4 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

As I said in my post "it seems to me", it is the interpretation I find the most logical after a year following closely the evolution of this project. No source other my own speculations 😉.

Asobo is an independent French company, not a MS division, so it cannot be but a contractor for MS.  I would also logically guess that MS will not take over the post-release service but let Asobo do it. Asobo has had, before FS20, a long business relation with MS  with Hololens. Everything is already "funded" in that sense

The long term vision for this sim  ?  MS  disbanded the Aces in a general business overhaul which affected most if not all of its game divisions, it has not much to do with the prospect of the game itself .

 I find it difficult to believe  that the Xbox crowd will flock to FS20 . FS20 will never be a major source of revenue, either directly or by boosting the Gamepass subscription. FS20 is a niche product and will stay that way. They will make little money with it , a few tens of millions bucks . 

So no long term vision ? There is maybe one which  intrigues me, the potential for other applications of the foundations that Asobo has been laying, the Twin Earth concept to which Asobo's Ceo alluded briefly in an interview. Imagine a software environment slowly building to a facsimile of our planet. The huge commercial potential . That would justify keeping the FS franchise alive.  But, look at me, I'm ramblin' again. You got any more of that good sarsaparilla?

 

 

Hi Dom, so true, FS20 is a very niche product. MSFS will not be as much. MSFS is only 1 of many games that will be released for XBox, but, with 60million+ gamers per month, the Xbox crowd is a worthy market. Far bigger than us simmers. Time will tell,

Regarding the long term vision.. Maybe we will find out that we are really living within the Matrix?

What you also have to consider is the corporate identity aspect of Flight Simulator. In days of old, MS Flight Sim was a flagship product, however, this was not merely  because of what it was from a technological standpoint, but how it reflected on the company's image.

MS used to put a link to it on new PCs which were sold with a Windows operating system and FS had a kiosk mode which allowed it to be one of the things which would loop through a demo on the screen of PCs in store windows and a large part of this was because it showcased Microsoft as being more than merely a  stuffy computer corporation; it was in many ways a loss leader which helped to portray MS as being more than just blokes in suits whose corporation made Excel and MS DOS.

Whether they do this with the new version is another matter, but it's a possibility. Beyond this, a base world simulation platform which visually replicates an entire streaming, realistic-looking planet in real time, is something which can have more application than merely as a flying game (sim if you prefer). It could be used for architectural purposes, town planning, car racing games, ship games,  geographic visuals for news items which are better than Google Earth which is presently used a lot, and so on.

MS will be well aware of this and you can bet your life they will wring all these possibilities out of it, which is good for flight sim fans as it means there are plenty of reasons to make it the best it can be visually and optimally.

38 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

 I find it difficult to believe  that the Xbox crowd will flock to FS20 . FS20 will never be a major source of revenue, either directly or by boosting the Gamepass subscription. FS20 is a niche product and will stay that way. They will make little money with it , a few tens of millions bucks .

I don't think anyone at Microsoft or Asobo is expecting the majority of Xbox users to flock to the sim. Not all people playing on the Xbox like the same games as it is. Some like FPS, others like RPG, yet more like sports (football, hockey, F1 racing etc.), and many play games across those and other categories. Even if only 0.5% of Xbox users pick MSFS and stick with it, that's an additional 3 million users. Pretty decent number in my books. Not every game has to, or is expected to, be picked up by all users of the platform.

Something Microsoft has learned over the past few years under Mr. Nadella is to go where the users, aka potential customers are. Once upon a time everything MS did was about getting people to buy Windows, but that has changed, in some cases dramatically. For example, their efforts in bringing apps and services to iOS and Android phones rather than persisting with their failed smartphone plans. Bringing their flagship Halo and Gears of War titles to Steam is another example.

I think quite a few people will opt for a one month GamePass subscription to test out MSFS. Will they stick with it? Who knows?

On 7/28/2020 at 12:18 PM, joec63 said:

 

Sure, there are no guarantees and MS won't come out and make one. The big elephant in the room is how will this new sim will be received. Will the younger crowd even be interested. My neighbors kids don't even care about learning to drive a car. lol

 

 

There certainly seems to be a lot of interest. Video channels and websites of all sorts are weighing in on the huge buzz surrounding this project.....

 

Edited July 29, 20205 yr by HiFlyer

1 hour ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I think quite a few people will opt for a one month GamePass subscription to test out MSFS. Will they stick with it? Who knows?

Probably not. Personally I've been in love with aeroplanes since I was little and that's never changed throughout my entire life, and I guess many others on Avsim are the same. But we have to remember that to the vast majority of people, aeroplanes really are not at all interesting, they are something which takes them on holiday. A Boeing 737 and a Tristar look the same to these people and believe me, this is not an exaggeration.

Nothing wrong with that, each to their own. So as tough as it is for us lot to believe it, most people are not obsessed with aeroplanes, really couldn't care less about them and think they are boring, and especially ones which have no guns rockets or bombs on them.

