Well, I suppose based on your "sophisticated statistical analysis" Microsoft and Asobo are surely about to call it quits!

3 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

What iniBuilds exactly stated, when asked by users on their discord was about the flight model being at par between both their versions (screencap below), which is the topic at hand here (read again slowly, we're not talking about systems depth parity)... it was not some intentional marketing material as you ridiculously claim, and also they really have no reason/need to market the A310 since they are already paid for by MS and don't depend on # of sales of the A310. Ever since that time, they have reiterated this point and further lauded the flight dynamics capabilities of MSFS (especially the CFD features they're using in both the A310 and other aircraft)... so ya, guess who I'm taking more seriously...



 

Still, it's a statement of a developer, who wants and needs to sell products. Not necessarily the A310 as MS already paid them for it, but they (currently) sell airports for MSFS and in the future maybe further planes? If they would state that their MSFS version is inferior to another platform, nobody would buy their products.
Apart from that, I'm wondering why the system depth is lower in the MSFS version. Didn't they want to replicate what they had in X-Plane or couldn't they, due to technical restrictions? Or ... didn't MS pay enough money?

8 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

We’re not agreeing to disagree. I said go back and actually read what I actually posted - which was that Steam numbers were down since the start of the year.

That's a weird way to compare though, when you have the previous year's data, and the year before that. Comparing to previous months is not the best way to compare sometimes because of seasonality. It's like comparing January shopping to December. December shopping will typically be much higher than January because of Christmas shopping.

Similarly for stuff like flight simulators, people tend to use flight simulators more in the winter, and less in the summer.  In the summer, people tend to like to do outdoor stuff.

I totally disagree with your conclusion that the numbers are getting worse for MSFS.  You should be comparing year on year, and not the months before because of the seasonality effect. For more information on the seasonality effect, read this article: https://www.nutshell.com/blog/sales-seasonality-definition-and-causes.

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by abrams_tank

3 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Why? Is there some subliminal mystic message I'm missing?

Uh, no - he gets paid to present the sim in a good light. His videos are not just for fun - he’s trying to build interest and trust in the sim. So you have to listen to exactly what he says, rather than what he almost says.

It’s  also interesting what doesn’t get said, like actual player numbers. I’m not sure if there’s anything useful in the MS financials.

1 minute ago, flying_carpet said:

Still, it's a statement of a developer, who wants and needs to sell products. Not necessarily the A310 as MS already paid them for it, but they (currently) sell airports for MSFS and in the future maybe further planes? If they would state that their MSFS version is inferior to another platform, nobody would buy their products.
Apart from that, I'm wondering why the system depth is lower in the MSFS version. Didn't they want to replicate what they had in X-Plane or couldn't they, due to technical restrictions? Or ... didn't MS pay enough money?

Lol sure, you keep believing and wondering whatever comforts you.

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

sp

7 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

One would think when they state that *all* proceeds of the AN-225 sales are going to Antonov, and then they also state that they're close to giving a million dollars to Antonov based on said proceeds, that they have sold nearly 50,000 copies.  Short of seeing some kind of proof of all their sales and transactions we kind of have to take his word for it don't we? If you're implying that they are adding their own money in order to give Antonov a million dollars.. well, that is one take I guess 🙂

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.

We know that Asobo/MS will present data in a somewhat misleading way, marketing types from all companies do this, for example using the number of people who downloaded the sim (mostly for free) and insinuating that this was active or current users. I don’t think they lied about that either, they just presented a piece of data in a certain way that led some people to assume.

10 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

That's a weird way to compare though, when you have the previous year's data, and the year before that. Comparing to previous months is not the best way to compare sometimes because of seasonality. It's like comparing January shopping to December. December shopping will typically be much higher than January because of Christmas shopping.

Similarly for stuff like flight simulators, people tend to use flight simulators more in the winter, and less in the summer.  In the summer, people tend to like to do outdoor stuff.

I totally disagree with your conclusion that the numbers are getting worse for MSFS.  You should be comparing year on year, and not the months before because of the seasonality effect. For more information on the seasonality effect, read this article: https://www.nutshell.com/blog/sales-seasonality-definition-and-causes.

You’ve got to read what I actually post, Abrams. I didn’t say that the numbers were getting worse for MSFS overall. I said that I consider the userbase to be more or less stable. I also said that there is a downtrend since the start of the year - there is - and that this is surprising to me in view of the quality of Asobos recent releases.

And the key point that I have made many times is that there is no available data that anyone has posted supporting the conventional wisdom of the thread that MSFS is charging forward and winning the hearts and minds of the large swathes broader community.

It may be happening, but the limited data that we have suggests that it isn’t.

You will note that I have posted two pieces of data, and nobody else has posted any!

 

22 minutes ago, flying_carpet said:

Still, it's a statement of a developer, who wants and needs to sell products.

So anything good they said about XP when they were developing for it was BS, right? I'm just following your logic.

23 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

Uh, no - he gets paid to present the sim in a good light. His videos are not just for fun - he’s trying to build interest and trust in the sim. So you have to listen to exactly what he says, rather than what he almost says.

It’s  also interesting what doesn’t get said, like actual player numbers. I’m not sure if there’s anything useful in the MS financials.

I have to say that I've never quite understood why there is such secrecy over sales numbers, both for the sim and for addon developers? There's obviously a reason but I can't work out what the reason is? What's the issue with just saying we've sold xxx numbers of copies?

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by jarmstro

22 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

Well, I suppose based on your "sophisticated statistical analysis" Microsoft and Asobo are surely about to call it quits!

Please look up “straw man fallacy” in your favourite dictionary. Thanks!

Also, I’m also waiting for anyone else to post a single piece of data here. Apparently low-effort sarcastic quips are better than data when analysing trends!

24 minutes ago, Sky_Pilot071 said:

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

sp

I feel the same, in fact I quit flight simming for a couple of years, and got into Run8 Train Sims, until MSFS 2020 came along. I lost interest in P3D after a few years, and I never could get interested in XP.

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by Bobsk8

3 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

I have to say that I've never quite understood why there is such secrecy over sales numbers, both for the sim and for addon developers? There's obviously a reason but I can't work out what the reason is?

Yeah, I agree. If I released an addon and it sold impressive numbers. I’d think it would be great marketing to say “Hey, we just sold 100,000 copies of this!”. But this isn’t my field, and the experts seem to disagree. 

It’s why I like the Steam stats, they’re real and solid and they’re pretty good for analysing trends. Of course, for DCS, X-plane and MSFS they have the very substantial limitation of only considering that one platform.

15 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

I have to say that I've never quite understood why there is such secrecy over sales numbers, both for the sim and for addon developers? There's obviously a reason but I can't work out what the reason is? What's the issue with just saying we've sold xxx numbers of copies?

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.

In some instances, it may be to a company's advantage to announce their sales, so their customers think they are in a healthy financial position. For example, if a bank is doing well, they definitely want people to know, so it avoids a bank run.  So of course, letting people know about your sales will differ on a case to case basis - it depends on the company and it depends on the industry.

Edited May 18, 20233 yr by abrams_tank

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