stagnation.

[akita 429]

What are we talking about here? Future potential of sales and revenue of LR/MSFS as a platform? Only desktop?

If the latter, then why some are talking about xbox?

If the first, then Xplane currently by far has the biggest market with 5M+ installs on android only. I have no official numbers for desktop and ios but that number above is already at least 2.5x bigger than MSFS. 

[Chock 17,769]

18 minutes ago, akita said:

Xplane currently by far has the biggest market with 5M+ installs on android only. I have no official numbers for desktop and ios but that number above is already at least 2.5x bigger than MSFS. 

Not really surprising when it is free. It's not really much skin of anyone's nose to at least have a look at something which isn't going to cost them anything. Can't say it appeals to me, but if some people like it then whatever floats their boat. To be fair, I'm not exactly the target market for it, my phone is for phone calls, taking the odd picture and one or two work-related apps, I don't really use it for very much else so I'd have no inclination to sit their playing a flight sim on it, it just doesn't appeal to me to use that kind of device to do that sort of thing.

[Bobsk8 12,945]

25 minutes ago, Chock said:

Not really surprising when it is free. It's not really much skin of anyone's nose to at least have a look at something which isn't going to cost them anything. Can't say it appeals to me, but if some people like it then whatever floats their boat. To be fair, I'm not exactly the target market for it, my phone is for phone calls, taking the odd picture and one or two work-related apps, I don't really use it for very much else so I'd have no inclination to sit their playing a flight sim on it, it just doesn't appeal to me to use that kind of device to do that sort of thing.

Can't imagine how non-immersion it would be playing a  Flight Sim on my smartphone. What's next, flying on my smartwatch or Fitbit? 

[abrams_tank 7,536]

1 hour ago, akita said:

What are we talking about here? Future potential of sales and revenue of LR/MSFS as a platform? Only desktop?

If the latter, then why some are talking about xbox?

If the first, then Xplane currently by far has the biggest market with 5M+ installs on android only. I have no official numbers for desktop and ios but that number above is already at least 2.5x bigger than MSFS. 

X-Box matters because many 3rd party scenery developers will get additional sales on X-Box.  X-Plane mobile does very little to help the 3rd party developers of complex planes and scenery that is over $20 USD.  In fact, I highly doubt even 1% of mobile users are willing to spend money on an add-on that costs over $20 USD.  

On the other hand, there will be X-Box players that will purchase add-ons even above $20 USD because that it's a different market.  Orbx and other scenery developers, and lower cost aircraft makers like Carenado will have a field day on X-Box.

I doubt that X-Plane on mobile will be enough to save X-Plane on desktop.  They are very different markets, very different consumers, and X-Plane mobile won't stop an exodus of 3rd party developers from leaving X-Plane desktop, if MSFS gains further traction among the consumer home desktop market.

Edited July 19, 2021 by abrams_tank

[akita 429]

1 hour ago, Chock said:

Not really surprising when it is free. It's not really much skin of anyone's nose to at least have a look at something which isn't going to cost them anything. Can't say it appeals to me, but if some people like it then whatever floats their boat. To be fair, I'm not exactly the target market for it, my phone is for phone calls, taking the odd picture and one or two work-related apps, I don't really use it for very much else so I'd have no inclination to sit their playing a flight sim on it, it just doesn't appeal to me to use that kind of device to do that sort of thing.

It's not my type too but for many others it is.

The same goes for MSFS, does somebody actually think there are 2M constant users of MSFS?

Some here are speculating for the future with a very selective POV, say maybe tomorrow Xplane will open it's current mobile marketplace to 3rd party developers with some commission, at least 5M+ *potential* customers for developers but also revenue for LR.

[akita 429]

17 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

X-Box matters because many 3rd party scenery developers will get additional sales on X-Box.  X-Plane mobile does very little to help the 3rd party developers of complex planes and scenery that is over $20 USD.  In fact, I highly doubt even 1% of mobile users are willing to spend money on an add-on that costs over $20 USD.  

On the other hand, there will be X-Box players that will purchase add-ons even above $20 USD because that it's a different market.  Orbx and other scenery developers, and lower cost aircraft makers like Carenado will have a field day on X-Box.

I doubt that X-Plane on mobile will be enough to save X-Plane on desktop.  They are very different markets, very different consumers, and X-Plane mobile won't stop an exodus of 3rd party developers from leaving X-Plane desktop, if MSFS gains further traction among the consumer home desktop market.

LR are doing the exact opposite, they are merging the code with desktop. So an almost single code base that is cross-platform that may yield potential market of millions, much more likely than the Xplane desktop (which has active profissional contracts too) fading away anytime soon.

As for 3rd party, it's up to them what to chrage so no point discussing that.

Edited July 19, 2021 by akita

[abrams_tank 7,536]

36 minutes ago, akita said:

LR are doing the exact opposite, they are merging the code with desktop. So an almost single code base that is cross-platform that may yield potential market of millions, much more likely than the Xplane desktop (which has active profissional contracts too) fading away anytime soon.

As for 3rd party, it's up to them what to chrage so no point discussing that.

We have discussed this before. The type of features on X-Plane mobile may not be the same that desktop users of X-Plane may want.  Again, I point to DLSS.  DLSS is something that desktop users of X-Plane would want.  But DLSS is not supported in most mobile phones.

Conversely, Asobo has been asked about DLSS and it's something that Asobo said they may consider, after they move MSFS to DirectX 12 for PC.

 

Quote

As for 3rd party, it's up to them what to chrage so no point discussing that.