I for one don't care how is funded, just bring it.

9 minutes ago, Chock said:

As tough as it is for us lot to believe it, most people are not obsessed with aeroplanes, really couldn't care less about them and think they are boring, and especially ones which have no guns rockets or bombs on them.

I tend to always think that that's a myth that we like to tell ourselves, because if it's true it allows us to disregard the concerns and varying interests of anyone outside of our niche community.

If it were true that there was no interest amongst the General Public, how do we explain the popularity all over the world air of shows and air museums and places like the Smithsonian visited by millions of people each year?

How do we explain the Millions on Steam Now using FSX?

How do we explain the television shows and endless YouTube videos regarding Aviation?

How do we explain the intense worldwide excitement over the release of this Sim?

There are several things about the general public that we tell ourselves in forums like these, because it allows us to be selfish and disregard other ways of interacting with Sims, but I don't believe those myths are true. I never have.

Instead, I believe they are merely... convenient.

I guess we'll see.

1 hour ago, goates said:

Something Microsoft has learned over the past few years under Mr. Nadella is to go where the users, aka potential customers are. Once upon a time everything MS did was about getting people to buy Windows, but that has changed, in some cases dramatically. For example, their efforts in bringing apps and services to iOS and Android phones rather than persisting with their failed smartphone plans. Bringing their flagship Halo and Gears of War titles to Steam is another example.

This exactly! Microsoft under Satya Nadella had a paradigm shift. For example, opening source many of their technologies are like dot net which now possible on Linux and OSX apart from windows. Embracing Linux as first class platform, for example the neat integration of Ubuntu into Windows10. Pushing Microsoft apps to other platforms like Android and ios. And finally, the big fish, the cloud technologies represented in Azure. 

For me, this is not will it survive or not, Microsoft did this as part to show off the capabilities that Azure gaming computing and other Azure services that can bring to the table and of course, MSFS would be the perfect example to do this as open world simulating the entire planet. You may wonder, is it worth to Microsoft to fund MSFS to show case its Azure service? Well, given the very tough competition with Amazon Web Service and Google Cloud Computing, it could be worth, especially I read somewhere that market for cloud computing is expecting to boom even further and not forgetting as well, Amazing Web Services represents a major revenue for Amazon in the past years (not forgetting Amazing was among the first in the cloud computing era). 

This is just my humble opinion on this. 

38 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

I tend to always think that that's a myth that we like to tell ourselves, because if it's true it allows us to disregard the concerns and varying interests of anyone outside of our niche community.

The reason I believe this is the case, is that I have loads of work colleagues (at the airport, who work on aeroplanes on a daily basis) who absolutely are not remotely interested in aeroplanes outside of work. They could just as easily be working on a tractor or a set of shelves in a warehouse as far as their interest in the fact that it is an aeroplane goes. Don't get me wrong here, they absolutely do take it seriously and do things properly, but they don;t really care that it is a flying machine. Now I do have a few work colleagues who plan to become pilots etc but it's really only one or two, and among my colleagues I think there are only a very few who like me, had a pilot's license and are actually what you'd call a 'plane nerd' in even the remotest sense. This was a surprise to me when I first started working there, I thought almost everyone I was going to meet would be really into aeroplanes since they had chosen to work on them, but this just isn't the case. It's just a job to them and that's it.

I'll give you a little anecdote on this: When we are on the ramp awaiting the arrival of an aeroplane at night, we'll get there maybe ten mins before it's due and we'll have the stand set up with all the gear necessary, but then we are standing about chatting and stuff, awaiting the plane touching down and taxying in. From some stands we can see the runway and see the aeroplane we are expecting touching down, from others, we can't, so whilst we are chatting, we'll look out for aeroplanes coming down the taxiway in the dark and try to see if it is the one we're expecting, because that means it's time to make sure your ear defenders are on and you are ready to do your stuff. Now there are a few of us who will point out: 'this one here is ours' and lots of work colleagues will be surprised that we can tell a 737 from an A320 in the dark quarter of a mile away, or an A330 from an A320 at that distance. They really are not interested enough in aeroplanes to be able to do this, even with stuff they work on regularly and don't notice the details of things to enable them to make these identifications. I've literally heard one guy who was a TCO talking about how he really 'loves the A320' as one taxied on stand, to which another ramp colleague said, 'what are you on about? It's a bus with wings'.

I had another work colleague - one who doesn't do that any more but at the time had more work experience than me on airliners -  tell me once that one of the winglets was missing on an SAS 737 he'd just worked on and that I'd see it when it came around the corner taxying out for take off. Needless to say I was looking out for a 737 which was apparently going to take off with a winglet missing, which would of course be interesting since there'd be more drag on one side than on the other and I was surprised this would be chanced with passengers on board. Sure enough it came around the pier and I saw that what was missing was in fact one of the flap canoe fairings. And the guy who told me it was a winglet was signed off to do headsetting and walkaround checks. now I know it doesn't matter much that he did not know the correct name for the bit, as long as he knew to check it for issues, but even so, it does tall you that his interests lay elsewhere than aeroplanes, in his case he was a big footie fan.

