3 hours ago, mSparks said:

The following message from Phil Spencer was shared to all gaming staff today:

ouch, yep, that's why they weren't there.

Meh...the cost of 4 people attending a large expo is a molecule of a drop in a bucket of water.

Especially when the expo is a legitimate sales and partnership growth opportunity.

9 minutes ago, GoranM said:

but it’s agreeable that 2024 isn’t doing anything remotely close to sales as 2020 did.

Fun fact, current 24hr peak steam users of MSFS 2024 (2,947) is less than peak steam users of XPlane 11 (4,173 in April 2020).

4 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Meh...the cost of 4 people attending a large expo is a molecule of a drop in a bucket of water.

Yeah, it was the cost of putting people losing their jobs soon into a conference in front of the press they were evading, they learnt that lesson the hard way already:

It's pretty much over now, just not everyone knows it yet.

Edited July 2, 2025Jul 2 by mSparks

9 minutes ago, GoranM said:

32 minutes ago, brinx said:

A few months back on the live stream Jorg said they had between 1 - 2 million first time users after the launch and he also said MS2024 userbase already surpassed 2020.  I believe as long as the addon-on is good, it will sell.

I’m having trouble reconciling these numbers with steam stats when compared to 2020. Even when extrapolated to include non steam users. Let’s say for every steam purchase of MSFS, there are 10 Microsoft store purchases. It still doesn’t add up. If jorg uses the words “first time users” instead of “sales” then I’m inclined to believe gamepass was a big factor. 

With all objectivity, Steam stats don't add up for XP 12's success, either. Last time I saw an XP 11 vs 12 snip from somewhere, the poster was using it to "prove" that XP 12 is failing...

Which is to say that I believe Austin, AND I believe Jorge. Within the usual limitations of CEO business-speak, of course 😉

39 minutes ago, brinx said:

The flight sim market has never been stronger in my opinion as evidenced with the vast amount of hardware on showcase at the expo.

Consider the expo itself. Or that it's multiple expos on the globe. We didn't have that even during the golden simulator age in the 80s and 90s.

(And it also shows how utterly commercialized this hobby has become, which is an absolute shame, if you think about it.)

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

Yeah, it was the cost of putting people losing their jobs soon into a conference in front of the press they were evading, they learnt that lesson the hard way already:

From personal experience, that's not how these things are handled.

31 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

From personal experience, that's not how these things are handled.

well, it isn't because they didnt have new products planned. Or were hiding away getting on with development  It was only a few weeks ago they had a dev stream talking about new products and how pleased they were with how the fixes were going.

Phil Spencer just announced he is quitting. 

Probably their biggest mistake was not embracing (failing at?) VR, XP12 is within a hairs breadth of a huge breakthrough there now.

4 hours ago, Bjoern said:

Consider the expo itself. Or that it's multiple expos on the globe. We didn't have that even during the golden simulator age in the 80s and 90s.

(And it also shows how utterly commercialized this hobby has become, which is an absolute shame, if you think about it.)

Agree with first, but not with second.

We've never had an abundance of high quality, high fidelity, high realism and high immersion a like we do today.

The sims are ever more accurate in all regards, etc.

The vast amount of new users have / are dumping vast amounts of cash into the market. And it's clear that many of them are moving up into becoming "serious simmers" rather than "just gamers", too.

And by that, I welcome the gamers because they bring the numbers to make devs willing to make ever more and ever better add-ons.

MS just sacked 900 workers.

12 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Especially when the expo is a legitimate sales and partnership growth opportunity.

I agree. The ones I've attended have always been a great way to network, see what others are doing, chat with customers etc. LR have nearly always attended, even if only 1 or 2 of them, and to me it shows that they are interested in interacting with the community, other developers etc. 

I wasn't aware of the layoff news which is sad, but if it were an X-Box related event, I'm sure they would have attended (along with some developers from Asobo). I guess the hardcore/niche simming community is not really their main market.

If I were developing only for MFS and my only source of income was from MFS products, I would feel very uneasy right now and probably would reconsider putting all my eggs in one basket

Would have thought that Laminar being one of there big sponsors they would have given them at least 30 minutes. it should have being embarrassing to the organizers

My mistake, 9000 left out a zero and thats important

 

The world of videogames in general is quite complicated right now, I hope the situation improves for the sake of the workers.

20 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Especially when the expo is a legitimate sales and partnership growth opportunity.

Hi,

Once the marketplace is online, we'll see less and less 3rd party providers at the Expo's, they won't have to guess if potential customers are seeing their products on various websites. They'll know their products are included in the base platform for everyone to see and/or purchase.

I believe this will hurt the Expo's going forward.
 

3 hours ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

Hi,

Once the marketplace is online, we'll see less and less 3rd party providers at the Expo's, they won't have to guess if potential customers are seeing their products on various websites. They'll know their products are included in the base platform for everyone to see and/or purchase.

I believe this will hurt the Expo's going forward.
 

Nope.

10 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

My mistake, 9000 left out a zero and thats important

It's a 4% reduction. A necessary trimming of the tree.

(And yeah, I've been RIF'd before, so...)