Payware sales

[Jeema]

Hi guys,

I've been trying to do some research online to determine exactly how big the whole FS9/FSX payware market is. Does anyone even know? I guess maybe I suspect that it isn't terribly profitable for the small players or as a side business, but I was just wondering if anyone has any actual numbers they'd be willing to share.

Not that I was contemplating getting into said payware development. Of course I'm just asking for my friend who wants to know... yet that's it... my friend.

Thanks in advance!...

 

[scruffyduck]

I suspect there is no reliable answer to that. I would also suspect that the number of folks who can make a living from selling product is relatively small. For many it will either just pay for the hobby or perhaps leave a bit over

 

[n4gix]

Even if any given payware developer were silly enough to publish actual numbers, those numbers would not be terribly useful at all, since the entire flight simulator community is so fragmented!

Aside from the different sim platforms such as FS8, FS9, FSX, X-Plane, CFS1, CFS2, et cetera, there are far too many insular "flight sim sub-communities" who are congregated around international, national, regional, and local websites, forums, and so forth. Taken together, these represent (probably) less than ten percent of those who actually own and use any sort of flight simulator!

All of which means that practically speaking, it's simply not possible to reach everyone in the aggregate "flight sim community" without investing a huge amount of time contacting hundreds of separate websites, forums, et cetera.

Compounding the difficulty is that within each of the afore-mentioned sub-communities, there are a plethora of different interests. Some are General Aviation fans, some are "big iron" fans, some are warbird fans, and so on, ad infinitum.

The technical term for this phenomenon is "Marketplace Opacity." It is analogous to the entire book publishing industry. When a new author's work is published, it is extremely difficult to reach everyone who might be interested in the new book. Even for well-established authors the same holds true. I'm constantly on active watch for a couple dozen of my favorite authors to release new work, and even so I still manage to miss many of them!

At a guess though, I should think that the universality of a product is the single largest arbiter of total possible sales, with ubiquitous utilities taking top spot. Pete Dowson's FSUIPC is likely the best example of what I mean by "universality," with professionally developed mesh such as FS Genesis taking a similar role.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

That is tough to answer, most payware add-ons concentrate on pure realism and the market for that is VERY, VERY SMALL. Last night I was in a multiplayer free-flight session in FSX, the majority where young kids, I could tell by hearing their voice and the insane acrobatic maneuvers and horrible landings I saw, lol --- to say the least, the average simmer isn't interested in realism only a few of us are, the average simmer just wants to get up and start flying, the thrill of flight is more exciting for some then spending 30 minutes on the ground going through a checklist and make sure everything is by the book, I favor both pratices but I tend to favor simplicity over complexity.

Part of the reason why I do not own any PMDG products, the only way I would purchase a high quality payware if its from an aircraft I love. There hans't been any high quality add-on for the A300 with a full fledged VC or working 2D panel ... all I have is the CLS A300 that I got to work with Benoit Grant's panel hopefully I didn't torture the spelling of his name ...

According to Microsoft in a press they held, the market for FSX was horrible and they lost more money than they hoped to make. If anyone watched the last shuttle mission to hubble, that last effort was only enough to keep going one last time...FSX was just like this, a sequel to FS9 to keep it going for the years to come.

 

[lionheart]

According to Microsoft in a press they held, the market for FSX was horrible and they lost more money than they hoped to make.

Mr.FaosFX

Hard to believe. Whats really wild is that the gaming industry, though it is slow this year, or lower then it was last year, brings in more money by far compared with the music industry. It used to be that when an album or CD went public (released) a fortune flowed in the first day, and for the first week, millions came in.

Now, people camp out in front of a BestBuy or Walmart, waiting for Midnight or noon or when ever they release the newest game of Halo, or some of the others.

I hear some Gaming studios talk (Asian based) and the funding for gathering up mesh modellers, painters, costs for making sets in virtual for the games, are phenomenal, and they make profits to cover the costs. HUGE profits. Mind you this year was slower then the last 2 years. Gaming for the first time came down a bit.

They believe that gaming is high because the economy is doing so bad (in America at least) and so many are taking to gaming because they are depressed financially and it keeps their mind off of problems. But there are also more kids out in the world that are raised on games and when a new game comes out that catches their eye, they must have it! "Mom, can I get this????????"

I think that TV advertising really brought FSX into homes and caused people to know that it exists. But, in trying to get into advertising myself, I know that it is HURRENDOUSLY EXPENSIVE, especially TV time. They went big with advertising. So that must be what shot down their profits...

Some of the games in the world dont advertise, and they are the most biggest. Very quick, short commercials, rarely seen if at all. Most of the advertising is 'word of mouth'. Their websites bring in the curiosity seekers. Gaming websites talk about the new releases, etc....

