PMDG 737 and Just Flight 146 released on XBox

[abrams_tank 7,391]

I don't think this Avsim has too many XBox users for MSFS. However, why this news is important is because it opens a huge market for 3rd party high fidelity plane developers, like PMDG, Just Flight, etc, in MSFS. The XBox market will just be icing on the cake, to attract other high fidelity airliner developers who aren't developing for MSFS already, to consider MSFS.  If you are waiting for a specific high fidelity developer who is not developing for MSFS to come to MSFS, this could be a game changer.

Anyways, as you may know, the DC6 from PMDG was originally released on XBox back in 2021. Unfortunately, there were issues with the DC6 on XBox back in 2021. The reason is, XBox is a sandboxed environment, and issues with the DC6 appeared with the final released version of DC6 in the MSFS marketplace on XBox. My understanding is, either the MSFS team, or the XBox team, or both, had to create a fix for this, and they did. This led to the DC6 eventually returning to the XBox last month, and now, the PMDG 737 and Just Flight 146 have also been released on the XBox.

Hopefully, we can find out about PMDG's or Just Flight's sales on XBox down the road. I would be interested to see the numbers. Like I said, this is icing on the cake to attract other high fidelity 3rd party plane developers to the MSFS platform, if they know they can make extra money selling their planes in the XBox market.

Edited May 26, 2023 by abrams_tank

[g-liner 388]

Sales look strong from the amount of people saying they’re enjoying it on the FS2020 Xbox discord and the sudden increased amount of 737s flying around. 
 

It works REALLY well on Xbox even with the controller. Pretty fun sitting back on your sofa doing complex arrivals in a higher fidelity aircraft like the PMDG 737. 

The changes making this and the DC6 possible were WASM 

Great to see MS/asobo go from thinking the Xbox was some gateway device to become a “proper simmer” and getting a PC to recognise it’s a capable device and market in itself. 
 

PMDG again showing why they’re one of the market leaders and hopefully encouraging other devs who have products with memory issues on console to raise their game a bit. 
 

Edited May 26, 2023 by g-liner
Spelling

[lwt1971 7,342]

Another nail in the coffin for the "But but XBox is for arcade-y gamers!!" talking point given the number of people on XBox who've wanted this and are now using it... absolutely fantastic to see the WASM XBox support put in place by the MS/Xbox team and for high fidelity aircraft based on the WASM framework to finally make their way to the marketplace. To be fair, WASM is a framework that's there for aircraft devs wanting to use C++ (and other legacy codebases) to make their aircraft for both PC and XBox versions of MSFS. Aircraft developed in the more "native" ways for MSFS without needing to run some components external to the sim can and have resulted in high fidelity aircraft already for the marketplace and XBox, i.e. the iniBuilds A310. In any case, it's clear the simmer crowd has expanded via XBox, and not all of them are for casual flying only. Future and more powerful versions of the XBox hardware will only keep expanding this userbase, and let's not forget XBox cloud... there's something to be said about being able to fly fidelity aircraft from a browser on any device 🙂
 

[chapstick 2,757]

Hopefully someone makes a video of them doing a full A-B flight in the NG on Xbox. I have a Series X and can't wrap my mind around flying a complex airliner on it without buying an Xbox compatible joystick/throttle and plugging in a keyboard and mouse. And that point, I may as well stay on my desktop. 

[Donka 641]

VR support on Xbox would be a game changer imho. Interesting to see if they include VR support in the next Xbox system.

[JonathanC 163]

1 hour ago, chapstick said:

And that point, I may as well stay on my desktop. 

Yes, but that’s cause you have a high end (presumably) desktop as well as the Series X. So do I and I totally agree…

But buying a higher end PC is expensive and the Xbox gets you an amazing gameplay experience at a quarter of the price. And it’s hassle free - on PC you kinda have to get used to configurations, tweaking, downloading from random sites on the internet, etc. it’s not hard to learn but it does take time to wrap your head around. 
 

And a lot of younger players are more likely to only have the Xbox. So overall it’s a really good thing to see quality planes coming to the Xbox. it is good for the overall sim ecosystem. 

Edited May 26, 2023 by JonathanC

[abrams_tank 7,391]

3 hours ago, g-liner said:

Sales look strong from the amount of people saying they’re enjoying it on the FS2020 Xbox discord and the sudden increased amount of 737s flying around.

Yeah, I would be curious to see how the sales turn out for PMDG for their products in the XBox marketplace.  If the sales are good, word of mouth will pass to other 3rd party developers, especially 3rd party developers not currently developing for MSFS. IMO, those holdout developers will have more incentive to release a product for MSFS, because of the extra money that the XBox marketplace can bring to them.

 

[BrammyH 446]

This is a big deal. I am glad to see them and as others mentioned, hope this drives other devs to make stuff for the Xbox. 

I am assuming there is no Simbrief at all and you need to enter the route manually. Same with any sort of Navigraph position data? It would be nice if Asobo at some point just had the APIs for Simbrief/Navigraph built in.

[blueshark747 1,843]

3 hours ago, Donka said:

VR support on Xbox would be a game changer imho. Interesting to see if they include VR support in the next Xbox system.

Microsoft dropped the ball big time with Xbox console VR.
A Halo & Forza VR title exclusive flagship would have been a huge market win for MS.
Nintendo dropped the ball with console VR, a Mario Kart VR title exclusive flagship has been one of the most desired experiences by Nintendo fans for over 10 years now.
Playstation scored a hit with Gran Turismo VR and PSVR2.
Kudos to Playstation for seeing the future and evolving through generational VR tech.

