MSFS: A Victim of Its Own Huge Success

[Sky_Pilot071 580]

3 hours ago, David Mills said:

I've seen many complaints that Marketplace purchases didn't go through. As a merchant, that's the last thing in the world you want. 

Worse than that what if you can't download the thing you purchased?

sp

Edited March 29, 2023 by Sky_Pilot071

[OzWhitey 3,353]

On 3/29/2023 at 1:28 AM, David Mills said:

Microsoft/Asobo servers have been overwhelmed recently by the number of new users.

I’m not convinced that’s true. The available stats for PC users certainly don’t show that.

Have a look at the steam charts. There’s no recent increase in usage. There was a moderate increase late last November when the 40th anniversary stuff released.

Since then, usage returned to baseline, with around 7000 users. 

That’s about 85% less than back in 2020, when the servers seemed to work pretty well.

Based on the data we have access to, MSFS is not massively successful amongst PC users. It’s actually struggling to attract new long-term users. It was pretty popular for a month or two back in 2020, then faded pretty quickly.

If you’ve never looked at these charts, have a look:

https://steamcharts.com/app/1250410#All

Its solid data and it doesn’t match the speculation in this thread at all.

[altenae 171]

7 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

I’m not convinced that’s true. The available stats for PC users certainly don’t show that.

Have a look at the steam charts. There’s no recent increase in usage. There was a moderate increase late last November when the 40th anniversary stuff released.

Since then, usage returned to baseline, with around 7000 users. 

That’s about 85% less than back in 2020, when the servers seemed to work pretty well.

Based on the data we have access to, MSFS is not massively successful amongst PC users. It’s actually struggling to attract new long-term users. It was pretty popular for a month or two back in 2020, then faded pretty quickly.

If you’ve never looked at these charts, have a look:

https://steamcharts.com/app/1250410#All

Its solid data and it doesn’t match the speculation in this thread at all.

Aren't those online players ?

More people play offline (yes and need to be online for weather and Bing data etc.)

But not online for playing online with friends 

[Noel 4,507]

2 hours ago, eslader said:

If they're not going subscription-based with a product that has 700 times the number of users as MSFS, why would they do it here?

Obviously to make it viable.  MS doesn't stream Windows, but the essentially does cloud-based Office and it's a subscription.  They could do it here IF it was needed to keep it financially viable for them to keep it alive in order to pay the cost.  The nattering is just rambling like a good part of all posts on Avsim are, including yours.

[Sky_Pilot071 580]

3 minutes ago, Noel said:

Obviously to make it viable.  MS doesn't stream Windows, but the essentially does cloud-based Office and it's a subscription.  They could do it here IF it was needed to keep it financially viable for them to keep it alive in order to pay the cost.  The nattering is just rambling like a good part of all posts on Avsim are, including yours.

The big difference is that Office is for buziness users and MSFS is for gamers.

sp

[eslader 1,786]

 As much as many of us would like to jump off of Windows because it's obnoxious and in some ways gets more like MacOS with every version, the fact is that it's the only viable operating system for most. Ubuntu tried to have a moment, but with the number of products including MSFS that only run well on Windows, it's a guarantee that most current users will need a copy even if they do have to pay for it.

As such, MS could easily charge an annual fee if they wanted to and unlike MSFS, many would have to pay it. As a game, MSFS is a want, but there are plenty of needs such as the Office suite you mentioned in modern computing that would obligate the payments. 

While I agree there are lots of posts that ramble, including mine, I do try not to engage in conspiracy theories. 😉

 

[Noel 4,507]

5 minutes ago, Sky_Pilot071 said:

The big difference is that Office is for buziness users and MSFS is for gamers.

sp

Right, and there are so few users of MSFS by comparison they need the subscription fees even more.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

22 minutes ago, altenae said:

Aren't those online players ?

More people play offline (yes and need to be online for weather and Bing data etc.)

But not online for playing online with friends 

No.

It’s the total number of people using the Steam platform MSFS. Nothing to do with playing with friends etc.

It just shows MSFS pottering along at a steady, fairly low level. 

There’s no way that the massive influx of players imagined in this thread is happening, at least on PC.

 

[Noel 4,507]

5 minutes ago, eslader said:

 While I agree there are lots of posts that ramble, including mine, I do try not to engage in conspiracy theories. 😉

 

Oh, you mean the conspiracy that's it's possible a subscription fee might be employed to help sustain the project?  It's just another way to develop income and it's certainly hardly unprecedented.  At least I can tell the difference between a conspiracy and rambling conjecture about possibilities.   

[Sky_Pilot071 580]

21 minutes ago, Noel said:

Right, and there are so few users of MSFS by comparison they need the subscription fees even more.

The point being that gamers have less financial resources than business.

sp

[Noel 4,507]

2 hours ago, Sky_Pilot071 said:

The point being that gamers have less financial resources than business.

sp

Gamers have enough financial resources to purchase the hardware to run MSFS, the internet bandwidth for same, and some already have subscriptions to Navigraph, OnAir, etc and buy 3rd party addons to the point they need Addon Linker to manage them.  I have streaming access to Apple ICloud and this costs us $9.99/month to be able to access it whenever but only a small fraction of total bytes streamed is used compared to MSFS.  This being said: I would only pay for a subscription when the big ticket areas are brought up to a significantly higher level of quality:  ATC, AI traffic, cloud depiction and detail, shader-based seasonal vegetation change synced to geolocation.  If MS takes MSFS to where it could go, to a truly professional level desktop sim with really no glaring defects, I would happily pay for a subscription to sustain it.

[turbomax 3,287]

10 minutes ago, GoranM said:

Every time this kind of comparison is made, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, there are people who get just a bit annoyed.

why does a comparison of user numbers between MSFS and x-plane annoy you?

[jarmstro 2,404]

14 minutes ago, GoranM said:

Can’t MSFS stand on its own merit?  

It's in competition with the other sims and does not exist on its own. People have a choice and comparisons will be made. This discussion has raised again the possibility of a subscription for MSFS which will make the choice harder for some who will need some method to judge. This will include current steam usage data.

if I go to buy a kettle and there are two available for the same price, but one has sold ten times more than the other, it's a good indicator of which one to buy.

Edited March 30, 2023 by jarmstro

[GoranM 3,772]

1 minute ago, turbomax said:

why does a comparison of user numbers between MSFS and x-plane annoy you?

Because there's no point.  Like I said, and I'll say it again for the 2nd time.  No one disputes the fact that MSFS is more popular.  It's been said in here, ad nauseam, for far too long.  And it always ends in a locked thread.

1 minute ago, jarmstro said:

It's in competition with the other sims and does not exist on its own.

Then why isn't it compared to Flightgear?  Aerofly?  DCS?  FSX?  GeoFS?  Google Earth Flight sim?  

[GoranM 3,772]

4 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

People have a choice and comparisons will be made.

Whenever I open X-Plane or now, MSFS, I never compare them.  We have an MSFS channel in our discord.  We ask that no comparisons be made.  Everyone can choose what they want, and enjoy it to it's full potential.  

5 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

This discussion has raised again the possibility of a subscription for MSFS which will make the choice harder for some who will need some method to judge.

Then why is X-Plane brought into it?  Let's be real.  Every single person in here will fork out a few bucks a month for a subscription service.  The only time people will shift is if Asobo stop supporting MSFS and it pretty much dies.  And even then, they'll move to FSX or, hopefully, keep running MSFS as long as any authentication is removed.