Where is Microsoft heading ???

[Rogen]

I was looking at the London expansion for Fallout 4 and got to thinking *wow* this game is around 10 years old and really amazing things are still happening.

By the same token I also thought about the MSFS franchise, it's longevity and where MS might to wanting to take it.

Which lead me to the question of just "where *is* MS intending to take the MSFS franchise long term ?".

From the looks so far they are aiming for a pretty high fidelity digital twin of the earth scenery wise, I mean Bing maps for higher up and on the ground there are what looks like procedural generated ground improvements/clutter which would expand the engine use to more non-flying applications, perhaps train and/or farming, or city simulation (just a few thoughts off the top), and of course data streaming would be a big part where the aim would eventually be hardware agnostic i.e. just stream direct to your TV aka NetFlix/Prime/etc..

But they are not alone in the world regarding such digital twin progress, for instance Maxar and Blackshark are actively building and promoting digital earth and spruiking it's gaming and movie use potential.

At this point I looked up the Steam charts to see how well the 3 x MSFS versions are performing relatively speaking as compared to Fallout 4 (as FO4 is ~10 years and still going).

And while the Steam charts don't represent total MSFS usage (no XBox of course), being PC would tend to represent the more hardcore type of sim fan as a PC can be of much higher spec than an XBox.

However I was pretty shocked by the charts and how few users are enjoying the MSFS franchise especially when compared to an older game like Fallout 4.
Chart Stats as of 23/01/2025

FSX-SE

• players right now:                   526
• 24-hour peak:                         678
• All Time Peak 4.8 years ago: 6,051

MSFS 2020

• players right now:                   4,117
• 24-hour peak:                         5,983
• All Time Peak 4.4 years ago: 61,829

MSFS 2024

• players right now:                   2,461
• 24-hour peak:                         3,800
• All Time Peak 2 months ago: 24,863

Fallout 4

• players right now:                   14,424
• 24-hour peak:                         16,540
• All Time Peak 9.2 years ago: 472,962

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

• players right now:                   39,154
• 24-hour peak:                         49,644
• All Time Peak 8.3 years ago: 69,906

Farming Simulator 25 (more popular than flight simulation... and the older releases of Farming Simulator are still going too)

• players right now:                   14,252
• 24-hour peak:                         38,254
• All Time Peak 2 months ago: 135,970

 

Quite shocking really... I mean I know flight sims are a niche but Fallout 4 and Skyrim are quite old games and it seems people prefer to literally watch and manage the growing of plants more than flying...

Moving forward.

Does anyone have any better insight to further stats ? like dev *ongoing* sales figure for example, something more tangible maybe ?

Speculative question...

• Is MS using the MSFS franchise to learn and develop processes for digital twin and and hardware streaming as a loss leader ? i.e. the franchise is loosing money and is being developed as a loss making learning and testing tool ? Thoughts ?

 

Business *always* cares about the bottom line... if you've ever sat in an executive meeting, budgets, forecasts, KPI's and costs are always on the agenda. Yes MS may own the infrastructure overall, but any business would pass those those sort of costs on internally and large scale software development and cloud infrastructure is not at all cheap in reality.

Yeah the above is all speculation, but I just kind worry, history has MS dumping FSX, selling the rights to ESP,  they also dumped MS Flight, Flight Sim World (based on MS licensing out FSX code) was dumped, what would be left in the non-commercial world should the bean counters decide *enough!*... who would have deep enough pockets to pick up the sim platform ? (MS even own Bethesda now, so who's left ?)

Cheers

 

Edited January 23 by Rogen
bad date

[abrams_tank]

They are obviously trying to create a digital twin earth for the long run. Microsoft could spend a minmal amount of money enhancing each MSFS version, and just sell us a new MSFS every 4 to 6 years with upgraded scenery and they would profit tremendously.

The fact that they spent so much money and resources on MSFS 2024 tells me that they found MSFS 2020 to be extremely profitable, probably because of the marketplace.

Flight sim will always be a niche and won't match the playerbase of games like Falllout. It is what it is. But it's possible that MSFS is more profitable, or just as profitable, as some mainstream AAA games because of the spending in the MSFS marketplace.

In the end, it's obvious that Microsoft is advancing their digital twin earth. Even if they incurred a small loss in MSFS (which I doubt, it appears MSFS 2020 was profitable for them based on the people and contractors that workrd on MSFS 2024), the cost is justified if they ultimately want the most advanced digitap twin earth for the market.

 

Edited January 23 by abrams_tank

[Ron Attwood]

Amazing figures. I thought flight simming was the centre of gaming universe. I got the impression that we were awash with an influx of would be pilots. Seems not.

When Asobo/MS go and make a pigs ear of what we hold dear, it appears they're not upsetting very many of us.

And I thought we were special. 😕

[Richard Sennett]

Eye opening - great post 

[HiFlyer]

To be fair, Skyrim was just on sale on Steam a few days ago for $3.99, and that pulled in a massive amount of new players. Numbers are already beginning to drop.

Plus, I think Gamepass is the natural home of MSFS, and I'm not sure those numbers are available.

