1 minute ago, abrams_tank said:

Because that's information for competitors. If your sales do really, really well, and you announce it, people will take notice and they will eventually put up a product that competes against your product.  For companies whose shares are held publicly on the stock market, they usually have to do a quarterly summary of their performance, so these companies have no choice but to give away this information to the public.

But if you don't have to announce your sales, sometimes you don't want to, and let competitors guess.  If nobody thinks your sales are doing well, they won't enter the market to compete against you. Then you keep making a nice profit, over and over again, and nobody has any clue how lucrative your product line is.

Ah. Makes sense. I suppose. 

1 minute ago, Gilandred said:

Back to the original topic, I think what MSFS does best is inflame the passions of rival flight sim users.

You beat me to it and I was definitely going to use the word "passion"!

42 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

No, because he never said a single word about sales numbers. 

He talked about a cheque that didn’t happen.

Did he ever come back and say “Hey, we sent Antonov a cheque for a million bucks!” - nope.

Did he ever say “And that cheque was solely based on sales receipts” - nope.

Well, these are the facts:
1) When the AN-225 was launched they made it clear that all proceeds are going to Antonov
2) In recent Q&A this is exactly what he said: https://youtu.be/oQzeTwdJzTQ?t=120
"it's been awesome to see how many people have been enjoying the plane, and as you know we are going to give the proceeds to Antonov, and I was so hoping that I could say today we are sending the first million dollar cheque to Antonov, and we are this close <hand gesture to show how close they are>, but we are this close which is great"

From all that, assuming he is not lying, I infer that they have sold ~50k of copies of the AN-225 alone on the marketplace. You infer something else. It is what it is. I also take away from his words that they intend (as per their statement prior to release and recently), to keep sending all proceeds to Antonov, given that he said the "the first million dollar cheque".  Again, other takes are definitely possible, especially if one thinks he's lying or being misleading.. but going purely by those words, that's the most plausible take for me 🤷‍♂️

 

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by lwt1971

1 hour ago, OzWhitey said:

No, I didn’t say that he lies. I inferred that you have to listen to his words carefully. What did he actually say? Did he ever say that the Antonov sold 50,000 copies? Nope. Has he ever given actual average user figures on the MS servers so we could compare that with Steam? Nope, no hard numbers ever that I have seen, as I said if there is actual data rather than broad, somewhat vague statements post the link. 

I'm still waiting for you to tell me why my math was bad. Also, when he does eventually say they sent the cheque, I wonder how you'll pivot then.

2 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

Interesting data, i always like to hear from pilots. In terms of the comparison - do you have much time in X-plane and P3D flying payware airliners?

Not in P3D, and not much in XP12, but a bit more in XP11. 

I've tried to give XP12 a good chance, and at the moment there's an understandable lack of higher-fidelity aircraft. That said, I find the experience of using XP12 after MSFS quite stark, and it heavily breaks any immersion for me.

8 minutes ago, 2reds2whites said:

Not in P3D, and not much in XP12, but a bit more in XP11. 

I've tried to give XP12 a good chance, and at the moment there's an understandable lack of higher-fidelity aircraft. That said, I find the experience of using XP12 after MSFS quite stark, and it heavily breaks any immersion for me.

Well, that's good to know anyway. If you think MSFS flies OK with the experience that you have, that's reassuring for the rest of us! I also haven't bonded with XP12 yet, we'll see if that happens with time. If you have the opportunity to fly the PMDG birds in P3D some time, you really should - it would be very interesting to hear your take on them versus MSFS/XP.

Cheers!

12 minutes ago, Krakin said:

I'm still waiting for you to tell me why my math was bad. Also, when he does eventually say they sent the cheque, I wonder how you'll pivot then.

I think your math was bad, but it's late and I've been posting too much when I should be sleeping - so i'm happy if you just check it, ta.

As for "Also, when he does eventually say they sent the cheque, I wonder how you'll pivot then." Meh, typical snarky comment that I'm seeing in this thread. The answer is, I'd ask him "How many copies did you sell?" If Jorge says "We sold 50K copies" then I'll believe that they sold 50K copies. If he says something that kind of infers that happened without actually stating it, I'll believe that neither you nor I know how may copies they actually sold, just like we don't know how many active users there are for MSFS on the Microsoft platform.

21 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Well, these are the facts:
1) When the AN-225 was launched they made it clear that all proceeds are going to Antonov
2) In recent Q&A this is exactly what he said: https://youtu.be/oQzeTwdJzTQ?t=120
"it's been awesome to see how many people have been enjoying the plane, and as you know we are going to give the proceeds to Antonov, and I was so hoping that I could say today we are sending the first million dollar cheque to Antonov, and we are this close <hand gesture to show how close they are>, but we are this close which is great"

From all that, assuming he is not lying, I infer that they have sold ~50k of copies of the AN-225 alone on the marketplace. You infer something else. It is what it is. I also take away from his words that they intend (as per their statement prior to release and recently), to keep sending all proceeds to Antonov, given that he said the "the first million dollar cheque".  Again, other takes are definitely possible, especially if one thinks he's lying or being misleading.. but going purely by those words, that's the most plausible take for me 🤷‍♂️

 

I think we've covered this already. I watched the video before I posted. As I've said, they didn't send a million dollar cheque. They haven't updated us to say they sent a million dollar cheque. They haven't stated that this imaginary cheque that was never sent would have been soley comprised of sales receipts, rather than also including licencing fees, donations to a worthy cause etc etc Microsoft/Asobo made a big deal of the Antonov on their website, I have no idea what the overall commercial arrangements are.  

