MSFS is now 10 million players strong

[OverTheEDJ 266]

5 hours ago, blingthinger said:

Nope. I'm downplaying the statistics put forth by marketing departments. Bots are a real problem. I'm not claiming they're involved, just allowing for that possibility. And these departments are all too eager to turn a blind eye to things like install failures and call them 'new users', simply to pad egos and market numbers.

Ok. I get it. So MSFS really has about 1 million users. All the rest is marketing BS and install failures. Thanks for your insight.

BTW - I am not a bot...and I was able to successfully install MSFS. Rumor has it, there are about 9,999,999 users just like me.

5 hours ago, blingthinger said:

The UI is most certainly for xbox on all levels. Wouldn't be surprised if the medium resolution ortho was also an artifact of that requirement. Certainly the flight model is a function of someone demanding backwards compatibility w/ legacy FSX, so that's not forced xbox-assimilation. Though given how that part was designed, yeah, definitely a game.

Really, how does calling MSFS a "game" takeaway from it success as a sim, and the now 10 million 'user' milestone???

This logic will only serve you well on that 'other' forum, where you claimed that MSFS could not measure up to that 'other' sim...that can't seem to get over 400 users on the steam "gaming" platform.

 

[Krakin 5,773]

That guy is just a salty X-Plane you-know-what who won't be happy till he sees MSFS crash and burn. Ignore him.

[pete_auau 1,160]

6 hours ago, blingthinger said:

Bots are a real problem. I'm not claiming they're involved,

I see what your doing here etching your bets both ways,  anyways  i link  the  thread  more  suited  for  you  🙂

https://www.avsim.com/forums/forum/335-the-x-plane-general-discussions-forum/

 

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

46 minutes ago, Krakin said:

That guy is just a salty X-Plane you-know-what who won't be happy till he sees MSFS crash and burn. Ignore him.

I actually tried that again last night. The engineering tool, not the forum. 25fps, with 2010 graphics. No thanks. Sure it has potential in lots of ways, and I hope it succeeds. Sincerely.  However there is potential and then there is delusion. The XP forum here is ruined because of the latter. 

[Pathfinder633 223]

Bots and suchlike is just silly, but certainly a fairly large proportion of that 10 million figure will be gamepass tryouts and of course some other transitory users, so a snapshot of one day.

Likely the figure will reduce in time.

Ultimately I dont give a gnats chuff how many players there are.

[MarcG 2,984]

2 minutes ago, Pathfinder633 said:

Ultimately I dont give a gnats chuff how many players there are.

Precisely, as long as I'm in the sky that's all that matters (although it is nice to see other players in the middle of nowhere from time to time).

[Pathfinder633 223]

15 hours ago, Dillon said:

Ah come on...🙄 Hopefully FS will do what's it's always done and that's inspire the next generation of future pilots.  That's not quite what I call niche...😏

Yes it is a Niche product and will always remain so by its very nature, for what its worth Farming Sim is actually more popular (and no I dont play that)

Even if your assertion that it inspires the next generation of pilots is true, that still doesnt make it not a niche product, not many people choose to become Pilots.

You are looking at it from within a bubble

 

[hansb57 493]

I really dont get the my sim is better than your game. I played FS from 98 and enjoyed it. I used X-plane and enjoyed it.

I now use MSFS 2020 and I enjoy it. Maybe because its more eye candy, maybe because it suits my needs better.

I play games that are 10 years old and enjoy them. Not because it's the newest or the best but beause I have fun with it.

 

 

[Pathfinder633 223]

Well Put Hans,I've heard it called Purchased pride... all a bit daft if you ask me.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

Lol, "10 million players strong".

That is very fake news, chaps. 10 million people who've given a free game a go once or twice, maybe. That's more a reflection of the number of gamers out there. They could equally say that "20,000,000 gamers couldn't be bothered trying MSFS even though it was free".

If we want to know what is actually going on, the Steam charts are always a good source of information, thought they are, of course, only showing the Steam version of the game. Anecdotally, I'd say the steam version Steam is a little more popular than the MS version amongst keen simmers.

Here are the charts for MSFS: https://steamcharts.com/app/1250410

What that shows is that MSFS peaked back in 2020 in the first two months after release. It's never come close to regaining the player numbers from month one and month two.

What microsoft's announcement suggests is that this is some sort of gaming behemoth. No. On the Steam charts, it doesn't quite crack the top 100, though it might on a good day.

Counterstrike: GO averages almost a hundred times more players, MSFS is 6545 average for November (up markedly compared to previous months due to the anniversary release), GS: GO has 586,000+.

Now, whenever these stats come up, somebody always says that "sims are niche and of course cant compete with FPS".

OK, look at MSFS compared with other sims then. MSFS has 6545 in its best month for years, whilst Farming Simulator has 11,000+ average players.

