27 minutes ago, Noel said:

Of the current 15M users, let's say only 10% are willing to buy a Platinum subscription, and the rest quit in a fit of rage over how dare MS do this to us, or join a lower tier of access.

When you take something that was previously either almost free (via Gamepass, which gets you loads and loads of games, not just MSFS), or ~60-120 one time and turn it into a subscription.. you're going to lose more like 95-99% of users. I've worked at places where this was done (previous free/cheap product suddenly goes up in price), and unless you are in a monopoly position (hello Adobe), everyone heads for the door. The only people left are the ones who are stuck there. 

There are 34 million GamePass users (https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/15/23570040/microsoft-xbox-game-pass-subscriber-numbers-34-million). You have to imagine that a large chunk of the 15 million unique users came from there - notice they didn't say "active players", or anything like that. All we know is that 15 million unique users ran the sim at least once. 

Going to a pure subscription model would instantly lose the vast majority of the 34 million people who can play MSFS today, and some fraction of them have played it at least once. 

These economic models aren't actually that difficult to work out if you have the raw data. MS has the data, and has no doubt worked out all the scenarios. Jorg alluded to that when he said they have a model for project success, and MSFS has exceeded their best predictions. Also, they made those predictions for 2020 with zero data.. they had been gone for 14 years, they had no hard data on their potential userbase and so on. They probably had a bit of a conservative model, and they blew past that. 

Now, however, they have real hard data and have a deep understanding of their userbase and the possible TAM (total addressable market). And they aren't Adobe which has a proper monopoly in their industry. If MSFS 2024 goes to $20 a month or whatever for a game that's (say) 30% more fun that 2020.. I'll just stick to 2020 or switch to XP. It would have to been a HUGE improvement to justify another subscription. 

And so my point is  - if MSFS 2024 does switch to a subscription, it will have to provide an immense amount of value. Otherwise, you'll end up with the casual players leaving, the "serious" simmers and people with simpits switching to X-Plane/staying on 2020, and whatever remains will be their TAM. Let's wait and see what happens, but my bet is that there's a 95% chance of no-subscription, and the 5% chance of a subscription would mean that 2024 will give us loads and loads to do. 

Edited June 25, 20241 yr by JonathanC

2 hours ago, Noel said:

You brought it up, so....Let's say there are 15,000,000 users currently.  And let's say MS decides to move to subscription based and the cost is $19.95/month for the Platinum, unlimited access subscription.  Of the current 15M users, let's say only 10% are willing to buy a Platinum subscription, and the rest quit in a fit of rage over how dare MS do this to us, or join a lower tier of access.   Even with only 1,500,000 of 15,000,000 users hanging on the monthly income comes in at $30,000,000 per month, or $360,000,000 annually.  

I personally would not buy a sub to MSFS 2020 it's not quite there yet.   When the ATC complete w/ AI voicings, weather, and a few other areas are perfected including overkill server redundancy then, I would happily pay $19.95/month to play, and I would consider it a bargain.

Switching it to a GaaS model is actually really silly when you're putting up MMO numbers like this.

For anyone familiar with the MMO business model - usually the vast majority of profitability comes from the "whale" customers - people who *this* is their game and they're willing to part with a lot of money to enhance their experience. Mobile, similarly, has a similar economy.

When you eliminate the "whale" that might spend $100/mo, and replace it with a $20/mo subscription that you'll have to pay content creators for, that dilutes a lot of that profitability. It's much easier to clean up on the 15% or whatever split you make on the marketplace transactions and keep those people spending money. 

Microsoft makes money every time someone hits purchase in the Marketplace, the idea is to improve those numbers and keep people clicking. Subscriptions, ironically, do not help because MS isn't the company producing most of the addons, so the creators need to get some payment. Subs would change the model, this is part of why you've seen the majority of MMOs go free-to-play - they've found they make more money by selling $10 and $20 microtransactions than they ever did on the sub model.

 

Put simply, a subscription model makes no sense for MS to implement. You make changes like that when you need to improve profitability. These numbers are eyewatering and more than enough to make any project manager at MS more than happy enough with the investment.

Plus a lot of users use this on gamepass already, they're not going to want to stack subscriptions.

I’ve actually given up buying stuff from the marketplace due to the snail like download speed. An airport I can buy from Orbx and download in 2 minutes takes an hour or more from MS. They urgently need to address this. 

I spent about $200 and only purchase from MP.

These days it's mega faster than 3 years ago.

sp

Edited June 25, 20241 yr by Sky_Pilot071

1 hour ago, bennyboy75 said:

I’ve actually given up buying stuff from the marketplace due to the snail like download speed. An airport I can buy from Orbx and download in 2 minutes takes an hour or more from MS. They urgently need to address this. 

Download speeds on the MS Marketplace have been much closer to normal over the past three months than they were when I purchased MSFS 2020 back in November 2023. Those "stuck at 2Mbps for 5 minutes, followed by a quick burst of speed" situations seem to have been sorted out.

It's interesting that so many are willing to pay for navigraph and other third party subscriptions, but mention a subscription model for MSFS and people immediately announce they will quit.....

Though I guess I'm already paying a subscription, since MSFS is my main reason for having game pass.

13 hours ago, cepact said:

Yet with all that cash flow and workforce and infrastructure and so on they can't  figure out how to fix the weather neither give us historical weather

or fix the servers.  it was always about the cash.

14 hours ago, cepact said:

Yet with all that cash flow and workforce and infrastructure and so on they can't  figure out how to fix the weather neither give us historical weather

I remember FSX so I'm very happy with MSFS its a great time.

11 hours ago, ca_metal said:

There's no reason to make subscription based. That's something people keep saying since 2019 for no reason. They never said anything about subscriptions, it's something the users (us) keep talking about.

It already is subscription-based for a proportion of the playerbase in the form of Gamepass.

1 hour ago, HiFlyer said:

It's interesting that so many are willing to pay for navigraph and other third party subscriptions, but mention a subscription model for MSFS and people immediately announce they will quit.....

Though I guess I'm already paying a subscription, since MSFS is my main reason for having game pass.

It's the difference between optional add-on and the core product.

15 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

2024 is going to have historical weather. Only 24 hours, but still

Not on release though, but in a future update.

15 minutes ago, Rimshot said:

Not on release though, but in a future update.

Yeah Jorgs response in the FSElite interview kinda suggests it's not even close, good they're working on it but it might still be quite a wait.

2 hours ago, Matchstick said:

It already is subscription-based for a proportion of the playerbase in the form of Gamepass.

There's a big difference between subscribing for Game Pass and Subscribing specifically for MSFS. The second was never officially a possibility, it was something the users started to talk about with no real indication it would happen.

4 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

It's interesting that so many are willing to pay for navigraph and other third party subscriptions, but mention a subscription model for MSFS and people immediately announce they will quit.....

Though I guess I'm already paying a subscription, since MSFS is my main reason for having game pass.

I believe it's because the costs tend to be higher with a subscription model, in the long term. I paid 120 dollars for the Premium Deluxe version in 2020. A mere 10 dollars fee/month would cost me 120 dollars in just a year. 

Game Pass is a library of 100s of games, it's a bit different. I would understand if they switch to a subscription model, because of the number of online services, but if I could choose, I would prefer to buy it directly.