A2A Comanche available for XBOX on Marketplace

[Jayjay 62]

As title says.  Good news for all of Xbox users.

Jean-Jacques

[abrams_tank 7,445]

3 minutes ago, Jayjay said:

As title says.  Good news for all of Xbox users.

Jean-Jacques

I think A2A will make another boat load of cash from people who buy the A2A Comanche on XBox.  This is one of the perks of being a 3rd party developer for MSFS, if you can make add-ons that work on XBox. I think that's why iniBuilds and PMDG have been able to hire many more people, because not only do they make a huge amount of money from PC add-on sales already, but they make additional money from the XBox add-on sales.

Edited February 11 by abrams_tank

[JBDB-MD80 1,480]

Will they enjoy that 50$ price tag while many would not even know how to fly it properly? and even really care.

Edited February 11 by JBDB-MD80

[Cognita 1,109]

9 minutes ago, JBDB-MD80 said:

Will they enjoy that 50$ price tag while many would not even know how to fly it properly? and even really care.

Is the assumption that those who use an X-Box instead of a PC are ever only out for casual, mindless fun? If so, I am not sure that holds up.

[Tom Wright 438]

I picked it up on Marketplace so I can enjoy it on both PC and Xbox. Best GA for the SIM available right now, brilliant aircraft!

[Jayjay 62]

I switched from an old PC to X-Box as for the same price I cannot  buy a decent PC that would run MSFS 2020 as well as on an X-Box. 

[Poncho 19]

1 hour ago, JBDB-MD80 said:

Will they enjoy that 50$ price tag while many would not even know how to fly it properly? and even really care.

Seems to be a narrow minded and/or condescending statement.

I’ve been flying Microsoft fight sims 20+ years on $4,000 -$ 5,000 over-clocked computers and played the software/hardware chase game that entire time. The best Flight Sim decision I ever made was to quit buying those $4,000 computers and get an Xbox Series X. It validates my decision even more now that I can fly aircraft with the quality as this A2A Comanche and the PMDG’s. 

I had all of A2A’s GA aircraft in FSX, and so this was an insta-buy for me. I’m happy to say I like this new version of the Comanche even better than the FSX version I had due to improvements Scott and his team made. I’m happy to support A2A once again. 🙂

[lwt1971 7,446]

The opinion that XBox MSFS simmers are only using it casually or don't care about fidelity is an antiquated take that permanently belongs in the dust bin. Perhaps more XBox users than PC users use MSFS in a casual sense, but that's doesn't necessarily mean all/most PC users only use the sim in a serious sense. And given that the XBox-X series is more powerful than some MSFS users' PCs, it's even more of a moot point. Proper flight sim controllers are now available for the XBox too which contributes to an experience not that different from PCs.

Obviously devs like FSReborn (Raul), PMDG, iniBuilds, etc have seen success for their high fidelity offerings on XBox, and now A2A are about to. All goodness for them, the sim, and ultimately for us Serious Simmers ™️ 🙂

On a side note, as some suspected before, much of A2A's code is still within the sim framework looks like (i.e. WASM modules, etc) and either heavily customizes base sim areas or completely overrides them. That's what has enabled them to get their AccuSim platform and Comanche on the marketplace and XBox. The only truly "external" part was the sound engine which came as an external executable for PCs but even that is now moved into the sim framework looks like.
 

Edited February 12 by lwt1971

[Cognita 1,109]

I suspect that when in a few years my wife and I downsize that I may very well purchase an x-box at that time along with compatible controllers so I can continue my flight simulation, and at a more realistic price than the $4,000 PC I used to have to buy to run the ancient code of P3D. Support for x-box has come along way and I think it has become a viable platform even for me who can use a tablet for the Navigraph functionality I require. Honestly, what Microsoft and Asobo has done is to dramatically increase the range of people who can engage in flight simulation and for that I am sincerely appreciative. Going forward I will be quite reluctant to purchase anything that cannot be sold in the Marketplace. 

