8 hours ago, Gilandred said:

I doubt it’s 500 full time people, but whatever the number is, it’s most certainly not just a handful.  I agree that their concept of “digital twin” goes well beyond flight simulation.  More to come for sure.

I think it's 175 working for MS/Asobo with the rest spread around elsewhere (partnership programs like ORBX, Working Title etc) is how I made it out during his expo talk.

Agreed. Jorg is awesome

15 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

Interesting, and good to hear. MS's increased investment is very clear and they are definitely doing it due to 2020's very obvious success. Here's to that success continuing to snowball!

Can't say enough good things about Seb too, just the right kind of lead dev to be in charge of the sim's core.
 

Out of genuine curiosity - how big of a success is MSFS actually?

I have the MSFS Steam version and not long ago I got the Century Club achievement (100h of flight time) and was surprised that only 6.9% of players on Steam reached that. Actually only 12.6% have flown more than 50h (and just for fun >500h only 0.9%). In the Steam charts, MSFS had an avg of 5120 players over the last 30days. For comparison - Farming Simulator 22 had  an avg. of 16860 players on Steam (and is like MSFS also available on XBOX / Game Pass). We're talking 3x the numbers here....

This - of course - is assuming that the Steam numbers are representative - but considering the marketplace - I would assume that the 87.4% of players not having flown more the 50h (or 93.1% considering <100h) are not buying a PMDG 737 on the marketplace.... or looking at Steam Charts - there are currently more than 3x as many players that are potential DLC buyers for Farming Simulator 22 than MSFS... 

4 minutes ago, GGLurch said:

Out of genuine curiosity - how big of a success is MSFS actually?

I have the MSFS Steam version and not long ago I got the Century Club achievement (100h of flight time) and was surprised that only 6.9% of players on Steam reached that. Actually only 12.6% have flown more than 50h (and just for fun >500h only 0.9%). In the Steam charts, MSFS had an avg of 5120 players over the last 30days. For comparison - Farming Simulator 22 had  an avg. of 16860 players on Steam (and is like MSFS also available on XBOX / Game Pass). We're talking 3x the numbers here....

This - of course - is assuming that the Steam numbers are representative - but considering the marketplace - I would assume that the 87.4% of players not having flown more the 50h (or 93.1% considering <100h) are not buying a PMDG 737 on the marketplace.... or looking at Steam Charts - there are currently more than 3x as many players that are potential DLC buyers for Farming Simulator 22 than MSFS... 

Don't forget that it's spread over three platforms, Steam, MS Store and Xbox. So those low numbers don't represent the total number of players playing at any one time, nor the total number who do achieve +100hrs etc

Edited June 27, 20232 yr by MarcG

The hour achievements are on a "single pilot profile" - Does anyone know what that actually means? As I have 2k hours but I haven't reached the 1,000 hours achievement which I assume is related to some sort of profile thing. 

5 minutes ago, Zangoose said:

The hour achievements are on a "single pilot profile" - Does anyone know what that actually means? As I have 2k hours but I haven't reached the 1,000 hours achievement which I assume is related to some sort of profile thing. 

Yeah - that is one thing. I also do not no if this is counting when in dev mode since flights are not logged in my pilot profile when in dev-mode. Also I have logged over 300h in MSFS on Steam but only 130+Hours flying...

 

7 minutes ago, MarcG said:

Don't forget that it's spread over three platforms, Steam, MS Store and Xbox. So those low numbers don't represent the total number of players playing at any one time, nor the total number who do achieve +100hrs etc

This is why I included Farming Sim as a comparison since it also is available on XBox and Game Pass... 

Edited June 27, 20232 yr by GGLurch

Just now, GGLurch said:

This is why I included Farming Sim as a comparison since it also is available on XBox and Game Pass...

Two entirely different games aren't they, it's like comparing Elite Dangerous to Elden Ring!

Anyway, I think Jorg mentioned something like 13m players in total with 3m casual and 3m simmers in the expo or something like that, either way I think it's fair to say it was above their expectations.

12 hours ago, Gilandred said:

I doubt it’s 500 full time people, but whatever the number is, it’s most certainly not just a handful.  I agree that their concept of “digital twin” goes well beyond flight simulation.  More to come for sure.

I wouldn't doubt it. I know of a game in development right now that has over 400 full-time developers working on it.

Edited June 27, 20232 yr by March Hare

18 hours ago, andradef said:

I had a chance to chat with Jorg at FSExpo. Really nice guy, very much into understanding customer feedback and being connected to the community. I asked him specifically about multi-threading in FS2024. He told me that they are indeed re-architecting some things to have more discrete processes so the title can better utilize multiple processors. He specifically mentioned that an area of focus is the separation of physics/flight dynamics processes and he expects FS2024 to make much better use of multiple processors. I mentioned to him that I have an RTX 3080 that is usually running less than 40%, while my CPU is completely maxed out. I told him that I am obviously not upgrading to an RTX 4080 any time soon because it won't make the product run much better (other than 40-series-only technologies that Nvidia has been implementing). His position is that the RTX 3080 has plenty of power for the flight sim, and I should not really need to upgrade it when FS 2024 comes. 

