Post by luisfeliztirado on Mar 16, 2012 19:17:16 GMT -5
I myself have spent over a dozen years in scenery design, so I know where you guys are coming from. Another truism is that most of us who develop fly very little if at all. ;D
But, the truth is in the numbers, not in our impressions. And FS never sold very well. The first version to break 1 million copies was FS 2000. And FS X perhaps never made it up to 2 million, although this is pure supposition since Microsoft never releases sales figures. Considering the pricing at retail, this means that FS X revenues were under $100 million for the life of the product, 5 years. And profits on this title most likely never exceeded 30 or 40 million.
That's really very little. Consider another example: Modern Warfare 3 was released just a few months ago. At retail, revenues in just the first 16 days were over 1000 million (a billion in the US). This is more than the previous best-selling entertainment title, Titanic, the movie. And sales have probably increased 50% since then.
So, we are not a lot of people flying FS, or any flight sim. And most of them have been abandoned by their developers or publishers because of that.
MGS obviously knows this, since it is one of the most successful game publishers. The Entertainment Division at Microsoft posts revenues every quarter over $4 billion. FS was never very important at all and has never attracted a lot of users.
It is a wonder that MGS is still releasing a flight game, and clearly Flight is meant to be the kind of title that has a lot more users than FS ever could. Whether this kind of flight game can succeed without modders, without the airline simmers - well, that is the whole point.
There are a lot of people who love flight, aviation, and everything to do with that, but who have never bothered with FS for whatever reason. And young people may or may not like Flight, but they certainly never liked FS. The demographics are clear, and the future of a title that caters to us old folks is not very bright.
There is no point in hoping for the failure of Flight. We gain nothing from that and if it turns out that this title does not succeed, what does that leave for us as hobbyists?
For my part, as a hard-core modder, and in spite of its limitations, I wish Flight all the best and hope for its complete success.
By the way, the Major Nelson web site that tracks the titles for GFWL reported that Flight was the second most played Windows game in its first week of release:
majornelson.com/2012/03/07/live-activity-for-week-of-february-27/
and it was second again for its second week:
majornelson.com/
This is pretty darn good results and much better than FS ever achieved.
Best regards.
Luis
But, the truth is in the numbers, not in our impressions. And FS never sold very well. The first version to break 1 million copies was FS 2000. And FS X perhaps never made it up to 2 million, although this is pure supposition since Microsoft never releases sales figures. Considering the pricing at retail, this means that FS X revenues were under $100 million for the life of the product, 5 years. And profits on this title most likely never exceeded 30 or 40 million.
That's really very little. Consider another example: Modern Warfare 3 was released just a few months ago. At retail, revenues in just the first 16 days were over 1000 million (a billion in the US). This is more than the previous best-selling entertainment title, Titanic, the movie. And sales have probably increased 50% since then.
So, we are not a lot of people flying FS, or any flight sim. And most of them have been abandoned by their developers or publishers because of that.
MGS obviously knows this, since it is one of the most successful game publishers. The Entertainment Division at Microsoft posts revenues every quarter over $4 billion. FS was never very important at all and has never attracted a lot of users.
It is a wonder that MGS is still releasing a flight game, and clearly Flight is meant to be the kind of title that has a lot more users than FS ever could. Whether this kind of flight game can succeed without modders, without the airline simmers - well, that is the whole point.
There are a lot of people who love flight, aviation, and everything to do with that, but who have never bothered with FS for whatever reason. And young people may or may not like Flight, but they certainly never liked FS. The demographics are clear, and the future of a title that caters to us old folks is not very bright.
There is no point in hoping for the failure of Flight. We gain nothing from that and if it turns out that this title does not succeed, what does that leave for us as hobbyists?
For my part, as a hard-core modder, and in spite of its limitations, I wish Flight all the best and hope for its complete success.
By the way, the Major Nelson web site that tracks the titles for GFWL reported that Flight was the second most played Windows game in its first week of release:
majornelson.com/2012/03/07/live-activity-for-week-of-february-27/
and it was second again for its second week:
majornelson.com/
This is pretty darn good results and much better than FS ever achieved.
Best regards.
Luis