3 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

You should widen the Steam DB chart to "All": https://steamcharts.com/app/1250410#All

MSFS averages 9K players over the last few months

I was looking at “all”, sir. What you wrote here isn’t true at all, go back and look at the chart again!

4 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

This comment wins the internet today.

I look forward to receiving my free Internet in the mail.

But my point is that MSFS is only doing “OK”, not “Great”. I’m personally surprised that player numbers are dropping on Steam. There’s a massive amount of work going into the sim, you’d think that player numbers might be trending up as new features are added and quality payware becomes available. But that just doesn’t seem to be happening.

6 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

I was looking at “all”, sir. What you wrote here isn’t true at all, go back and look at the chart again!

Huh? What did I say wasn't true, regarding the numbers in the chart? It says 9K for me (9,985 for the week of May 1, 2023):

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by abrams_tank

3 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Huh? What did I say wasn't true, regarding the numbers in the chart? It says 9K for me (9,985 for the week of May 1, 2023):

You’re confusing the “average players” stat and the “peak players” stat. Both on the chart, but obviously different stats. 

Hmmm given that a great majority of 3rd party devs are exclusively working on and pumping out products for MSFS, and given we've got some 3rd party devs literally asking us on the forum to plead their case to MSFS to open up API access since they see no future in developing for other sims, and given we've got examples like a single aircraft like the AN-225 reaching nearly a million dollars in sales on the marketplace at $20 a pop, and given MS/Asobo's continued and relentless investment in giving us more and more free content, and ... well I'll stop there and say ya, MSFS is doing a hellavalot OK.

No one in their right mind is trying to compare it to other entertainment products with obviously larger user bases. And also I think when MS/Asobo talked about the 10 million user mark (https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-flight-simulator-is-now-10-million-players-strong/ ) they were not talking about sustained active players but the overall total since launch who've tried it at least once or more? In any case, the active numbers of players is obviously sizeable for a flight simulator and numbers into the thousands definitely and very likely tens of thousands (just taking the AN-225 as one small example, fifty thousand people have bought it for it reach a million dollars in sales).

Oh, so to add to the list that the OP asked for, another thing that MSFS does really well? Expanding the flight simming community by leaps and bounds!
 

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by lwt1971

26 minutes ago, 2reds2whites said:

Background - widebody pilot, flown Airbus and Boeing (Boeing now), don't do any light aircraft flying any more.

For default sims, apart from perhaps DCS (which is sufficiently focussed in scope that it's not really comparable) no other sim comes close to how MSFS replicates the feel of flying an aircraft. When third party add-ons are included, the gulf widens. 

And for what it's worth, in my personal opinion an 'FAA certification' is absolutely meaningless. 

 

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?

14 minutes ago, 2reds2whites said:

Background - widebody pilot, flown Airbus and Boeing (Boeing now), don't do any light aircraft flying any more.

For default sims, apart from perhaps DCS (which is sufficiently focussed in scope that it's not really comparable) no other sim comes close to how MSFS replicates the feel of flying an aircraft. When third party add-ons are included, the gulf widens. 

And for what it's worth, in my personal opinion an 'FAA certification' is absolutely meaningless. 

 

And there you have it folks, from someone on the correct glide path! 😉

And for the success scenario, this simulator is successful no matter how you slice it.

And what does MSFS do best? …. Capture the imagination of first time users to the most realistic sensation of flight on their home computer! Just like when we all started but in a whole new world of realism!

1 minute ago, OzWhitey said:

But my point is that MSFS is only doing “OK”, not “Great”

"OK" and "Great" are relative terms and ought to be considered within the context of the genre which in this case is Flight Simulators.  MSFS users currently "in-game" is 6,086 at this moment on Steam, whereas that FAA Certifiable flight sim currently shows a whopping 331.  And if we currently see 6,086 actually using the sim now, what does that translate to for people who own and use it, but are not in-game now?  And moreover, I will venture to guess people who bought MSFS on Steam is a minority of total buyer/users.  Now if we extrapolate to those who own/use and are not currently in-game, and I will use myself as a comparator, as I use the sim roughly 15% of a week's worth of hours I could use the sim during, we might estimate that 6,086 really amounts to 40,573 users in total, and that's just Steam.  So I'll venture a guess it's probably more like 250,000 active users of MSFS.

12 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

You’re confusing the “average players” stat and the “peak players” stat. Both on the chart, but obviously different stats. 

That's fine. But I said the number of players in the first few months of 2023 is roughly the same as Feb to Apr, 2021, and is roughly the same as Feb to Apr, 2022, at least on that green line (the green line, meaning the 9,985 number for the week of May 1, 2023).

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by abrams_tank

6 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Hmmm given that a great majority of 3rd party devs are exclusively working on and pumping out products for MSFS, and we've got some 3rd party devs literally asking us on the forum to plead their case to MSFS to open up API access since they see no future in developing for other sims, and we've got examples like a single aircraft like the AN-225 reaching nearly a million dollars in sales on the marketplace at $20 a pop, and given the MS/Asobo's continued and relentless investment in giving us more and more free content, and ... well I'll stop there and say ya, MSFS is doing OK.