[lwt1971 7,446]

40 minutes ago, Cognita said:

I suspect that when in a few years my wife and I downsize that I may very well purchase an x-box at that time along with compatible controllers so I can continue my flight simulation, and at a more realistic price than the $4,000 PC I used to have to buy to run the ancient code of P3D. Support for x-box has come along way and I think it has become a viable platform even for me who can use a tablet for the Navigraph functionality I require. Honestly, what Microsoft and Asobo has done is to dramatically increase the range of people who can engage in flight simulation and for that I am sincerely appreciative. Going forward I will be quite reluctant to purchase anything that cannot be sold in the Marketplace. 

Good points.. I also wonder about the future of X-Cloud and MSFS. The very possibility of enjoying a comparable experience to what we have now just within a browser on any device (including big monitors/TVs) is very compelling.. especially as their server-side power, internet speeds, etc keep improving. Also as MSFS 2024 and beyond becomes more server-side compute intensive with thinner clients this can only get even better. Controller support for x-cloud gaming is also improving (i.e. https://support.xbox.com/en-CA/help/games-apps/cloud-gaming/cloud-gaming-tested-controllers).
 

Edited February 12 by lwt1971

[abrams_tank 7,445]

1 hour ago, lwt1971 said:

The opinion that XBox MSFS simmers are only using it casually or don't care about fidelity is an antiquated take that permanently belongs in the dust bin. Perhaps more XBox users than PC users use MSFS in a casual sense, but that's doesn't necessarily mean all/most PC users only use the sim in a serious sense. And given that the XBox-X series is more powerful than some MSFS users' PCs, it's even more of a moot point. Proper flight sim controllers are now available for the XBox too which contributes to an experience not that different from PCs.

Obviously devs like FSReborn (Raul), PMDG, iniBuilds, etc have seen success for their high fidelity offerings on XBox, and now A2A are about to. All goodness for them, the sim, and ultimately for us Serious Simmers ™️ 🙂
 

Didn't Simbol say about 1/3 of his sales for FSReborn come from XBox? I can't remember the exact percentage, but I remember it was around 30%.  That's huge, IMO. Not as huge as PC sales, but 30% is not insignificant either.  It really adds more money and profit to the bottom line of some add-on developers, if they can sell their add-ons in the XBox market.

If A2A experiences something similar, they will make a lot more money as well.  And IMO, I can't see A2A focusing on any other platform, other than MSFS (A2A said they would consider developing for a competing platform, but I doubt that will happen once they taste the sweet, sweet money of MSFS).

[Matt Sdeel 47]

2 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

And given that the XBox-X series is more powerful than some MSFS users' PCs,

I'm not familiar with XBox-X. In what way is it more powerful than some user's PCs?

[lwt1971 7,446]

20 minutes ago, Matt Sdeel said:

I'm not familiar with XBox-X. In what way is it more powerful than some user's PCs?

Very roughly equivalent to a 3060 Ti or 3070 GPU wise, and Ryzen 7 3700x or intel equivalent CPU wise.. my main point here was that there are certainly PC users running MSFS on equivalent or lesser hardware in the last 2+ years since MSFS came out. The underlying XBox OS is just a variant of Windows, using the same DirectX tech, etc. So all things considered they can be compared. Only difference with software such as MSFS for XBox vs PC is that the in-game configurability for visual fidelity is much less on XBox, understandably since MS/Asobo (like other game developers for consoles) fix/hardcode the visual fidelity at specific settings so that a desired 30fps or 60gps can be achieved on the target console machine (believe MS targets 60fps for MSFS with XBox-X, and 30fps for the lesser XBox-S machine).

https://www.wepc.com/cpu/faq/what-cpu-is-equivalent-to-the-xbox-series-x/
https://www.makeuseof.com/xbox-series-x-vs-gaming-pc/
 

Edited February 12 by lwt1971

[Matt Sdeel 47]

5 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Very roughly equivalent to a 3060 Ti or 3070 GPU wise, and Ryzen 7 3700x or intel equivalent CPU wise

Thank you. This is very interesting. The Xbox X I just checked in Walmart has 16 GB of RAM and selling for only about $500. I didn't know it would be competitive, performance-wise with a PC. I'm pleasantly surprised. It doesn't appear to have VR support though.

[Ixoye 1,828]

Wonderful news for all of Xbox users 👍