Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 announced.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Had the CDKeys pricing not been available, I would have most likely gone for the Premium Deluxe edition as I would have found it hard to justify the extra £70 for Aviator. However, at ‘only’ an extra £43 it suddenly becomes much better value!

It's funny because I thought (going on cd keys prices) £75 for the premium deluxe seemed good value for the price point for the 3rd tier option, going to the 4th tier seemed a significant jump.

I think if you look at percentages the jump to aviator from premium deluxe, is a good jump, whilst from base to premium deluxe, consider you are going up 2 tiers on the latter does seem that sign

I'm absolutely not criticising your decision nor saying your opinion isn't correct, it's just funny how different people perceive stuff.
 
In fact the pricing on CD keys intrigues me.

I'm guessing here, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the keys are legit from the developer, under the mentality that people are CD key anyway, might as well make some money through it. Especially given the availability of the keys.

Seems they priced it so the base game isn't that attractive, the premium deluxe is nicely discounted and let's face it, aviator people gonna aviator, right?

The fact that the likes of me for example, despite on the face of it, got a good deal, still spent £75 on a pc game, that's a lot of money for a pc game.

And they will be getting a return on that.

I wouldn't have purchased the game at full price at all, so better to make some money than none at all?

I guess we will never really know.
 
In fact the pricing on CD keys intrigues me.

I'm guessing here, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the keys are legit from the developer, under the mentality that people are CD key anyway, might as well make some money through it. Especially given the availability of the keys.

Seems they priced it so the base game isn't that attractive, the premium deluxe is nicely discounted and let's face it, aviator people gonna aviator, right?

The fact that the likes of me for example, despite on the face of it, got a good deal, still spent £75 on a pc game, that's a lot of money for a pc game.

And they will be getting a return on that.

I wouldn't have purchased the game at full price at all, so better to make some money than none at all?

I guess we will never really know.

Yes, I agree, even at the CDKey's £75 discounted price for Premium Deluxe, it is a lot of money. However, I suspect that the flight sim demographic is quite varied now. There will be a significant 'core/long term' segment that have likely been invested in flight simulation for many years. Many of these users won't purchase many other games and are instead heavily invested in their flight sim hobby with the addition of expensive hardware and software add-ons. I think many of these users will go for Premium Deluxe +. As such, they will likely be happy to pay the higher prices.

FS2020 has massively rejuvenated home flight simulation and opened it up to more people than arguably any previous FS platform before. I think there will be many gamers (PC and XBOX) who will purchase this as just another game in their collection - possibly significantly more than the previous group! I suspect many of these users will go for the lower tier options or play via Game Pass.

Back in 2020-2021, many of the fore mentioned group turned their noses up at FS2020 being released on XBOX. However, it has been an amazing thing for the hobby and a key reason why FS2020 has been such a great success. It has no doubt exponentially increased sales volume, and that has benefited everyone who loves flight simulation. I still remember the day back in 2008 when Microsoft announced that Flight Simulator would be cancelled. In the years between 2008 and 2020, many continued with FSX/FSX Steam edition, some moved to P3D and of course X-Plane did very well. There was the failed 'Microsoft Flight' in 2012 which had such a build up and then crashed so exponentially, being cancelled just months after launch! However, the hobby endured. Back then nobody could have imagined that this age of flight simulation and such an incredible new platform would be on the then still distant horizon.
 
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Airbus TCA setups are reasonable and have a rudder function without the need for separate pedals. Just depends if you want a yoke or a stick.
Hope they work in the full version, I couldn't get them to work in the Alpha even though it showed them as an option
 
Tempted to just get something like this to see how I get on -

Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas One​


Much better out there for the price?
 
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I can't wait for tomorrow. Perversely I'm most excited by how bad things might be and everyone chucking their toys out of the pram.

With the world assets being cloud based streaming and it seems to use a fair amount of data for that streaming and seeing many big online game launches I suspect the servers to be swamped tomorrow.
 
It will be interesting to see which third party aircraft work with the new sim from day 1.

I imagine it will take a little time for devs to officially support the new platform and potentially longer to update existing models to really make the most of the enhanced flight dynamics and new features.

I also don’t have high hopes of getting it downloaded tomorrow afternoon though!!
 
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