Now don't get me wrong, I've been to enough airshows to know that lots of people go to them, but if you think about how many people there are in a town near an airfield, there are vastly greater numbers of people who don't go to that airshow. And with regard to the vast majority of TV shows and youtube videos on aeroplanes; nearly all of them are about dramatic stuff: plane crashes, hijacks etc. Show me the TV shows about the normal operations of Boeing 727 or the Airbus A320. There aren't many, if any. People will watch Air Disaster on TV because they like to rubberneck at ghoulish events in exactly the same way they will slow down when there's a crash on the opposite carriageway of the motorway (something I actively refuse to do incidentally).

You only have to take note of how much effort airlines had to put into assuring people that the 737 NGs and Classics they were boarding, were not 737 MAXs when there was a discussion going on about whether to ground the new type back about 12 months ago. To the passengers, it's a bus with wings, but at that time it was a bus with wings which was prone to crashing because it had Boeing on the side of it, and Boeings were in the news in regard to that. This is how much Joe Blow understands and cares about aeroplanes.

I'm in no way an elitist about liking aeroplanes, I'd love it if they were more popular. There'd be more stuff about them in the mainstream for me to enjoy, but the truth is people far prefer reality TV shows, talent shows, TV miniseries, manufactured pop bands, soap operas, various sports, shooter games, racing games and  MMOs for the most part.  Stuff about aeroplanes is way down their list of preferences. 

Edited July 29, 20205 yr by Chock

9 hours ago, goates said:

TI don't think anyone at Microsoft or Asobo is expecting the majority of Xbox users to flock to the sim. Not all people playing on the Xbox like the same games as it is... Even if only 0.5% of Xbox users pick MSFS and stick with it, that's an additional 3 million users. Pretty decent number in my books.

I dont disagree with that but the issue was revenue and the future of the franchise more than the number of players. They are tied a bit of course but distinct though. Do we know the ratio between xbox users on the gamepass and those  buying games ? I would say off my hat that the XBox-only buyers  of a standalone will be rather smaller than 3 Mil and for the first category FS20 will rarely be the trigger to buy the subscription mode (excluding the present promo). 

7 hours ago, omarsmak30 said:

For me, this is not will it survive or not, Microsoft did this as part to show off the capabilities that Azure gaming computing and other Azure services that can bring to the table and of course, MSFS would be the perfect example to do this as open world simulating the entire planet.

This is just my humble opinion on this

Thats my view or rather, as you want us to be humble 😉my speculation. The future of the franchise would not be  mainly tied to the Xbox market numbers, as common wisdom says, but to demonstrating Azure, the GIS AI, and the recreation of the planet. It would be a pilot (pun non intended) of a new software environment. This is not only about having other games running in Asobo’s planet. The potential for land and urban management for instance is staggering at a ten-year horizon.  That will hopefully fuel FS30 (Yes thirty). It may work.. or not but what is going on, is certainly fascinating to see. Now bring the sarsaparilla.

The numbers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/04/30/with-10-million-game-pass-subscribers-xbox-ecosystem-begins-coalesce/

Likely to increases with PC game pass beta, and i think this is why they brought it back for $5 you get it and hundreds more. 

It'll be funded by Microsoft.  I'm only being half-facetious there.

There is no dollars out-dollars in revenue model for something like this.  It'll be supported by a combination of retail sales, Game Pass subscription revenue, probably Asobo selling their own add-on content for the game at some point, plus a potential percentage take off of anything third-party sold through the in-game store.  Asobo will presumably switch to a smaller support team for the sim after launch, so the ongoing development won't cost as much.

With Game Pass, Microsoft are more concerned with simply making a diverse array of stuff that will keep the most people re-subscribing every month, and attracting new people at a good clip.  They are less concerned with the traditional "X Game has to make Y dollars to be profitable" model.

Whether MSFS gets to 10 years of consistent updates and support, will probably just depend on the player engagement being there to justify it.

 

13 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

There certainly seems to be a lot of interest. Video channels and websites of all sorts are weighing in on the huge buzz surrounding this project.....

Indeed! I thought the chap looked familiar (Tyrone Magnus) - his main channel covers other, more political commentary now and again. Great to see that he has separated the gaming side from his main channel. 

So, if anybody is interested, some of the plans for MSFS 2020 have been disclosed in this media article: https://fselite.net/news/microsoft-flight-simulator-information-vr-steam-edition-third-party-info-and-future-plans/.  There will be Paid DLC,  Specifically, that article says:

Quote

The following release plan was shared about the post-release future:

1. VR Update
2. World Update I
3. Sim Update I
4. Paid DLC I
5. World Update II
6. Sim Update II
7. Paid DLC II
8. World Update III

Looks like they have some plans for "Paid DLC I and Paid DLC II"

Edited July 30, 20205 yr by abrams_tank
Paid DLC I and II