I hope you don't go to business school because as a professor, I would fail your paper if you wrote that.  What 3rd party developers can charge is based on the consumer.  And consumers for mobile have a much different mind set and price they are willing to pay for add-ons, as opposed to consumers on desktop (because all the "serious" flight sim enthusiasts are on desktop and not mobile).  For starters, at X-Plane.com's page, they are charging $0.99 USD to purchase for each additional aircraft: https://www.x-plane.com/kb/how-to-buy-add-on-aircraft-in-x-plane-for-android/.  Companies like PMDG, FSLabs, etc, won't sell their planes for $0.99 USD, period. 

Edited July 19, 2021 by abrams_tank

[rka 916]

52 minutes ago, akita said:

LR are doing the exact opposite, they are merging the code with desktop. So an almost single code base that is cross-platform that may yield potential market of millions, much more likely than the Xplane desktop (which has active profissional contracts too) fading away anytime soon.

As for 3rd party, it's up to them what to chrage so no point discussing that.

Making XP more like XP mobile "may yield potential market of millions"? I mean yeah, possibly, but this potential market has nothing in common with the market formed by people owning PCs (or Xboxes) to run flight sims on, so there's not much point in discussion that IMO.

Edited July 19, 2021 by rka
added xbox

[Gulfstream 416]

I feel for LR in this case, especially Austin, Ben and others are extremely talented developers and aviation geeks.

But when you look at this realistically, you have a small company with a lot of technical debt going against a company with infinite money and who was able to start "clean sheet".

Unless X-Plane goes completely back to the drawing board and rebuilds a modern graphics engine, it simply won't be able to compete in visuals.  And taking a step like that would require many years of work, with a very small team.  And it requires a lot of experts in cutting-edge computer graphics techniques, who all likely work for companies like Asobo or other AAA gaming companies.

Vulkan was a step, but that alone does not get you the graphics pipeline you need for something like MSFS2020.

At the end of the day, it looks like they have to look towards the numbers.  And that would be mobile, and whatever contracts/sales have coming in for official FAA simulator bases.  I am not sure if they can fight MSFS on graphics going forward.

[akita 429]

24 minutes ago, rka said:

Making XP more like XP mobile "may yield potential market of millions"? I mean yeah, possibly, but this potential market has nothing in common with the market formed by people owning PCs (or Xboxes) to run flight sims on, so there's not much point in discussion that IMO.

Not to look like mobile, but share a similar code base, i.e. using the same formats, the same flight model...

Fancy graphics features are mostly fancy shaders those can be stripped down for a mobile version.

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

 hope you don't go to business school because as a professor, I would fail your paper if you wrote that. 

And I would not care less.

Everything u said is irrelevant to discuss, every developer is entitled to run his own company the way he wants. If he wants to charge 100$ or 1$ is up to him so as his reputation, and it is up to the customer to buy or not and therfore the developer reacts. Why should I care?

[Janov 2,383]

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

I hope you don't go to business school because as a professor, I would fail your paper if you wrote that. 

Its a good thing you are not a professor at a business school, because this sentence shows that your election into professorial status would have been a major fail. 😆 (Like most of your pseudo-economy-scientific claims here hint at, too).

The sentence

1 hour ago, akita said:

As for 3rd party, it's up to them what to chrage

is completely correct. A 3rd party dev could charge 10.000.000 dollars for his airport or aircraft, if he choses so. There is no law or rule outlawing this. It might not make SENSE in the business sense, but it is certainly up to them.

Hence the statement is correct - and any professor failing a paper because of that sentence would be wrong.

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by Janov

[abrams_tank 7,536]

7 minutes ago, Janov said:

is completely correct. A 3rd party dev could charge 10.000.000 dollars for his airport or aircraft, if he choses so. There is no law or rule outlawing this. It might not make SENSE in the business sense, but it is certainly up to them.

Hence the statement is correct - and any professor failing a paper because of that sentence would be wrong.

 

The paper is a fail because it shows no thought by the business student.  PMDG can charge $999,999,999 USD for the 737 when they release it on MSFS.  Will they maximize their revenue and profit?  Of course not.  

Again, a business professor would fail you because the student hasn't given any thought into pricing.  If you think "companies can charge anything they want," you don't need to go to business school.  LOL, everyone knows that before they enter business school, just save your money and time. Business professors grade papers based on the thought the student has put into it. 

Edited July 19, 2021 by abrams_tank

[abrams_tank 7,536]

9 minutes ago, akita said:

Not to look like mobile, but share a similar code base, i.e. using the same formats, the same flight model...

Fancy graphics features are mostly fancy shaders those can be stripped down for a mobile version.

And I would not care less.

Everything u said is irrelevant to discuss, every developer is entitled to run his own company the way he wants. If he wants to charge 100$ or 1$ is up to him so as his reputation, and it is up to the customer to buy or not and therfore the developer reacts. Why should I care?

This is exactly the point.  Your business analysis is very poor.  Your entire analysis of X-Plane's business is wrong on so many levels.  Any company that charges mobile consumers of X-Plane $100 on an add-on is a company that will fail.  The fact that you don't understand this tells volumes.

[akita 429]

9 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

The paper is a fail because it shows no thought by the business student.  PMDG can charge $999,999,999 USD for the 737 when they release it on MSFS.  Will they maximize their revenue and profit?  Of course not.  

Again, a business professor would fail you because the student hasn't given any thought into pricing.  If you think "companies can charge anything they want," you don't need to go to business school.  LOL, everyone knows that before they enter business school, just save your money and time. Business professors grade papers based on the thought the student has put into it. 

Love it how you give grades to me while it's only your pure imagination driving you to comment on what *you think* I wrote.

I never talked about what a developer should do to maximize his profits or succeed, simply about a potential market of millions in Xplane thay may be available for 3d party in the future, as part of your own future speculations.

What developers do about that is up to them, i'll recommend you as an advisor.

Edited July 19, 2021 by akita