As far as where they are going though, there are several possible directions.....

 

[prolixindec]

I don't know anything about anything, but for the last decade or so, I've been thinking we need to split up the "digital twin earth" app and the "flight simulator" app. 

If they were split, then the hypothetical maker of the digital twin earth would offer a platform for anything and everything, including flight simulators, and would let other apps just inject a camera (or a POV) into the world and move it around as required.

Meanwhile, the "flight simulator" apps would handle aircraft systems and performance, flight dynamics, ground handling, navigation, and ATC. 

And they would simply be networked together.

It sort of cripples what MSFS can do with their world sim, when they also have to build an engine that handles all the flight stuff. I'm sure they do this in-house anyway; the team at Asobo that models the digital twin earth certainly isn't the same team that builds the aircraft systems, the turbulence model, the ground handling, and the ATC scripts. Asobo might make even more money if they un-bundled the digital twin, and let competing developers put their creations into the world.

You see this to some extent with those who use MSFS as the graphics engine for the Aerowinx flight simulator: MSFS makes the view out the windshield, and Aerowinx does literally everything else. But the arrangement is hardly plug-and-play, and neither app is optimized for this use case, so there are compromises. Still, it seems like a more flexible way to go then having the digital twin app being inseparable from the flight sim app.

 

Edited January 23 by prolixindec

[eslader]

Farming Simulator is extraordinarily popular, and the new one just dropped something like a month ago. Actually if I were Giants, I'd be very worried about those numbers. The reviews have not been great, and the franchise has a reputation for releasing new versions that are really just carbon copies of the old versions with very minor changes. It also has a reputation for not bothering to fix bugs, ever. There's a lot of demand for farm simulation (there are even tractor controllers out there akin to our flight yokes) and to have dropped 100,000 players with a brand new game in the genre which happens to be the only game in the genre is, I think, pretty telling.

I suspect 2024's numbers were hurt off the top by the absolute tsunami of negative reviews — here, the official forums, YouTube and gaming industry press — and the dropoff is because a lot of what was said in those negative reviews was true, so people have shelved it until it gets better.

 

 

[anavsun]

3 hours ago, Rogen said:

 

Yeah the above is all speculation, but I just kind worry, history has MS dumping FSX, selling the rights to ESP,  they also dumped MS Flight, Flight Sim World (based on MS licensing out FSX code) was dumped, what would be left in the non-commercial world should the bean counters decide *enough!*... who would have deep enough pockets to pick up the sim platform ? (MS even own Bethesda now, so who's left ?)

Cheers

 

Worry about the future of MSFS. Why?

If tomorrow, news comes out that Microsoft/Asobo are closing shop Feb 1, 2025, I don't think it would matter much so long as it can be played offline. ie. no photogrammetry and no Marketplace for example. There are currently no better options after all. I just don't see folks running back to other flight sims. With the current versions of MSFS, the future of flight sim is happening now.

[GSalden]

@Rogen

Thanks for sharing. Didn’t know that. Great post.

[jspilot]

It’s a moment in time type analysis but it is pretty telling that 2020 has more active users right now than 2024.  If you are Microsoft and see this trend continuing you have to wonder if the direction they are taking this franchise is working.

Im still using 2020 and have 0 desire to switch to 2024 as I’ve watched the sim streamed and im just not that impressed with what it has to offer.

If I were Microsoft and guiding them on how to improve I’d ask them why they create what is essentially a soulless game that, even with career mode- really has no life to it.  Why are they still so reliant on other developers to create far superior aircraft, create immersive features and the like, that elevate their base sim?

Imagine if something like the multiple add on AI ATC options out there was part of the base game for Microsoft…  Imagine if the top quality add ons we all use were included in the base game…

The direction they took 2024 was basically to add career mode into the same sim, tweak the flight characteristics and release a whole bunch of poorly to far below standard aircraft with essentially the same ATC service.  Clearly that’s not good enough for consumers anymore.

[MarcG]

We've had this discussion before on the future, they have the possibility and the platform to utilise many simulation aspects in one central World. Train, racing, boat, flight, truck etc. The more the merrier to attract larger numbers, trouble is they're not up to the task currently.

As of right now the future of the franchise depends on them regaining trust in the players after the horrendous start to MSFS24, if they don't fix that then there may not be a future at all as well all know how M$ like to pull the plug on failing projects.

The possibilities are practically endless, it's whether the management are good enough and whether the suits above them give them time to make it happen.

[HiFlyer]

6 hours ago, Rogen said:

However I was pretty shocked by the charts and how few users are enjoying the MSFS franchise especially when compared to an older game like Fallout 4.

Thinking about it, another point I would make is that those games can often be acquired very cheaply or even occasionally for free at this point, whereas an investment in MSFS demands (unless you are on Gamepass) a significantly higher outlay, both initially and then later for addons, though I see Asobo/Microsoft counteracting that a bit by including a lot of unprecedentedly high quality base planes, as well as the rapid release of cheap(er) planes on a regular basis, not to mention the free scenery updates to keep people interested and exploring......