I think that what 'might' have brought people out of FSX was that it didnt run well on an average computer, unless you turned all the neat things off, and that is what made FSX was the goodies. Without those, you might as well have FS2004, which runs FAST on todays computers.


I did great last year, by the way. This year in payware was... how do you say... HORRIBLE... ack!

 

[mgh]

Orbx posted on 6 September 2011 - 10:36 PM in the AVSIM Microsoft Flight Forum that "We estimate less than 40,000 active FS enthusiasts worldwide.."

I suspect that's a pretty good estimate.

 

[n4gix]

Yes, that does seem a reasonable guesstimate. Pity that 40,000 is so divided into so many tiny domains of interest though.

 

[jtanabodee]

I think I'd like to share something.

I did some paywares and I don't think it is going to make me rich and replace my current job.
But I do think that I have fun making 3d models in Gmax, export them to see in Flight sim.
Money is a "By Product" of my fun. My friends said people always spent their hard earn money on their hobbies but you you can make money from what you like. That's good enough.

I just think the market is too small to get a big investment on that, just only my thought.

 

[n4gix]

I just think the market is too small to get a big investment on that, just only my thought.

Every month I receive a commission-on-sales check for each of the dozen or so projects in which I've had some part in creating, either model, gauges, or both. Taken in isolation, no single project's commission is any great amount, but in aggregate contribute enough to be reasonably called "supplemental income"

When added to my monthly Social Security check, this is enough to keep a roof over my head, food on my table, and just a little bit left over to put into savings.

I'll never get "rich" this way, but it beats being homeless!

 

[arno]

Orbx posted on 6 September 2011 - 10:36 PM in the AVSIM Microsoft Flight Forum that "We estimate less than 40,000 active FS enthusiasts worldwide.."

I suspect that's a pretty good estimate.

I would feel that is a rather low estimate. But I guess it depends on what you call enthusiasts. If you mean the people very heavily involved in the online FS communities it might be right. But if you look at the FSWeekend event in the Netherlands there are around 1500 visitors each year. Most of the people visiting are using Flight Simulator in some way, many of them have some addons installed as well. So I think even in the Netherlands alone there must be a few thousand active FS users already. Worldwide I would expect a bit more than 40000.

 

[scruffyduck]

I would be inclined to agree with Arno. My experience with freeware is that there are likely to be more folks than that regularly involved in the hobby. However I guess there will be a smaller market for payware than freeware.

 

[lionheart]

I didnt think of that Jon.

Parusing through the Flightsim best downloads section, you could see how many downloads of each package have been done. That would tell something of the figure with just one freeware site alone.

I wonder how many copies of FSX were sold? How many boxes were shipped out?

 

[mgh]

The AVSIM members list can be filtered.

There are some 76,560 members in total (4838 pages each with 20 members). Of those, only 11,140 (557 pages) have posted in the last year. Also members 24,320 (1216 pages) haven't posted in the last 5 years which, I suggest, gives an indication of turnover - people come and go.

That suggests to me that the figure of 40,000 active enthusiasts worldwide is realistic. I suspect there aren't as many of us as we sometimes like to think.

 

[lionheart]

One thing that will (is about to) tip the scale is Chinese sales. They will soon all be into FS, and sales from China alone will be phenomenal.

 

[dmaher]

...But I guess it depends on what you call enthusiasts...

I think it's a good practical number, but I totally agree it depends on what we're counting.
As I recall John didn't elaborate on what it specifically refered to or how it was determined.
Squawkbox, hardcore and freeware, has had 120,000 unique IP downloads.
To me that indicates the total audience of one-time free-ware, pay-ware, and pirate fans is considerably larger than 40,000.
So what do we call an enthusiasts?
I think the only good reason to get into FS development commercially is you're compelled to do it

 

[scruffyduck]

Just my stats. We get an average of 30,000 downloads per year for ADE. Depends on how many updates we make. This year is higher, last year a bit lower. If you surmise that it gets downloaded on average twice a year per person then there are 15,000 folks who have it. I tend to think that the 'audience' for airport design tools is around the 30,000 mark. Perhaps I exaggerate (after all I like to think ADE is popular ). Maybe 25% - 50% of sim users get the fancy to update their local airport a bit so maybe the total freeware audience is getting up around 100,000. Of course new folks get into the hobby and others drop out. But before y'all get the idea that this is a bug market only a small percentage of these folks have purchased the payware bit of ADE. Now this is a tool so the audience for finished add-ons is going to be quite a bit bigger

 

[arno]

The AVSIM members list can be filtered.

There are some 76,560 members in total (4838 pages each with 20 members). Of those, only 11,140 (557 pages) have posted in the last year. Also members 24,320 (1216 pages) haven't posted in the last 5 years which, I suggest, gives an indication of turnover - people come and go.

