8 hours ago, tonywob said:

I'm curious how you know this, do you have access to their sales and accounts? In fact, their team size has increased over the years and now they want to hire even more people, therefore they need to pay those people, as well as catching up with inflation, it seems simple enough to me and not a imminent sign of a dying sim. X-Plane has been around for years and has always been somewhat of a niche product overshadowed by Microsoft, so I don't see how MSFS is killing it when it was never really their target market in the first place.

Nah.  This price increase is the 437th final nail in X-Plane's coffin.  But I'm curious how many more final nails we'll see.

😉

7 minutes ago, mjrhealth said:

 Also as mentioned previously more go to laminar direct, where they may have gone to steam before…..

…..steam numbers mean nothing.

A significant number of people that bought XP11 on Steam decided to forego that platform when it came to purchasing XP12?

That seems….unlikely. Have Laminar stated this?

Once again, despite what you may think or hope; the sheer size and diversity of the Steam community gives to their user figures a good gauge on the overall size of the player base. In this respect these figures would indicate that XP12 has not progressed in the way XP11 did when it comes to user numbers.

9 hours ago, flightskyc said:

MSFS is eating Laminar's breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sadly, this is probably the start of the spiral down for X-Plane. Laminar just hasn't innovated in years.

Good grief, you must be talking about a very different X-Plane to what I see - the recent lighting improvements for example.  to get the same quality of lighting in MSFS one needs to use a hex editor.

Personally I am currently mostly using MSFS for one main reason - HDR.  I hate to say it, but XP12 looks very dull after using HDR in MSFS (I realise if you have only ever used SDR, XP12 looks superb).  Apart from that, XP12 is an absolutely great simulator!

3 hours ago, blingthinger said:

We already had a good feel for what the public will swallow based on the snake oil that 'goliath' is peddling

What 'snake oil' would that be?

2 hours ago, DD_Arthur said:

That's interesting. The Steam figures show the average number of users for X-Plane 12 increased by just over 200 from September 22 to September 23.

For X-Plane 11 the Steam charts show an increase of 600 users in the first year after release. 

Increasing the retail price of software by over a third, one year after release, is a remarkable piece of marketing......

Compare what we know about MSFS users overall vs Steam MSFS users and it's fairly easy to see why guesstimating market position on Steam numbers alone is basically useless.

I.e., Steam is its own world, for better and worse. Different demographics, etc.

In contrast, you can look at last years annual Navigraph survey (when XP 12 beta was still a new thing) and you'll see entirely different trends (and surprisingly positive). 

https://navigraph.com/blog/survey2022

Now make no mistake, the Navigraph numbers are ALSO skewed like Steam numbers are, just in different ways.

Even with MSFS' undisputed market dominance, I'm really looking forward to seeing what 2023's numbers show, etc.

1 hour ago, DD_Arthur said:

Once again, despite what you may think or hope; the sheer size and diversity of the Steam community gives to their user figures a good gauge on the overall size of the player base. In this respect these figures would indicate that XP12 has not progressed in the way XP11 did when it comes to user numbers.

XP 11 has been out for as many YEARS as v12 has been out for MONTHS.

11 hours ago, flightskyc said:

[insert random flight sim here] is eating Laminar's breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sadly, this is probably the start of the spiral down for X-Plane.

If Laminar had a dollar for every time THAT (mis)prognosis has been made, they wouldn't need to raise the price 😉

2 hours ago, DD_Arthur said:

A significant number of people that bought XP11 on Steam decided to forego that platform when it came to purchasing XP12?

That seems….unlikely. Have Laminar stated this?

Once again, despite what you may think or hope; the sheer size and diversity of the Steam community gives to their user figures a good gauge on the overall size of the player base. In this respect these figures would indicate that XP12 has not progressed in the way XP11 did when it comes to user numbers.

Laminar didnt but many choose to give there money to laminar instead of steam, do they could hire more people which they did, that was didcussed in the very beginning by users. Steam means nothing, i dont have a steam account. Xplane isnt going away, just because it upsets a few people, for what reason it upsets so many is beyond me.

2 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

What 'snake oil' would that be?

At that price point it's literally double the base amount for nothing more than a few additional default aircraft and airports. My goodness gracious. I'd rather buy now-year-old pre-release versions of Xp12 twice over...Oh wait...I did do that....where's them polo shirts!!

7 hours ago, DD_Arthur said:

These figures don't seem to show any sort of significant increase....quite the reverse; XP12 seems to be down by two - thirds the amount of users on Steam that XP11 had at a similar time after release.

This is what makes such a large price hike such an unusual decision....

 

I think you missed my point. After XP11 came out, half the community switched to XP11, thats why it had a huge increase of users. Now, even with a dominating player that is supposed to have „killed“ everything else, they were able to INCREASE their numbers of users. This is the opposite of what was expected. And the increase of price confirms that. Everyone with basic knowledge of markets know that when a company desperately needs more customers they will DECREASE and not increase their price. For example successfull addons can keep their price according to the quality: CL650, Toliss or FlyTampa have higher prices and are very successfull. On the other hand bad ones like Jardesign have to sell their addons for 1/2 or 1/3 of these prices.

Another very positive point is that they want to hire more people after having already grown quite a bit in the past few years. This speaks clearly against your theory.

1 hour ago, Franz007 said:

I think you missed my point. After XP11 came out, half the community switched to XP11,

Yes, there was certainly a decent uptick of users at this point, mostly those frustrated with P3D/FSX and the cancellation of Dovetail's sim. It was a somewhat golden period for addon developers, with many of the big names from FSX announcing X-Plane products and bringing their users with them. I was working on TrueEarth at the time, and there was a fairly big customer base that came with that. Many of these new users went back to MFS once that came out, with the expectation that they'd never need to buy any scenery addons because the sim had everything they needed out of the box.

Having been around developing when XP9/10 was out, we have mostly returned back to those levels of users, which is why it is irratating when people say X-Plane is dying and it's the final nail in the coffin etc. X-Plane has been around for years, it used to be way more expensive, and I have no doubt it will continue to remain around for years. Plus, those on Mac OS can't run MFS.

 

@tonywob Yes that’s true. But knowing that XP12 has sold the most copies of any other version at its start, i think the user-base will be above what XP10 and previous versions were. I saw some new users frustrated by MSFS trying out XP12 and being quite happy. So as funny as it may sound, it looks like the success of MSFS indirectly contributed to XP’s one, after MSFS had attracted a whole new bunch of users that never ever used a sim before.

Edited October 5, 20232 yr by Franz007

33 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

So as funny as it may sound, it looks like the success of MSFS indirectly contributed to XP’s one, after MSFS had attracted a whole new bunch of users that never ever used a sim before.

That's a pretty good summary, I think.

12 hours ago, DD_Arthur said:

A significant number of people that bought XP11 on Steam decided to forego that platform when it came to purchasing XP12?

That seems….unlikely. 

[snip]

I did. And I'm sure I wasn't alone in the decision to go that route. 

14 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

If Laminar had a cent for every time THAT (mis)prognosis has been made, they wouldn't need to raise the price 😉

Fixed that for you 😀.

And they even could buy this well known IT company in Redmond. And another one in Cupertino.

And Tesla Motors.

 

And SpaceX.

Edited October 5, 20232 yr by flying_carpet