I've assumed that the career mode is yet another effort to maintain longevity and customer interest by providing a friendly climb up the ladder of complexity in a comfortable/familiar gaming environment/context.

At this point, I think the success or failure of this endeavor lies in Asobo/Microsoft's determination/perseverance in putting in the needed work over the long term. I find encouragement in the apparent change in cultural attitude towards flight simulators, evidenced by the fact that pretty much every benchmark video in the last few years showcasing popular gaming titles and testing performance, now finds it pretty much mandatory to include flightsim in their reviews.

And not just any flightsim: pretty much solely and exclusively MSFS.

Edit: I forgot to mention their income from the marketplace. I've occasionally thought the must be in agony that the 2024 market is closed and not generating any income.

 

Edited January 23 by HiFlyer

[tfm]

I suspect their "roadmap" is largely improvised and opportunistic. As I recall the hype at the time, FS 2020 was supposed to be the last version ever, with unending updates: the business model presumably depended on dynamism in the "marketplace", with new/ updated add-ons being released to keep pace with innovations in the sim, with MS taking their pound of flesh from those sales.

My personal guess is that this business model basically worked BUT, as usual these days, what got the better of them was just sheer greed: why make shed-loads of money by honouring the original promise , if you can make even more money by breaking that promise and releasing a "new, improved" version which, alone, will receive the updates originally promised for v2020?

Unfortunately, it seems to have back-fired. Not only was the release seriously under-cooked but, disastrously, the defects are so fundamental that it impedes the very "marketplace" on which so much of the profit depends.

I hope very much that v2024 is something they can recover from, but I do have a slight fear that it was a strategic blunder which might ultimately lead the bean-counters to pull the plug on the franchise. For the third time, by my count (first was FSX, then the execrable"Flight" thing they released in c2012).

Edited January 23 by tfm

[jcomm]

Excellent post and theme!

I believe it's difficult to compare the "audiences" of the different games the OP showed use statistics from Steam. Specially being Steam the base...

Flight simulation is still a "niche" market. People will only get into it if "flying" is some sort of passion in their minds.

Exceptions in the case of xBox would be all those users with a game pass that even not being particularly fond of flight or it's simulation, load the game just to check how it looks and performs in their console, and also probably as a "scenery browser" alternative to using Bing or Google Maps...

For me, specially after having just now started to play Career Mode in FS 2024, it's a lot clearer that ASOBO aimed at a very wide range of potential users, with a focus on didactic aspects of civil flight as a recreational or professional activity.

Even if not *perfect*, Career mode which I had been avoiding since I installed FS 2024 is actually very well thought, and I'd say, structured - yes there are bugs / limitations / inaccuracies, but overall the experience so far has been rather positive, and I personally intend to invest in it probably more than in casual airline flights... This aspect of MSFS is, I think, something we would probably have to pay for as an addon if the base FS 2020 remained the only version and specific addon packages would be released to augment it's features, so, I can't complain having had to buy FS 2024, and I am actually really glad with it, to the point of having completely dropped FS 2020.

I think their Project is that of bringing the World of Civil Flight, probably with future incursions into the military side of Aviation, to a wider audience, giving those that previously would use the simulator just as a --> flight <-- simulator, the chance to get a structured and more or less sound perspective of what the progress of a pilot life can be.

This seems like a great objective for the younger, and for the older like me ( 60 yo ) it is, just as some aspects of MS FLIGHT were, really enjoyable.

Their aim is the satisfaction of a wider audience, with emphasis on the didactic aspects when possible, and I'm all for that !!!

In order to get the necessary outcome they have to bring to the MSFS ecosystem, as much as they can, the profits from addons purchased by their users, hence the Marketplace, and probably hence the not so open to 3pd aspects of the sim, which is bad for 3pds and sometimes also for users if their way of implementing it in the sim doesn't please them, but it's understandable as a necessary measure to ensure profitability and not bring outside of the platform the money users end up spending, leaving for ASOBO / MS just a marginal, with time rather residual, profit.

We really have to accept that if we want MSFS to keep alive, profit must sustain the huge structure behind it, so we will have to "sacrifice" some of our "earned rights" in order to be able to enjoy it's evolution, the more dynamic the best.

I honestly believe that although it would probably rise a wave of arguments / critics / blame / ..., actually restricting all addons to only be available through the Marketplace would be acceptable. In the limit even freeware developers willing to make their content available should have to be given access (for free) to the platform through a marketplace agent account, and submit their addons / mods / ... through it, in that case with cost ZERO.

Ideally a kind of "BAO Aircraft & Adventure Factory" / SDK + Tools kit should become available for all developers, probably Cloud based as pretty much everything these days.

A fully centralized feed for content is something I think ASOBO / MS should try to implement.

Edited January 23 by jcomm

[Christopher Low]

4 hours ago, anavsun said:

If tomorrow, news comes out that Microsoft/Asobo are closing shop Feb 1, 2025, I don't think it would matter much so long as it can be played offline. ie. no photogrammetry and no Marketplace for example.....

....and no Bing photoscenery. In short, MSFS offline is worthless.