[abrams_tank 7,391]

18 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

Another nail in the coffin for the "But but XBox is for arcade-y gamers!!" talking point given the number of people on XBox who've wanted this and are now using it... absolutely fantastic to see the WASM XBox support put in place by the MS/Xbox team and for high fidelity aircraft based on the WASM framework to finally make their way to the marketplace. To be fair, WASM is a framework that's there for aircraft devs wanting to use C++ (and other legacy codebases) to make their aircraft for both PC and XBox versions of MSFS. Aircraft developed in the more "native" ways for MSFS without needing to run some components external to the sim can and have resulted in high fidelity aircraft already for the marketplace and XBox, i.e. the iniBuilds A310. In any case, it's clear the simmer crowd has expanded via XBox, and not all of them are for casual flying only. Future and more powerful versions of the XBox hardware will only keep expanding this userbase, and let's not forget XBox cloud... there's something to be said about being able to fly fidelity aircraft from a browser on any device 🙂
 

Yup. I also think some PC owners of MSFS, also own an XBox. I'm sure some of these PC owners have spent thousands of dollars on their flight simulation equipment on their PC, and they probably also follow all procedures and may even fly on VATSIM (or the other ATC networks) when they are on their PC.  But sometimes, they may want to just relax on their couch and it can be convenient for them when they just want to have a casual flight on their couch using their XBox.

[abrams_tank 7,391]

On 5/26/2023 at 7:59 PM, chapstick said:

Hopefully someone makes a video of them doing a full A-B flight in the NG on Xbox. I have a Series X and can't wrap my mind around flying a complex airliner on it without buying an Xbox compatible joystick/throttle and plugging in a keyboard and mouse. And that point, I may as well stay on my desktop. 

I think the default XBox controller should be okay for a simple flight. If you're doing something complex though, like holds and what not, then I can see that being more difficult on an XBox.

[Krakin 5,733]

I hope JF gets flooded with complaints from Xbox users saying the 146 needs a visual upgrade lol

[jaytee73 132]

This bloke seems to have some sort of answer for a couple of the above questions

Pilot / 0083 - YouTube

[MintyB 0]

I hate to disagree with the marjority of comments on this threat, so sorry in advance. But I find the PMDG 737 a complete waste of money - for a casual easy going player on Xbox at least. 

Firstly, I bought it right on release. You can't just jump in and fly it like you can the a320neo or other varients because it doesn't preload a flight plan.. 

Authenticity I hear you say .. no!

Firstly, it's clunky as hell. Using a controller with this is beyond annoying, lots of double clicking, lots of inputs just to move some switches. I even took the mouse from my computer to ease my stresses and this has yet to half the problem. 

I'm now having to completely learn a whole computer system (FMC) just to get the thing in the air, if I even get there. I'm having issues with baggage and stairs not removing even when I'm selecting then to be removed through the FMC, the checklists are beyond boring, tedious and long being as though the auto-complete function doesn't work. 

I spent nearly 1.5 hour following YouTube tutorials just to enter a simple 50 minute long flight into the FMC only to find it didn't work properly once in the air, I restarted and went through the entire process again spending another bunch of time seeing if I had missed a step or entered something wrong. Before I knew it, my entire evening was spent being stressed and flustered and over before I knew it, and I hadn't even gone anywhere. 

For the £60 they're charging on top of the games purchase price, I think there definitely should be an option for an ease of access to a chilled night flying aircraft without spending hours clicking buttons on the ground watching gamertags cruise on by. 

Oh and don't even get me started on liveries and separate purchases for the 700/800 varients... 

Sorry for the rant, maybe I'm not in the right frame of mind to find positives right now. It's looks great I guess... But so does the cheaper counterparts.. 

 

[JonathanC 163]

48 minutes ago, MintyB said:

I hate to disagree with the marjority of comments on this threat, so sorry in advance. But I find the PMDG 737 a complete waste of money - for a casual easy going player on Xbox at least. 

Firstly, I bought it right on release. You can't just jump in and fly it like you can the a320neo or other varients because it doesn't preload a flight plan.. 

Authenticity I hear you say .. no!

Firstly, it's clunky as hell. Using a controller with this is beyond annoying, lots of double clicking, lots of inputs just to move some switches. I even took the mouse from my computer to ease my stresses and this has yet to half the problem. 

I'm now having to completely learn a whole computer system (FMC) just to get the thing in the air, if I even get there. I'm having issues with baggage and stairs not removing even when I'm selecting then to be removed through the FMC, the checklists are beyond boring, tedious and long being as though the auto-complete function doesn't work. 

I spent nearly 1.5 hour following YouTube tutorials just to enter a simple 50 minute long flight into the FMC only to find it didn't work properly once in the air, I restarted and went through the entire process again spending another bunch of time seeing if I had missed a step or entered something wrong. Before I knew it, my entire evening was spent being stressed and flustered and over before I knew it, and I hadn't even gone anywhere. 

For the £60 they're charging on top of the games purchase price, I think there definitely should be an option for an ease of access to a chilled night flying aircraft without spending hours clicking buttons on the ground watching gamertags cruise on by. 

Oh and don't even get me started on liveries and separate purchases for the 700/800 varients... 

Sorry for the rant, maybe I'm not in the right frame of mind to find positives right now. It's looks great I guess... But so does the cheaper counterparts.. 

 

If you are frustrated by correctly setting up the plane, it simply means that this kind of plane is not suited for you.  

As you say, you’re more of a casual player, so this is too much work. Which is perfectly ok.. I’m sure we all started as casual players, and some of us get deeper than others.  

Different people enjoy different things. I simply can’t get into helicopters and I’ve given up on them. I get just as frustrated as you!! 
 

I’m perhaps a bit more into the setup and flying, but then I know people that have built entire cockpits.. I’ll likely never do that. 
 

finally.. if you actually got the plane into the air, that’s impressive for a first time. I think you’ll be having fun doing this pretty soon. :)