With the fact MSFS 2024 will utilise my hardware better, with multi-threading, and more done on server side, I still have confidence in my GTX1070 and core i7 system to run it well. I run the current version on full ultra settings, albeit in 1080p at a capped 30FPS, but it looks great and is smooth.

3 hours ago, GGLurch said:

Out of genuine curiosity - how big of a success is MSFS actually?

I have the MSFS Steam version and not long ago I got the Century Club achievement (100h of flight time) and was surprised that only 6.9% of players on Steam reached that. Actually only 12.6% have flown more than 50h (and just for fun >500h only 0.9%). In the Steam charts, MSFS had an avg of 5120 players over the last 30days. For comparison - Farming Simulator 22 had  an avg. of 16860 players on Steam (and is like MSFS also available on XBOX / Game Pass). We're talking 3x the numbers here....

This - of course - is assuming that the Steam numbers are representative - but considering the marketplace - I would assume that the 87.4% of players not having flown more the 50h (or 93.1% considering <100h) are not buying a PMDG 737 on the marketplace.... or looking at Steam Charts - there are currently more than 3x as many players that are potential DLC buyers for Farming Simulator 22 than MSFS... 

Please keep in mind that the average of 5120 players is PER HOUR over the 30 days. Jorg said they have 100s of thousands of unique players logging on every day and if you do the math, it checks out when you take the other platforms into consideration. The CEO of MS has brought up the success of the marketplace at three separate investor meetings. Seb said MSFS will continue after he's retired. PMDG have seen sales performance far beyond their wildest dreams. Despite being sold at a low price, the An-225 sold close to a million dollars in revenue soon after it was released and the ATR-72/42 sold even more than that. MS, 3 years on is still charging full price for a copy of the sim.

I doubt very much that Farm Simulator is out pacing MSFS in add-on sales. They're two different beasts and MSFS has wayyyy more potential since it is simulating the whole world and there are a lot of planes to sell. I've purchase most of the fighter jets available for DCS and I haven't flown most of them. Achievements on steam does not tell the whole story.

Edited June 27, 20232 yr by Krakin

Good points Krakin and in support of that they nearly doubled their dev team which speaks to how successful MSFS is.

4 hours ago, GGLurch said:

Out of genuine curiosity - how big of a success is MSFS actually?

I have the MSFS Steam version and not long ago I got the Century Club achievement (100h of flight time) and was surprised that only 6.9% of players on Steam reached that. Actually only 12.6% have flown more than 50h (and just for fun >500h only 0.9%). In the Steam charts, MSFS had an avg of 5120 players over the last 30days. For comparison - Farming Simulator 22 had  an avg. of 16860 players on Steam (and is like MSFS also available on XBOX / Game Pass). We're talking 3x the numbers here....

This - of course - is assuming that the Steam numbers are representative - but considering the marketplace - I would assume that the 87.4% of players not having flown more the 50h (or 93.1% considering <100h) are not buying a PMDG 737 on the marketplace.... or looking at Steam Charts - there are currently more than 3x as many players that are potential DLC buyers for Farming Simulator 22 than MSFS... 

"How big of a success is MSFS actually?" FYI, I play a lot of video games, on XBox gamepass and Playstation Plus. I have not spend a single penny on cosmetics, upgrades, in store items, etc, on all those games I play.

I have spent some money in the MSFS marketplace for add-ons for MSFS. And I don't think I am even a big spender, compared to others here at Avsim in the MSFS forum.

Even if Farming Simulator has more players than MSFS, do the players in Farming Simulator spend as much as a player on MSFS? I don't think so.

I can only imagine that Jorg had the go ahead to hire 500 people to work on MSFS 2024 because Microsoft has been seeing the returns in the MSFS marketplace. We know that the AN-225 was close to 1 million US dollars in sales from about a month ago (perhaps it has surpassed 1 million USD sales since then). I suspect revenue wise (not player wise), MSFS has been a huge success and that's why Jorg convinced his bosses to set a budget so that he could hire 500 people for MSFS 2024.

I think if everyone truly knew the personalities behind MSFS, the tone of some remarks on AVSIM would be very different. Not sure if this has been posted, but a great interview by Vasco of MSFSAddons https://msfsaddons.com/2023/06/25/exclusive-interview-with-jorg-neumann-and-sebastian-wloch-we-are-in-the-pursuit-of-the-perfect-sim/

5 minutes ago, The Flight Level said:

I think if everyone truly knew the personalities behind MSFS, the tone of some remarks on AVSIM would be very different. Not sure if this has been posted, but a great interview by Vasco of MSFSAddons https://msfsaddons.com/2023/06/25/exclusive-interview-with-jorg-neumann-and-sebastian-wloch-we-are-in-the-pursuit-of-the-perfect-sim/

 

Copy that! Tough to read and keep track of everything here!