How Many Flight-Simmers World Wide?

Mach3DS

Mach3DS

Charter Member
Just curious, doing a little thinking...what's a reasonable number of FS9/FSX users world wide right now? Any good educated guesses out there? With all the recent activity it might be good for us to know how small/strong are ranks really are...
 
000rick000 said:
Just curious, doing a little thinking...what's a reasonable number of FS9/FSX users world wide right now? Any good educated guesses out there? With all the recent activity it might be good for us to know how small/strong are ranks really are...
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I think it would be safe to say world wide, that the number could be hundreds of thousands, if not more.....
 
I think the only way to really know the answer would be to know how many copies of FS9/FSX were sold. My guess is that after 20+ years the fan base is in the 250,000 range. Also, this is prime time for developers, since all the teenagers from back in the day are now grown and in their 30s/40's with heaftier disposable incomes...if they were/are still flying. Any other thoughts?
 
I don't know many copies of FS9 was sold, but for FSX in its first full year sales were 280000 copies (2007). FSX also broke in the top 10 in 2006, so it is possibly over 100000 copies in the first months. Because most of the sales happen in the beginning of the life cycle and FSX haven't made into any statistics later on, it is impossible to say how many copies were sold during the later years. I've seen estimations of 1 million total copies which may be quite accurate.

Then there is the question how many are actually active. It is pretty much safe to say that most copies just lay in the shelves with other older titles. I think it is low hundreds of thousands at maximum, most likely less. Enthusiasts spending considerable amounts of money to addons are probably few tens of thousands.
 
If I'd had 10.000 customers for any of my products, I could continue to develop them way into my retirement.....
 
Well, Avsim has 113,465 members. I assume not everyone is a member at Avsim so there are likely to be more!:jump:
 
We have a few numbers there but in reality it is still hard to tell . How many people have bought it twice or more . A new machine requires a new fsx . I've bought more than one .
 
A new machine requires a new fsx .
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It shouldn't, I've only got the one copy and installed it on various machines over the years as I've upgradeded. You do occasionally have to phone the activation line to reset things but it's no biggy.

I'd agree those numbers aren't much use as they only cover a few years of sales out of almost a decade.
 
The numbers that buzzed around for FS2004 total were 2 MILLION. Never confirmed, but where there is smoke....... FSX initially did (a lot) worse compared to that total figure and that was the ultimate reason for the MS beancounters to send the team and the product into oblivion.

Basically MS has NEVER confirmed ANY number, so any number you see fro whatever source is 'guesstimate' at best. Personally, I think there are a couple 10's of thousands core simmers around the world left.....
 
I cannot find the recent link to the poll begging MS to reconsider a new sim, but I recall the numbers weren't exactly stellar in signing it. Perhaps the question given the age of FSX, FS9 & CFS series, should be how many hard core users are still active worldwide.
 
In my opinion, two million sounds closer to the truth than just a few hundred thousand!

I'm not sure if sales figures provides a good measure even for guesswork - not everyone buys their software...

And as for forum memberships, well I flight simmed for at least two years without being part of a forum. I mainly joined here to thank and encourage freeware devs.

Owen.
 
I bought 2 copies...the original FSX Deluxe along with the Acceleration addon which was released some time later. I then picked up a copy of FSX Gold.
At the time of it's release I was working for a well known gaming PC manufacturer and as FSX was one of the first DX10 game titles to be released, several copies were purchased by the company in order to test out the DX10 GFX cards on the new ,top of the line, computer systems. Funny to think that I was once paid to fly FSX on bleeding edge computer technology!:icon_lol:
 
FentiFlier1 said:
And as for forum memberships, well I flight simmed for at least two years without being part of a forum. I mainly joined here to thank and encourage freeware devs.

Owen.
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True, but it is pretty much safe to say, like I said, that most of those who have during the years purchased or even pirated the software and are actually using the software actively even today. Of those who do, just some percentage of those are active enthusiast simmers, who spend significantly money to addons and simming hardware.

All in all, whether FSX has sold one or two million copies is quite irrelevant. Figures are really low compared to bigger AAA titles. Halo series reached around 50 millions copies sold late last year and figure has gone up from that considerably. Latest Halo 4 has sold around 8.5 million copies to this day since its release in the beginning of November 2012, in a timespan around 10 months. So, MS ditching the FS series was pretty much an ecnomical decision. I would think that developement costs are quite high and I wouldn't be surprised if FSX has barely reached break-even yet.

IMO Flight was quite bold attempt to draw wider audiences to flightsimming. It was more of an experiment and it failed, because it showed that the approach chosen proved that the concept was too boring for average gamer and offered too little for simulator enthusiast. If MS would've allowed third party developement even though letting distribution of 3PD addons only through only their own store thus creating revenue from 3PD sales, it would have possibly fared better with the enthusiasts. Flight was a failure, which probably keeps MS out of the sim business for the forseeable future. One interesting point for MS's decisions considering Flight that hasn't been discussed that much is the failure to capitalize on professional market with their ESP (which now effectively is in LM hands). Now, there are only few studios developing serious sims today and if you look two of them, both Eagle Dynamics (DCS series) and Laminar Research (XP) have businesses for professional market. DCS is actually a spin-off of training simulators. I have no clue how much revenue those companies gather from professional market, but it may be that it is quite vital for them to carry on with the consumer "game" developement at the same time. After ED and LR, this leaves us pretty much with 777 studios with Rise of Flight, which is also pretty much the only serious sim product aimed at completely for consumer simulation market. After the apparent failure with Battle of Britain and Oleg's departure from 1C games and flight simulator industry all together, also the story of the IL-2 series is pretty much done and the next "heir" to the IL-2 series is a co-operation product with 777 Studios using RoF based engine. So, there seems to be quite small space for the consumer flight simulator market to make it a decent business, if we assume that professional market is important for Eagle Dynamics and Laminar. If there would be potential for the sales for millions of copies, like it is with the many AAA gaming titles, we would have much more offering with the sims. That's how the market works and even though we have good and active community with FSX/FS9 and XP, we are still quite a small bunch among the other gamers out there.
 
TheGrunt said:
s and even though we have good and active community with FSX/FS9 and XP, we are still quite a small bunch among the other gamers out there.
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.... we always have and always will be.... in spite of all semi-pro additions such as full-blown cockpits and other efforts aimed at the more professional markets (like ESP), FS will remain a niche hobby market for many years to come and it will never compete in the gamer's markets.
 
Francois said:
.... we always have and always will be.... in spite of all semi-pro additions such as full-blown cockpits and other efforts aimed at the more professional markets (like ESP), FS will remain a niche hobby market for many years to come and it will never compete in the gamer's markets.
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YEP THE LAST TWO POST NAILED IT! THAT DOESN'T STOP US FROM ENJOYING WHAT WE HAVE.:jump:
Ted
 
Out of the 10-12 friends/family that I know use FS9/FSX regularly, I'm the only one that is a member of any FS related forums.

FlightSim.Com Statistics...Members; 520,706...Active Members; 117,642
Currently 1986 users online, 711 members and 1275 guests

Just using one site, and IF; my friends/family ratio to me, are representative, statistically:
Well over a million active users, and untold millions(guests?) of casual users.

No demand? Bull. There was enough demand for FSX that MS completed a second production run of it in Spring 2010 when retailers shelves ran dry.
I sincerely doubt that MS would have even considered the second run if they, and their retailers, didn't deem it profitable.
Even when they closed ACES, they stated that the closure was not related to it's profitability.

Too bad we don't know what the actual production numbers were...Don
 
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