1 hour ago, edpatino said:

Yes, tend to agree, but Navigraph was not the only partner to gather data for the survey. There were almost 26 different partners involved to collect data from users.

Anyway, maybe the others are also not very known to Xbox users either.

They will have already moved on to their next "fix", so I doubt that they will be sticking around to see the results

The most interesting thing of all to me was that 24,000 people took the survey in the first place.  I've been doing this hobby for a very long time.  We have always been a niche of a niche. I see that as a good thing as I would think that anybody taking this survey is somewhat actually into the hobby and not just some dude who has a new love for flying over their house in the new sim.  

Rob also makes an interesting point.  Regarding income/employment.  I know in the airline universe, their is a segment of the customers referred to as HVC's (high value customers).  They are the ones most likely buying upgrades and paying the highest fares.  The 80 / 20 rule if you will.  I still contend that the adage around here that MSFS is good for our hobby because it's bringing in more users is a fallacy.  No, I don't deny the new sim has made more people interested in sims.  I just think the majority of those customers are two different types.  1.  new game people who come in and go out shortly after.  2.  Regular users of the simulator, but not likely to spend significant money on addons or hardware.  Heck probably not the type to learn a full "study level" aircraft either . More the type who would be happy with a CS 777 even if it uses 747 cockpit elements.  I'm not sure that has any benefit to the more hardcore type of simmer.  Because they likely are not satisified with the current state of MSFS.  But they are stuck in a world where developer attention is far less than it was.  Which is normal for the evolution of the business.  I guess at this point it will be interesting to watch XP12 closely as well as development by LM.  

We are wrapping up 2021 and the same things we were saying in January, we are saying in December.  Flying airliners in MSFS is still not all that compelling to many of us.  And I find that very sad.  This is not how I thought I'd be feeling the very day I saw the first trailer of the unexpected MSFS.  

I am quite happy to stick with P3Dv4.5 in 2022, and see what happens as the year progresses. I am in no rush to switch sides when "Flight Unlimited Great Britain" is alive and well in P3D

43 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

 The willingness to spend on this hobby seems pretty low unfortunately. 

ill make a punt that both xp11 and ms2020 are rife with pirating, and the kids instead of spending money are taking stuff from numerous websites and discord servers what have stuff up with 1 day after release.

If the developers such as orbx, aerosoft and pmdg released polished finished products then people might be more inclined to buy them rather than rip them

Edited December 29, 20214 yr by fluffyflops

14 minutes ago, fluffyflops said:

If the developers such as orbx, aerosoft and pmdg released polished finished products then people might be more inclined to buy them rather than rip them

I don't know how rampant piracy is in flightsim.  But I would say most of the products I've purchased have been up to my expectations . I don't think it's fair to somehow suggest it is ok for a thief to be a thief.  I think those who steal will continue to steal no matter how good or bad the product is. 

Well we have still users that are floating around in 17 year old FS9 software... I take this survey with grain of salt...  Such a small user base that has taken that survey, it says more about Navigraph as anything else...

Edited December 29, 20214 yr by awf

I am astonished to see that 11% still use FS2002!! I thought that was rubbish twenty years ago.

Edited December 29, 20214 yr by Christopher Low

1 minute ago, Christopher Low said:

I am astonished to see that 11% still use FS2002!! I thought that was rubbish twenty years ago.

🤣🤣

10 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

I am astonished to see that 11% still use FS2002!! I thought that was rubbish twenty years ago.

Same people that said they were Jedi in the census 20 odd years ago 🤣🤣

33 minutes ago, micstatic said:

I don't know how rampant piracy is in flightsim.  But I would say most of the products I've purchased have been up to my expectations . I don't think it's fair to somehow suggest it is ok for a thief to be a thief.  I think those who steal will continue to steal no matter how good or bad the product is. 

I never suggested it was ok. read what i typed again.  Piracy is rife im afriad in any gaming scenario,

Im saying maybe the age of ms2020 and xp11 users are younger than p3d users,  therefore have less income and more prone to stealing stuff.

Im also implying because the general "quality control" of addons has gone down hill since this cancer of pay to beta, people are less willing ti part with their money.

 

 

1 hour ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Some important metric for me were:

• Only 50.5% surveyed were employed (which was actually higher than last year, yikes!)
• User income level would suggest not a lot of disposable income for this hobby
• 78% spend less than $400/yr on their flight simulator

I realize only 24,200 users represented out of about 2.7 Million (all platforms) so 0.8% sample.  The willingness to spend on this hobby seems pretty low unfortunately.  I couldn't find any data that indicates how much a user spends on platform X, Y, or Z etc.?  A critical metric for my goals, did I miss something?

Cheers, Rob.

I spent most of my working career as an economist doing statistical sampling.  For me this data only tells me what those who took the survey do.  If the sample size was random and I knew what the actual size of universe, maybe (a big maybe) I could see some statistical significance.  Again, this is just my opinion.  

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

I am astonished to see that 11% still use FS2002!!

Not only this. The number has GROWN over the year!

Edited December 29, 20214 yr by Rafal

1 hour ago, fluffyflops said:

I never suggested it was ok. read what i typed again.  Piracy is rife im afriad in any gaming scenario,

Im saying maybe the age of ms2020 and xp11 users are younger than p3d users,  therefore have less income and more prone to stealing stuff.

Im also implying because the general "quality control" of addons has gone down hill since this cancer of pay to beta, people are less willing ti part with their money.

 

 

Gotcha. Sorry if I misunderstood 

The most compelling news I learned was not actually the result of the survey, but the fact on the navigraph website that they have 850.000 users, which is a number equal to hard core simmers, since they are pretty much without competition??? Which really shows we are a niche.

Interesting to see the numbers and do a comparison from last year's survey.

 

When I look at the two charts posted in this thread for which sims are regularly used, mots of the "major" sim products actually when up in % usage according to the survey.

Slightly noticeable was the relatively small dip during 2021 for those still running FS2002/2004 and X-Plane 11.50+ was down slightly at ~3-4%.

 

i..e DCS World, those running a combination of P3D v4.x and v5.x, FSX and of course the MSFS sim, all increased their % usage over the previous year.

This would seem to suggest that overall the sim world is indeed alive and kicking!