4 hours ago, TASCHMANN said:

I'm very content to have the community assess whether 4 hours a month seems like a reasonable average or not.

Four hours a MONTH?

I haven't touched a setting on MSFS since I installed it on my new computer a couple years ago.  There's nothing to tweak.

It hasn't fallen off in performance or anything at all.  

3 hours ago, ca_metal said:

They didn't say anything about the number of active users, but I would guess around a million (Xbox + PC + Steam).

We can check SteamDB to see that Steam alone has had an average peak of 10k users, daily, since basically the release date. That doesn't mean 10k users/day... that means at the busiest time of each day, there are an average of 10k users active in MSFS. MSFS is currently #101 for best-selling game on Steam. And that is just Steam users.. in most cases, Microsoft Store users would be a lot less, but given MSFS is part of Game Pass, the daily users could be even higher for the MS Store.

For some perspective, X-Plane (11+12 combined) has been averaging a peak of 1.5k daily Steam users.

So back to those who think a bunch of users are having issues with MSFS... they are not. But the users who do have issues come to forums like these to either troubleshoot or vent while 99% of users are flying with little to no issues.

19 minutes ago, Funky D said:

We can check SteamDB to see that Steam alone has had an average peak of 10k users, daily, since basically the release date. That doesn't mean 10k users/day... that means at the busiest time of each day, there are an average of 10k users active in MSFS. MSFS is currently #101 for best-selling game on Steam. And that is just Steam users.. in most cases, Microsoft Store users would be a lot less, but given MSFS is part of Game Pass, the daily users could be even higher for the MS Store.

For some perspective, X-Plane (11+12 combined) has been averaging a peak of 1.5k daily Steam users.

So back to those who think a bunch of users are having issues with MSFS... they are not. But the users who do have issues come to forums like these to either troubleshoot or vent while 99% of users are flying with little to no issues.

It's actually much higher in the MSStore. In the marketplace presentation they've shown a chart with the players by platform. They didn't put any numbers, but the Xcloud (Microsoft Stream service) is on par with Steam, and the MSStore version and the XBOX version have more players than Steam. And yeah, the Game Pass helps.



This chart has 10 lines, each platform has:
Win10 (PC MSStore version): 8.5
Xbox: 6.1
XCloud: 4.1
Steam:4.8

Microsoft Platforms: 18.7
Steam: 4.8

MS platforms had almost 4x the number of the Steam players in May. And those numbers go up and down (Steam is the most stable). 

TLDR: Steam isn't the most important platform for MSFS.

4 hours ago, ca_metal said:

It's actually much higher in the MSStore. In the marketplace presentation they've shown a chart with the players by platform. They didn't put any numbers, but the Xcloud (Microsoft Stream service) is on par with Steam, and the MSStore version and the XBOX version have more players than Steam. And yeah, the Game Pass helps.

This chart has 10 lines, each platform has:
Win10 (PC MSStore version): 8.5
Xbox: 6.1
XCloud: 4.1
Steam:4.8

Microsoft Platforms: 18.7
Steam: 4.8

MS platforms had almost 4x the number of the Steam players in May. And those numbers go up and down (Steam is the most stable). 

TLDR: Steam isn't the most important platform for MSFS.

Nice write-up! To add to what @ca_metal, in the Navigraph survey, MSFS has close to a 71% market share among Navigraph survey takers ( "Which One Is Your Primary Flight Simulator Software?" chart in 2023 Navigraph survey).  Now if you consider that Navigraph survey takers is representative of "hard core" flight sim enthusiasts, because they are paying a subscription fee to use Navigraph (something I doubt most casual flight simmers would do), then MSFS is likely dominating the "hard core" flight sim enthusiasts market too.

That's very impressive of MSFS, that it can dominate the casual flight sim market segment, and also dominate the "hard core" flight sim market segment.

I have to say I am more than a little bemused and surprised at just how many are 'in from day one.' I mean come on guys, most of you have been round long enough to know that new releases are more often than not plagued with bugs and issues. Maybe it's me, but I will wait to hear all the feedback before rushing to part with my hard earned cash! 