Bottom line, it's marketing spin, it's not data, Jorge doesn't state a number, he's not lying, he says a bunch of things and then hopes that the listener will fill in the blanks themselves.  

Once again, it's not any sort of hard data, it's not really data at all because there's not a single moment where he mentions an actual sales number.

You guys have met software companies before, right? You've read a PMDG press release, or heard what CD Projekt Red said about Cyberpunk pre-release, or read 1000 other examples like this??

1 hour ago, Sky_Pilot071 said:

Truth be told, if there was no MSFS I wouldn't be flight simming.  

sp

Yeah, I can understand that. I don’t think I would be either…

44 minutes ago, Gilandred said:

Back to the original topic, I think what MSFS does best is inflame the passions of rival flight sim users.

🤔….👍

12 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

I think we've covered this already. I watched the video before I posted. As I've said, they didn't send a million dollar cheque. They haven't updated us to say they sent a million dollar cheque. They haven't stated that this imaginary cheque that was never sent would have been soley comprised of sales receipts, rather than also including licencing fees, donations to a worthy cause etc etc Microsoft/Asobo made a big deal of the Antonov on their website, I have no idea what the overall commercial arrangements are.  

Bottom line, it's marketing spin, it's not data, Jorge doesn't state a number, he's not lying, he says a bunch of things and then hopes that the listener will fill in the blanks themselves.  

Once again, it's not any sort of hard data, it's not really data at all because there's not a single moment where he mentions an actual sales number.

You guys have met software companies before, right? You've read a PMDG press release, or heard what CD Projekt Red said about Cyberpunk pre-release, or read 1000 other examples like this??

You keep talking besides the point... nobody said they have already sent a cheque. Yes you can interpret it as whatever spin you want and keep throwing out all the demands for numbers/details/records/proof, and even if they provided such details then one could say well it's frabricated bla bla.

Again, it's quite logical based on the *actual* words and numbers stated so far by MS/Asobo, and not assuming that they are lying, that the sales of the AN-225 are now very close to being a million dollars, and at $20 a pop, that'd be nearly 50k sold so far. A lot of us reached that very plausible conclusion, you didn't, and that's that.
 

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by lwt1971

Just now, lwt1971 said:

You keep talking besides the point... nobody said they have already sent a cheque. Yes you can interpret it as whatever spin you want and keep throwing out all the demands for numbers/details/records/proof, and even if they provided such details then one could say well it's frabricated bla bla.

Again, it's quite logical based on the *actual* words and numbers stated said so far by MS/Asobo, and not assuming that they are lying, that the sales of the AN-225 are now very close to being a million dollars, and at $20 a pop, that'd be nearly 50k sold so far. A lot of us reached that very plausible conclusion, you didn't, and that's that.
 

If believing vague marketing spin is data makes you happy, hurrah for that. I don't really have a dog in this fight - I'm a happy MSFS user who is heavily invested in the platform - but I'm also a sort-of scientist who likes looking at and thinking about data. Sometimes. And I guess tonight is one of those times.

As I've said a few times now, if you have any actual data - anything - to support the hypothesis that MSFS is wildly successful, I'd love to see it.

Don't you find the Google trends data interesting? I'm not cherry-picking data here, I've actually been actively searching while I've been posting, and Steam and Google Trends are the only numbers I can find.

I've checked the last MS annual report and there's nothing there, and also looked for Asobo data without any success. So those two sources would seem to be what we have.

To refute the Steam data, you'd need to come up with a hypothesis for why users are moving in bulk from that platform to MS. Otherwise, one would have to accept that the use base is effectively stagnant rather than growing rapidly.

Anyway, that's it for me for tonight, it's late, this was only meant to be a single post! Cheers all.

Jorg: in response to that guy on Avsim, I can confirm that we've sold X amount of units.

 

OzWhitey: That doesn't mean much. Can you show us a list of every game code sold? 

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by Krakin

The fact that MSFS is the flight sim that we choose to fly is beside the topic of why we choose MSFS.

What MSFS does best only refines the question.

So forgeting the nonsensical ying yang about user stats try to think of just one thing that MSFS does really well.

Gong back to Louis Armstrong's quote- if it sounds good it is good.

cheers

sp

 

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by Sky_Pilot071

Perspective. Coming from "other" simulators here.

In the beginning, they've done right with how everything looks but function was a different story. Lots of bugs. But since then they have improved with dynamics/physics (from what I understand) and systems depth (Working Title, for example).

As far as systems: huge improvement coming from 3rd party planes, PMS750 (and the other one) and lots of support from the freeware community.

All in all, after owning several higher fidelity planes and flying several days a week I'd say this simulator does almost everything really well. If you asked me that a year ago I'd disagree.

Why almost everything? Well, there are a lot of GA and airliners available now with good fidelity, I don't have to mess with ortho to make the ground look like the ground, autogen/buildings look great, performance is good and it doesn't feel like the plane is on rails.

Not so good? Performance can take a hit randomly, default airports are very mediocre but the physics, clouds and plane availability make up for that.

Edited May 19, 20233 yr by Sonosusto