That suggests to me that the figure of 40,000 active enthusiasts worldwide is realistic. I suspect there aren't as many of us as we sometimes like to think.

But I don't expect everybody to use Avsim, the people are spread out over a big number of sites. I think the biggest mistake we often make is to think that the entire community is on such sites. I think it is only 1% or 2% of the total FS users that is so active online. Of course not all FS users will be buying addons, but that is still a bigger part then the part that is active online.

It is a couple of years ago, but the older version of our NL2000 scenery was downloaded about 25000 times from FlightSim.com alone. On Avsim the file is gone now, but I think it had similar numbers. When we added all sources back then we got an estimation of 80000 downloads. And since this scenery is for one country only, we expect that it only interests people who like to fly in the Netherlands. So the entire community must have been much bigger around that time, let's say 250000 or so. It can of course be that the community got smaller now, but I think it is bigger than we all think.

As was said earlier in the discussion already, the biggest problem is that it is spread out so much. There are separate communities for VFR flying, IFR with ATC, bushflying, etc, etc.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

So I guess Microsoft was right? I wonder if FSX sold over a million copies? It must have but they are right, the general 'FS enthusiast' as they refer to it meaning people who are aviation savy people are the users of FSX.

I showed my friend FSX a few months back, this guy usually plays Call Of Duty, Racing Games, etc...when I let him take a feel for FSX. He took off and then just looked at me and said, "This is it? All you do is fly? That's boring man, no action, no objectives, no strategy? How do I quit this, let's play something more exciting." I was heart broken for a minute and thought in my mind...I guess only people who like aviation are into FSX.

Also during many multiplayer sessions in FS2002 during the MSN Gaming Zone days, the majority of users would never do long haul flights or any flights that lasted over 1 hour ... everyone did more 'bush flying' then commercial jetliner type flying and those who did plan the long flights always shocked me with their procedures...taking off, climbing, leveling out, everyone get ready, were going into hyperspace! Increase the sim rate to 8x!! They would fly from JFK and get to Miami in half an hour, lol!!! People were more interested in the take off and landing --- "crusing" for most simmers is a boring time wasting experience .... which is why most people prefer smaller aircraft and prefer at lower altitutes 'bush flying' which is why the market for this stuff is so good.

You had to find really good hard core simmers in order to do a nice flight like JFK to LAX and rarely did I find such people but when I did, during cruise, it was usually formation flight while we talked and made jokes, fun experience and then everyone lining up to land at the end of the flight.

 

[khaos_56k]

...I showed my friend FSX a few months back, this guy usually plays Call Of Duty, Racing Games, etc...when I let him take a feel for FSX. He took off and then just looked at me and said, "This is it?..."

I've experienced that and even watched as people I introduced to FS purposely crash aircraft in an attempt to see the carnage. It saddens me...

I guess we are a unique breed of "gamer". Although I enjoy the high speed action of Need for Speed, Grid, DiRT... the suspense and violence of FEAR, Silent Hill, Resident Evil... the adventure and puzzles of Tomb Raider (Regardless how sexy that CG babe Lara Croft has become)... the retrospective and modernized battles in Call of Duty... the fantasy and science fiction of Tachyon, Starlancer, X2 & X3 (THANKS Lionheart!)... FS is my true first love. It's not as exciting as all the rest but the complexities... the add-ons... the fact that I can actually add to the simulator...

I find the estimate of 40,000 plausible but I think the global society is slowly leaving us behind. They're looking for the action, the scare, the violence, the instant gratification. It seems to me that the thrill of making a successful ILS approach with 1/2-mile visibility onto an aircraft carrier... or the thrill of successfully performing multiplayer formation take-off, flying, and landing... or just exploring other places in the world that you may never ever see in real life doesn't pacify the aforementioned.

For me, FS is the only way I will ever pilot an aircraft. I do not have the disposable income to pay for training and maintain a license (ie: pay to rent or own an aircraft, fill the tanks, re-certifications... etc...) nor do I have the "connections" to earn these "privileges" in trade.

As a business venture, FS is never going to amount to much except those like Microsoft. I had a dream to make scenery for a living but every time I "crunched the numbers" I realized that it's not viable. A bit of extra cash is about all it would be.

 

[Francois]

Hi guys,

I've been trying to do some research online to determine exactly how big the whole FS9/FSX payware market is. Does anyone even know? I guess maybe I suspect that it isn't terribly profitable for the small players or as a side business, but I was just wondering if anyone has any actual numbers they'd be willing to share.

Not that I was contemplating getting into said payware development. Of course I'm just asking for my friend who wants to know... yet that's it... my friend.

Thanks in advance!...

Even MS tried to find out... and asked us at times!

No chance in h..l that you're gonna find out, buddy
If you want to dabble in FS add-ons, just do it and find a good publisher. Maybe you even make the money to pay your pencils from !