I can’t wait for the new sim to appear. I’m going to buy the ultimate version asap. I might even move to Kiribati to get it first. 
 

First things to do, after the buying and downloading. . .
 

Have a brief look at all the new menus etc

Spawn over my house.

Try a take off and landing somewhere 

Check out the career and missions 

 

There’s so many awesome new features (that we know about) on the way I’m REALLY excited about it and looking forwards to it. 

 

12 minutes ago, Rocky_53 said:

I have to say I am more than a little bemused and surprised at just how many are 'in from day one.' I mean come on guys, most of you have been round long enough to know that new releases are more often than not plagued with bugs and issues. Maybe it's me, but I will wait to hear all the feedback before rushing to part with my hard earned cash! 

If it was a brand new product or by a new development team, I'd agree with you, but 2024 is going to be 2020 with bells and whistles so even if it is plagued by bugs and issues on release, I can't imagine that I would never buy 2024 so my investment is safe.

38 minutes ago, Rocky_53 said:

I have to say I am more than a little bemused and surprised at just how many are 'in from day one.' I mean come on guys, most of you have been round long enough to know that new releases are more often than not plagued with bugs and issues. Maybe it's me, but I will wait to hear all the feedback before rushing to part with my hard earned cash! 

I want to know that all of my airport addons will be compatible before I make the move. MSFS 2020 isn't suddenly going to become rubbish because the next version has been released, so I am quite happy to sit back and wait for confirmation of this. After all, it took me three years to upgrade from P3Dv4 to MSFS 2020, so I clearly do not suffer from "must upgrade instantly" syndrome. I am also keen to know if the handful of terrain/graphical issues have been sorted out. You know the ones I mean. I have been waffling on about them for the past six months

40 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

I want to know that all of my airport addons

How many airport add-ons do you have?

I’m too excited to test the new sim to wait. Don’t care if all of my addons will work, I’ll leave 2020 on my hard drive.

1 hour ago, Rocky_53 said:

I have to say I am more than a little bemused and surprised at just how many are 'in from day one.' I mean come on guys, most of you have been round long enough to know that new releases are more often than not plagued with bugs and issues. Maybe it's me, but I will wait to hear all the feedback before rushing to part with my hard earned cash! 

or maybe people have been around long enough to know exactly what they are in for and can deal with it. A few bugs and issues certainly won't detract from the experience. I was part of the MSFS alpha all the way to release and nothing in that experience took away from enjoying it.

50 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

MSFS 2020 isn't suddenly going to become rubbish because the next version has been released

Me2 I only fly with APL and Self Loading Cargo and it all works wonderfully so my plan is def to purchase 2024 a few days after the servers cool down and just play with it until I can port over APL and SLC and the planes I use.  I've been wanting to do some different flying than airliners for score and am starting to get a little excited about in particular wildfire fighting and medical evac roles and if those don't pan out I just installed Neofly to see if I can find another role as a light aircraft pilot.  As a tubeliner pilot one can missout a bit on scenery, however the drone camera solves that handily.

I do not have enough disk space to have MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 installed at the same time (unless they can share one community folder and one Steam/Official folder), so that is another reason not to jump the gun too quickly.

4 hours ago, Rocky_53 said:

I have to say I am more than a little bemused and surprised at just how many are 'in from day one.' I mean come on guys, most of you have been round long enough to know that new releases are more often than not plagued with bugs and issues. Maybe it's me, but I will wait to hear all the feedback before rushing to part with my hard earned cash! 

Why would you wait?  If there are bugs that make it impossible to play for you, you can switch back to MSFS 2020.

4 hours ago, Rocky_53 said:

I mean come on guys, most of you have been round long enough to know that new releases are more often than not plagued with bugs and issues. Maybe it's me, but I will wait to hear all the feedback before rushing to part with my hard earned cash!

I want to see for myself what bugs and issues are there from day one. I will then report them to Asobo for them to fix it. You may thank me later😁

Edited August 29, 20241 yr by Rimshot