Now, it'd be great to know how many concurrent players the MS Store version of MSFS has, but MS doesn't tend to release useful stats (they know this number, but they've always just released meaningless PR numbers like the one here).

As GWO reported recently, "Microsoft still prefer vague numbers...": https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/10/27/microsoft-game-pass-growth-vague-stats

TL;DR: Steam stats are the best available data. They show that MSFS has been mildly successful and is holding steady at around 5,000 concurrent players in most months of 2022. There are no useful stats (that I know of) for the MS store version of MSFS.

[Dillon 2,197]

1 hour ago, Pathfinder633 said:

not many people choose to become Pilots.

😳😶... Out of honest curiosity, what country are you from?  This is certainly not what I've seen with the international community.  People love flying all over the world and in many cases there's not enough access in certain countries to get more people into it who are interested. 

I just spent $5,000 forcing my son to become a pilot and now that I think about it I hate flying back and forth myself to south Florida on a given weekend when I can get away...🥴  I didn't realize this until you said it...🤪🍺  I'm just joking but to read something like this is bazar especially considering the passion may of us have for aviation going back as far as we can remember.😳

Edited December 8, 2022 by Dillon

[peloto 213]

What is a high priority urgency is that Asobo includes in FS20 a total (or at least their marketplace ones) base inside MSFS of the planes developed on flight around you in the Sim, to represent the online user with their real plane that they are flying. It is sadly to watch online helicopters or fighters represented as double aisle airlines or small GAs performing like fighters haha or trying to land in a tiny heliport. And please solve the bug with the static rotors in the air with online copters.

Edited December 8, 2022 by peloto

[spearmint_flyer 579]

Why do people not see the positivity of this? 
 

1st - There hasn’t been any other iteration of Flight Simulator by Microsoft (Gamepass, Digital Download, Steam) that has brought anything close to 10,000,000 in 2 years. None of them have. 
 

People who never have been part of the what i would call Flight Simulator scene would come up to me and start a conversation about it, telling me “wow have you seen that new simulator! I want to try it”. That is a success, to have that Rea h that organically people who would in the past honestly question my choice of career that started as a hobby actually get enthused to explore the simulator and get a taste of flight will only open the doors to a whole new generation. That is happening all over the world, and that’s a big deal for us. I see it every day, in VATSIM I hear more accents than ever before. The other night flying out of Austin, for the first time in 15 years I had a female voice over the radio. So, it’s reaching s new audience that is a very big deal. 
 

2nd- That new fresh market share will bring creativity into the platform, new ways of interacting , new developers, new modes that will attract new individuals, a new dynamic world. For a long time I’ve wondered what would happen if Microsoft would create flight simulator as a platform for them to build a whole simulation world around it. For example, we already know that it could be a prime candidate for a Ship simulator, or a train simulator, or even a third person avatar simulator. They already have the entire planet built into it. Imagine if they combine multiple functions into the platform, then allow cross platform multiplayer modes. Where you can see people actually controlling their ships, vehicles, avatars in a multiplayer environment. That would bring our hobby into an interactive world where we could interact with different elements we previously simply did not have. 

3rd- Say what you want, the other simulator in development is already feeling the pressure to evolve. You’ve already seen that our good friend Austin is picking up his advertising campaign to explain things in detail, copying from the discovery series. He is doing it in his quirky way, it’s his style, i would have approached in a different manner but okay. MSFS is forcing competitors to be more communicative, to push the envelope, to build platforms that work with the technology of today. Tell me, when did you ever thing your could have and simulator in the high 100 FPS? Yet out of the box MSFS worked with the newest GPUs taking advantage of that technology. That’s something that will push other platforms to get the best technology into the platform, brining their simulators to new standards, or they die. 
 

I clearly remember the last 10 years of my life where we were stuck in this 2004 graphics world as the rest of the interactive gaming world got new technology. I personally paid thousands of dollars just to get better scenery, clouds. I spent my time tinkering for hours and days. Neither one of the platforms did anything to improve it other than small bandaid fixes. Now MSFS has lit the fire for platforms to evolve or die.

So, sure criticize the 10,000,000 but I’d argue that you’re missing the picture. It’s not the 10,000,000 that matters, it’s that we are in the highest growth period of this platform that we have ever seen. Thanks to the efforts of Jorg, Asobo Team.

Like it or not everyone else is playing catch-up. 
 

 

[ErichB 3,643]

19 hours ago, St Mawgan said:

I do not believe for a second that there are 10,000,000 individuals who have purchased MSFS.  

The figure is more than likely based on 10m unique login usernames.

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

Let's say 9,000,000 of those were just one off logins or whatever, just for arguments sake..... and we are left with 1,000,000. Even 1 Million is massive for this hobby! never mind 10! 

Edited December 8, 2022 by Ianrivaldosmith