No one in their right mind is trying to compare it to other entertainment products with obviously larger user bases. And also I think when MS/Asobo talked about the 10 million user mark (https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-flight-simulator-is-now-10-million-players-strong/ ) they were not talking about sustained active players but the overall total since launch who've tried it at least once or more? In any case, the active numbers of players is obviously sizeable for a flight simulator and numbers into the thousands definitely (just taking the AN-225 as one small example, fifty thousand people have bought it for it reach a million dollars in sales).

Oh, so to add to the list that the OP asked for, another thing that MSFS does really well? Expand the flight simming community by leaps and bounds!
 

Steam data - the only hard data that we have - shows that quite a few people used it in the first two months of release, but the userbase is only a small fraction of that now. And, as noted, it’s down this year - trend is down every month except one. 

That’s the data that we have. There’s no evidence that it is expanding the flight sim community “by leaps and bounds”, apart from marketing speak by the devs - who are pretty good at marketing speak! 

3 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

That's fine. But I said the number of players in the first few months of 2023 is roughly the same as Feb to Apr, 2021, and is roughly the same as Feb to Apr, 2022, at least on that green line (the green line, meaning the 9,985 number for the week of May 1, 2023).

You were quoting the average number of players. There is a clearly marked stat for the average number of players. My post reported it correctly. Your post, attempting to correct mine, used the wrong stat.

It’s not that complex, you just read the stats wrong.

8 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

That’s the data that we have. There’s no evidence that it is expanding the flight sim community “by leaps and bounds”, apart from marketing speak by the devs - who are pretty good at marketing speak! 

No need to depend on marketing speak to know that MSFS has obviously expanded the flight simming community in non-trivial ways. One would need to be intentionally turning a blind eye or living under a rock to not realize this. Looking at various forums, social media from facebook to twitter to reddit and others, computer gaming media, and even mainstream media it obviously has made a mark beyond the niche audience for flight simming prior to 2020. Personally I know folks who never touched flight simulators who now know about MSFS, got it and are using it, or want to use it. The pandemic probably had a part to play in boosting its reach too... and of course the XBox community, etc. The other hard numbers data we have (at least for the hardcore ™️ simmer community is of course the Navigraph survey: https://navigraph.com/blog/survey2022)

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by lwt1971

5 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

You were quoting the average number of players. There is a clearly marked stat for the average number of players. My post reported it correctly. Your post, attempting to correct mine, used the wrong stat.

It’s not that complex, you just read the stats wrong.

Okay, I see the average players in the table below. The graph above with the green line is peak players. But how do you get that the MSFS player base is shrinking on Steam? Looking at that SteamDB chart, MSFS has slightly more average players in the first few months of 2023, than the first few months of 2022/2021:

The SteamDB chart shows MSFS average players is growing a little, on a year on year basis, if we are comparing the same first few months of each year.

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by abrams_tank

7 minutes ago, Noel said:

"OK" and "Great" are relative terms and ought to be considered within the context of the genre which in this case is Flight Simulators.  MSFS users currently "in-game" is 6,086 at this moment on Steam, whereas that FAA Certifiable flight sim currently shows a whopping 331.  And if we currently see 6,086 actually using the sim now, what does that translate to for people who own and use it, but are not in-game now?  And moreover, I will venture to guess people who bought MSFS on Steam is a minority of total buyer/users.  Now if we extrapolate to those who own/use and are not currently in-game, and I will use myself as a comparator, as I use the sim roughly 15% of a week's worth of hours I could use the sim during, we might estimate that 6,086 really amounts to 40,573 users in total, and that's just Steam.  So I'll venture a guess it's probably more like 250,000 active users of MSFS.

You’re making way too many assumptions for that to be in any way meaningful, Noel.

The thing that catches my attention is the downward trend in 2023. Overall, I’d actually say player numbers are stable but the user base is not really responding to the large amount of free material that Asobo is releasing.

I would expect numbers to slowly increase as people move across from other sims as MSFS matures and better aircraft and scenery becomes available.

I don’t see any evidence of that happening. 

Just trying to throw a small dose of realism on the hyperbole that often gets posted here. 🙂

Personally, I’m still addicted to MSFS.

6 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

No need to depend on marketing speak to know that MSFS has obviously expanded the flight simming community in non-trivial ways. One would need to be intentionally turning a blind eye or living under a rock to not realize this. Looking at various forums, social media from facebook to twitter to reddit and others, computer gaming media, and even mainstream media it obviously has made a mark beyond the niche audience for flight simming prior to 2020. Personally I know folks who never touched flight simulators who now know about MSFS, got it and are using it, or want to use it. The pandemic probably had a part to play in boosting its reach too... and of course the XBox community, etc. The other hard numbers data we have (at least for the hardcore ™️ simmer community is of course the Navigraph survey: https://navigraph.com/blog/survey2022)

“No need to depend on data when I know a guy who has now heard of MSFS” 😉

MSFS was in the media briefly in the month or so when it was released, which is also when Steam says it was pretty popular - around 6 times as popular as it is now on that platform.

The navigraph data tells us nothing about what we are talking about here, it only tells us about shifts in sim preference within a subset of the community. 

Let’s look at some more actual data. Google trends shows that there was a lot of interest in MSFS in release month back in 2020. But you’ll note that interest is decreasing, not increasing, in the past 12 months and is a tiny, tiny fraction of what it was back in 2020.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&q=Microsoft flight simulator&hl=en-US

Hey, we’re happy with MSFS because, as active users, we keep getting new, free stuff like the WT 787. But there is zero data that I can find to suggest that the broader world is noticing.