So how big is the flight simulator market?

[Guest Dean]

Over the last few years popular thinking has been that, other than MS, very few if any publishers want to invest money in a PC based flight simulator because of the narrow market potential. I saw this post over in the MS forum and it would indicate there is plenty of opportunity for a simulator than delivers what the market wants. MS has been very successful in layering improvements over the same basic sim for years. Why wouldn't a publisher follow this same approach with the Fly franchise? http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...id=143881&page=

[michal 44]

>delivers what the market wants. This is the key to deliver what the market "wants". Easier said than done. These days a pretty good world-wide scenery is expected (plus some good airport detail from start) and this got to be the single most challenging task requiring a sizeable team and access to digitized data which is hard to obtain. And yes, "layering" new features on top of previous release is a way to do it - therefore I was a bit surprised when TRI decided to scrap FLY!2k and code FLY!2 from scratch. That got to be very expensive undertaking.Michael J.

[Guest Dean]

Points taken. Considering the sales bounce that FS9 experienced, the initial No. 1 spike in sales was most likely from the "faithful" running out and buying the product at it's release, but the second No.1 spike would indicate a different and larger consumer base buying the product. So, if the flight sim market is apparently this vibrant, why doesn't somebody else want a piece of it? MS Office dominants the office suite market but the other guys still get a big enough piece to stay in the fight. I may be mistaken but I recall a statistic from a year or two ago that said Fly II actually sold more copies than X-Plane. Whatever the opinions are of the core Fly II engine, it could very well serve as a base product with scenery improvements layered in and, considering the current state of the hardware available, it would probably run fairly well. Maybe this is what Brandon had in mind with the cryptic "Developer of Fly III" in his signature.

[michal 44]

>So, if the flight sim market is apparently this vibrant, why>doesn't somebody else want a piece of it? Well, TRI wanted it and .. failed. Unfortunately probability of failure is very high. In order to compete with a fair chance of success you need to be very well financed up front. Trying to do it "on the cheap" (like TRI) results in predictable outcome.Michael J.

[lefteris 70]

Michael-we can debate this to no end, but TRI alone didn't fail - it was Take2 who failed to realize what they were doing to the product.Also, don't forget that Rich was not able to devote as much time as was required for Fly!2 to become bug-free, due to his illness and subsequent passing.I think it wasn't the probability of failure that played a role here - it was other unforeseen factors at play.

[michal 44]

>TRI alone didn't fail - it was Take2 who failed to realize Lefteris, You are probably correct here but regardless - someone in this 'chain' is bound to fail when the project is poorly founded and/or understaffed. Michael J.