1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

So Asobo is essentially the art crew? Made a bunch of textures and 3D models and wrote some new shaders? Took 200+ people to do that??

"Took 200+ people to do that??"

so true. Bruce Artwick, developer of the very first pc flight simulator ( "... a few of them got PPLs",) he did not have a PPL at the time, wrote the code all alone by himself.

"a bunch of textures and 3D models and wrote some new shaders?"

true, just add a bunch of textures and shaders, it's that simple.

I agree, typical waste of Microsoft shareholder's hard earned money.

what do you expect from a 59 $ game store product?

Edited December 4, 20223 yr by turbomax

16 minutes ago, turbomax said:

I agree, typical waste of Microsoft shareholder's hard earned money.

Its sooo much more than that.

From the pre MS launch days the best analogy I came up with is the paper airplane example.

A child can make any old paper airplane.

But simulating an arbitary paper airplane well can easily take 10 years and a couple of PHDs worth of r&d.

Flight simulation needs that - and the talents of people who can build a real tubeliner.

"flight sim is hard"

But done well it looks easy, just grab a copy of unreal engine, some blackshark ai for your scenery, and JSBSim for your flight dynamics and you are good to go right?

Not really, in the paper airplane example all you got was a blank piece of paper, you still need to hire 6 or 7 Rolls Royce engineers to work out how to make a couple RB211s with it, who will tell you RB211s cant be made with paper, but you know better so you push on anyway..

Edited December 4, 20223 yr by mSparks

5 minutes ago, turbomax said:

wrote the code all alone by himself.

That he did. Here's his thesis:

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA027419.pdf

Bruce and Austin followed very similar paths. Real engineers doing real software dev. Not a pair of game companies by any stretch.

 

7 minutes ago, turbomax said:

true, it's that simple

That's what I'm seeing too. Asobo is an xbox house, so lots of artists on board. Now, a few of them have learned quite a bit about aerodynamics and such, but otherwise it really is a skin for fancied-up bing maps with back-compatibility for FSX/P3D stuff.

 

8 minutes ago, turbomax said:

I agree, typical waste of Microsoft shareholder's hard earned money.

Yeah, a tech demo more than anything. Enterprise is where the real money is at. The xbox game is a side gig. Here's hoping that game pass revenue keeps coming in.

Not to forget that all this can be seen as a showcase of what Microsoft Azure AI cloud is able of. Real world implementations for industry and military should be numerous.

7 hours ago, mSparks said:

EDIT: actually, they are an LLC, we can just look at what they reported

So MSFS destroyed their consistent growth creating massive continuing losses  and halved their employee count... and you think they are happy with that.....

Not sure where the data is coming from, but when MSFS came out P3D sales flatlined as per numerous dev accounts while PMDG didn't yet have a single product on the market for MSFS but instead were in the process of developing, meaning development costs persisted or likely even rose while revenue was close to zero, therefore the growth rate tanks.

This is completely normal however during a transition period like that and does absolutely not mean MSFS is destroying their profit in the long run. This is a short term effect after which significantly increased sales of units compared to P3D plus a greater number of products on the market compared to now will make the growth curve skyrocket compared to before, as you can see already toward the end of the green graph, thereby increasing profit over P3D times in the long run.

Ironically, your first graphs describe exactly what you're arguing against.

50 minutes ago, Nixoq said:

Not sure where the data is coming from

LLC stands for Limited Liability Company, among various other things that means a good chunk of their (self reported) accounts are public.

Not quite PLC (public limited company) where the full accounts are both completely public and audited by an independent accounting firm (to minimise any lying), but enough that any claims they make to take on debt can be validated by anyone who might be in a position to lend them money.

50 minutes ago, Nixoq said:

but instead were in the process of developing, meaning development costs persisted or likely even rose while revenue was close to zero, therefore the growth rate tanks.

yes - and achieving a positive ROI was based on future sales to the XBOX market.

Sales which will only happen now if they either become employees of Asobo and bundle their stuff with the sim like many of the others or Microsoft find it in their hearts to risk opening up the entire XBOX platform to piracy by allowing WASM on it.

The whole reason the Sagaard Newgen thing happened was that MSFS missed the targets needed to give Microsoft a positive ROI so they pulled their funding back in early 2021.

Its these numbers that form the "truth" about whether any financial investment could/should come to a platform, the difference between "doing it as a business" vs "doing it for other reasons", is that when other factors are involved sales ROI takes a back seat - e.g. the return is the smilies or an aircraft to train on, rather than financial reward.

Which comes right back to what I said earlier:

1. What results

2. At what cost

3. With what unintended consequences. 

7 hours ago, blingthinger said:

a tech demo more than anything

Harsh, very harsh. Not sure I would go that far, at the same time not an unjustified assessment.. 

Edited December 4, 20223 yr by mSparks

I do not understand why addons  for XP cost, always, in excess of 50% more (sometimes double) than the main competition for an equivalent product? Are they 50% better? Not to mention the cost of hard drives and orthos.

Edited December 4, 20223 yr by jarmstro

9 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Why do addons for XP cost, always, in excess of 50% more (sometimes double) than the main competition for an equivalent product? Are they 50% better? Not to mention the cost of hard drives and orthos.

https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/willingness-to-pay

here endith todays MBA lectures 🤣

1 minute ago, mSparks said:

https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/willingness-to-pay

here endith todays MBA lectures 🤣

So basically XP users are quite willing to be ripped off? Odd. To be serious the question of cost is putting me off taking the plunge. The real cost of XP is ridiculous.

My god some people still arguing black is blue I see. This Xp12 forum needs a serious shake up....

3 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

 Odd

not really, their PC market is generally people who have a private plane, thats quite a different WTP than parents of kids with XBOXs

9 hours ago, mSparks said:

 

 

So MSFS destroyed their consistent growth creating massive continuing losses  and halved their employee count... and you think they are happy with that.....

You are delusional...  You should try listening to RSR's podcast and actually LISTENING for once instead of being so focused on LECTURING... They had no revenue stream since what, 2019 with P3D?  And you are surprised they showed a downturn leading up to the release on an entirely new platform which ended up being their most successful releases to date....  Sure please continue to teach us about this MBA...  

Edited December 4, 20223 yr by psolk

9 minutes ago, mSparks said:

not really, their PC market is generally people who have a private plane, thats quite a different WTP than parents of kids with XBOXs

Ah yes, now XP PC users are generally people with private planes which is quite different than kids with XBox?  Ironic considering XP's largest segment is probably mobile users.... You know, kids with phones... 

You really need to come down from your elitist high horse and just have logical conversations.  

Edited December 4, 20223 yr by psolk

13 minutes ago, mSparks said:

not really, their PC market is generally people who have a private plane, thats quite a different WTP than parents of kids with XBOXs

Ah! So their market is primarily limited to private plane owners and not plebs with consoles. But wait! My daughter in law has a private plane AND she has an XBox?😂

Edited December 4, 20223 yr by jarmstro

1 minute ago, psolk said:

Ah yes, now XP PC users are generally people with private planes which is quite different than kids with XBox?  Ironic considering XP's largest segment is probably mobile users.... You know, kids with phones... 

Somebody told me to save my key strokes debating with this guy... You can't argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.