Steam Sales Bonanza

[Pips]

Currently reading the May-June Issue (No.97) of PC Pilot.

In it there is an article on Dovetail Games, the folks who brought FSX to Steam. In that article it's said that since December 2014 there have been sales of over 200,000 copies of FSX. 200,000!!

That's mind blowing. And fantastic news.

Well done Dovetail Games. :applause:

[Chuck_Jodry-VJPL]

Interesting figure that , 200,000 represents 10% of what FSX sold in its initial year as a boxed set, i have two of these still , discussing the sales figures of a product a partner and I released on Steam we realized that many owners of the FSX Boxed version ordered a "Backup" version from steam but dont really use it, I wonder what percent of the 200,000 is represented by FSX users Backup practices and what portion represent new users, at a guess 50 / 50 based on proportional installer downloads of various products and their specific version installers, FSX Steam Edition remains a very distant third.

[Willy]

Might be a third, but the way I see it, FSX came out in 2006 and has had up until MS quit messing with it to rack up it's numbers. That's almost 10 years now. Compared to that amount of time, how long has the Steam Edition been out? Kind of apples and oranges there.

I held off on FSX up until early this year as my old comp while within specs for it, apparently didn't like it. And having dealt with CFS 3 from the gitgo and hearing about all the fixes and tweaks people were having to do to FSX, I just wasn't up for that again. FSX Steam? Downloaded it, installed it and have been running the hell out of it with no tweaks or fixes needed. Just like FSX (& CFS 3) should have been from the start.

[Chuck_Jodry-VJPL]

Good Stuff , as an interested party i greatly appreciate feedback on the subject , the type of Aircraft and usage patterns new users of the platform adopt , what level of sophistication, IE full failures and system modelling or the ready to fly type without all sorts of dll's running in the background monitoring data.

The returns on investment dealing with Dovetail Games are vastly different than is the norm , its hard to justify in fact and that has affected most of the decisions so far in what gets released , new products are out of the question but sorting through the catalogue of past productions is something under debate .


Input from the community is invaluable when coming to terms with these decisions .

Best CJ

[wombat666]

Just FTR, I have my original FSX 'Boxed Set' and a couple of spares (complete with 'Acceleration') as these were on sale at AUD$15.00 each, and I decided the Steam/Dovetail Games FSX was worth purchasing as well.
I may never use it but backing Dovetail up with a sale is my way of keeping the faith.
:encouragement:

[Willy]

Input? I'm guessing you're part of a payware group. Ok, here goes....

As far as aircraft and usage patterns... Usage, about the same as FS9 which I haven't started up in months (it's become more of a parts bin as has CFS 2 & 3). Online multiplayer most nights with the guys (using FS Host instead of the Steam servers), our racing stuff here and checking out paints I'm working on. Right new we've got a race on in the SW Pacific and I'm using the old AH Seafire III that's been reworked for FSX. Fun stuff.

Aircraft, mostly propliners and military stuff. Some of my old favorites have survived being ported over some have not for various reasons. Some payware that I'd bought for FS9 that came with a FSX version didn't fare well either. And some have. Both the Virtavia ones work great (F4D Skyray and the Gee Bees). The FSD Cessna 337 while it seems to fly fine has some panel issues that I haven't taken the time to resolve. But that one was always somewhat problematic with the panel. It's just really showing it's age in X. Lately, I've been more into early jets. Mostly the old straight wing ones.

As much as I enjoyed aircraft carrier stuff in FS9, I haven't picked it back up in FSX yet. I intend to, just haven't got there yet. I've still got a lot of old FS9 favorites to muck about with. But I have bought a few payware planes explicitly for FSX. Vertito SBD and the Aeroplane Heaven B-17F. The AH L10 Electra is going to be a must buy as well.

Aircraft failures. I'm iffy on those. I'm usually fine with them if they're not too intrusive. Keep the engines out of the red type things. I'm more of a kick the tires and go type though. If I have to jump through a bunch of hoops to start one up and fly it, it's probably not going to get much usage if it's even purchased.

Mostly my viewpoint on purchasing payware aircraft for FSX SE is that if it says it's for FSX Acceleration, I'll give it a try. From my understanding, they're close enough that it should work. However, if the price tag is over $30, then it had better state that it's for FSX Steam Edition. Under about $25, I'm willing to take a chance on. But so far in my experience, if it says Acceleration, then it's worked like it should in SE. With the old FS9 payware, my quick rule of thumb is to see if it has VC textures. Some do and some don't.

[Tom Burnside]

Im one of that 200.000 and im very happy with it.