I just have seen a very interesting post "over there" in the X-Plane forum. It is about the age of the simmers, namely that earlier the average age of the community was around 50 years or even older. Currently, we have ... see below.

So, I rather would call these young people "kiddies" or at best "gamers". Undoubtedly, older simmers have and invest more money into their hobby and I would also claim that they are taking their hobby more seriously (i.e. flight/ground physics, failure simulation, ... etc. over scenery). But that's only my interpretation 😉.

 

3 minutes ago, flying_carpet said:

I just have seen a very interesting post "over there" in the X-Plane forum. It is about the age of the simmers, namely that earlier the average age of the community was around 50 years or even older. Currently, we have ... see below.

So, I rather would call these young people "kiddies" or at best "gamers". Undoubtedly, older simmers have and invest more money into their hobby and I would also claim that they are taking their hobby more seriously (i.e. flight/ground physics, failure simulation, ... etc. over scenery). But that's only my interpretation 😉.

 

I have to admit, I'm surprised at the fact there are flight simmers who are 100 years old.

IBTL

33 minutes ago, flying_carpet said:

So, I rather would call these young people "kiddies" or at best "gamers"

Ok boomer

Ah yes…the annual “most predictable Avsim thread” of the year. Let me go grab some coffee. Anybody want to wager the number of pages until closure? I don’t know…maybe it’s the hope of the Christmas season, but I’m optimistically going to go with 7.

17 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

That's fair and basically one can say the survey doesn't speak for *all* the people using MSFS and other sims out there on the various hardware platforms.. but 27,736 people responded to this survey, and that's a sizeable sampling and definitely gives indications to all the stakeholders in the simming world a good view on user trends. I'd say the stakeholders interested in this survey (such as high/medium fidelity add-on developers, sim platform devs of course, sim hardware/controller developers, etc) fits right in with the folks who responded.

Hopefully add-on developers are getting good stats/numbers of X-Box usage from MS/Asobo and the marketplace (and MS is the only funnel where XBox'ers can purchase add-ons anyways so it can definitely pass on the numbers).
 

Not particulary as a response to you, Len, but the 27k number here caught my eye and reminded me of something I noticed the other day. I bought some addons two days running from IniBuilds and noticed that the order numbers increased by about 3000. Assuming that those numbers are just incremented naturally within their selling systems, that's a pretty impressive sales throughput. I have noticed similar situations with other vendors as well. That, to me anyway, suggests some pretty solid usage of MSFS, and probably by more "casual" than "serious" simmers, as my impression from this forum (and it is only that, an impression) is that the more dedicated piloting types tend to buy relatively few addons apart from their aircraft of choice and maybe the airports of their favourite/regular routes. 

(and although I buy a LOT of addons, I can't claim all the credit for those 3000 apparent sales at IniBuilds <grin>)

Not trying to convince anyone of anything, just an observation.

37 minutes ago, GoranM said:

have to admit, I'm surprised at the fact there are flight simmers who are 100 years old

That must be the guy that rigged up the first flight sim on ENIAC

These Navigraph surveys aren’t really the views of the “flightsim community” especially now that so many simmers are on console, they’re the views of a section of it, to imagine only 2% of the flightsim community are on console is quite clearly incorrect. Yes it’s interesting but let’s not attach too much importance on the data it gives each year.  
 

Avsim isn’t the flight sim community either just one little part of it. 
 

Most devs know this though and are getting all their content out on console because they see the sales figures. 
 

Devs constantly make reference to the huge number of buyers on marketplace which is driven by a captive console market (who also get the purchase on pc if they have one also) this enables them to release more products and invest more time and money into more content, it also attracts other developer into the market so it’s a win win for everyone. 

Some funny phrases being throw around tbh ‘casual simmers’  ‘serious simmers’ ‘ core simmers’ ‘gamers’ etc 

 

We’re all just playing the same flying game regardless of how we view ourselves or other people doing the same hobby. 
 

 

Edited December 23, 20232 yr by g-liner

Impressive numbers for MSFS. I couldn’t answer this year’s survey. Also, very impressed with the number of people willing to move to 2024 when released. 

And people were disputing me why I decided to do addons for msfs.. maths don't lie.

Regarding the xbox numbers, they look small in the survey, but based on my sales from 2021 to 2023, lots of users that started on xbox have moved to PC, so the xbox HARD CORE user base have been migrating to PC.

At the moment I see 25% to 30% of my sales being on the consoles vs 50% as in 2021.

Xbox users are being plaged with badly optimisation addons causing lots of troubles for them, so they have now reduced their foot print in the purchase space unless you are a well known brand / company which known what to do to ensure your product works almost problem free on the console, lately all their issues seems to be sceneries with a ton of 4k textures even for the LODs outside of 20% screen size, causing a ram overload.. at that point stutters, ctds and avionics blacks outs will occur.. xbox users that keep their consoles vanilla (no sceneries, no WUs) can fly most aircraft with no issues but as soon as a 3rd party addons sceneries is installed and it had bad optimisation, boom..

This has been driving Xbox users either out of msfs or towards a PC. I will continue supporting consoles, with proper optimisation, it is important to keep inspiring new aviators.

My two cents,

Raul

26 minutes ago, simbol said:

This has been driving Xbox users either out of msfs or towards a PC. I will continue supporting consoles, with proper optimisation, it is important to keep inspiring new aviators.

There are still many of us that actually just LIKE flying on Xbox and kicking back on the sofa with the controller and minimal peripherals and fuss. We’re not new aviators or saving up for a PC or gamers etc. 
 

I’ve got both PC and Xbox and prefer flying on the sofa with Xbox. Sure it’s got limitations but I still prefer it to PC in many ways. It’s certainly good enough on Xbox for me to enjoy and keep using anyway, especially now that devs like you are adding fantastic aircraft and navigraph integration etc. 

 

It a small sample size I know but all the pilots in my airline that play on flightsim actually use Xbox rather than PC, like me it’s for the sofa flying and still being able to use it for practicing some procedures/scans etc before our sim checks. Even though we’re airline pilots we still enjoy a VFR group bush flight in the wilga or trying to land the 78 in places our operations manuals, performance calculations and management, wouldn’t allow. Are we “serious simmers”? Probably not. Are we using the sim for IRL training? Possibly. Are we on Xbox, yes. 
 

MS/asobo originally thought Xbox would be a gateway into ‘serious simming’ but now it’s become a market in itself. The amount of effort being made to get higher fidelity content onto the console reflect this. It will hopefully be even better in FS2024 with more cloud data and less RAM usage. Hopefully. 

57 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

Also, very impressed with the number of people willing to move to 2024 when released. 

We’re probably ready to move right back though if it’s too buggy! I’ll define be keeping both installed for the first few weeks/months. 

2 hours ago, flying_carpet said:

So, I rather would call these young people "kiddies" or at best "gamers". Undoubtedly, older simmers have and invest more money into their hobby and I would also claim that they are taking their hobby more seriously (i.e. flight/ground physics, failure simulation, ... etc. over scenery). But that's only my interpretation 😉.

 

1 hour ago, g-liner said:

It a small sample size I know but all the pilots in my airline that play on flightsim actually use Xbox rather than PC, like me it’s for the sofa flying and still being able to use it for practicing some procedures/scans etc before our sim checks.

Who would have thought that MS actually extended the user base by a fair share of professional users by launching MSFS on XBox?

6 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

mean that it's a superior vehicle for "hard core" family transportation?

He made no claims about quality, he made a claim about preference and he's obviously correct about that.