Despite running load tests that simulated 200,000 users, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 devs admit that they 'completely underestimated' how many players would actually want to play their game
They had no problems taking everyone’s money. Maybe companies should limit the number of sales when deploying a product tied to services they operate and need to scale.
No, it's a multinational 3.1 trillion dollar company that has many in house resources it could pull on for a project like this. If they're gonna sell a product with this kind of server reliance built in, it's on them to actually hold up their end of the bargain instead of "oh oops looks like the game is just too much of a success guys".
I think their point is that Microsoft literally had all the information they needed to prevent this from happening and they just didn't because they were incompetent or some other human reason that had nothing to do with server capacity or or a missing Ethernet cable. There was nothing "unknown" here.
Scaling to meet demand is literally their job. Supposedly best, which is why they have been awarded military contracts.
They lost situational awareness, or they never had it.
I have a friend who plays, and they suggested that maybe putting it right onto gamepass -- allowing Johnbro McFuck to download it, get lost in a cloud, crash into the ocean and never play again -- during the launch window might not have been a great idea.
I don't see why it can't download each map individually. Like say you only fly in los angeles, it downloads only los angeles. Maybe it will still be a lot of data and you got a point.
And with some addons X-plane is nearly as pretty.
FS is all about VFR visuals. X-plane is about getting as close to real flying as possible in a home setting.
I, for one, couldn't care less about people. It's a flight (That's why I use X-plane) simulator. Spend your resources on giving me a plane and environment that works as close as real life ones. This is not airport lounge simulator.
If it's the version I'm thinking of, that's circa 2007, yeah? I remember the fully 3D interior panels being a little crunchy looking but using it mostly to practice instrument stuff with the traditional 2D panel overlays at ERAU. For which it was perfectly adequate.
Almost every major release ever f’s up the server demand. Whether it be downloading the content or players looking to join games.
They know the bitching will happen, buy everyone’s already handed over the cash, so too bad. They budget enough servers to just keep the complaints from lasting too long. Then everyone forgets and finds some other facet of the game to call “unplayable”.
The peak concurrent users for the game thus far has been less than 1/10th of that (EDIT: slightly more than 1/10th of that). They were well within the bounds of what they simulated. They just screwed up.
Yeah from what I hear, they kept the shitty self-downloader of the first one that is obscenely slow and counts as "playtime" because the game is open while downloading.
This is on Microsoft, they can make as many excuses as they want, but they fucked it up.