How large is the DCS community?

It would be very interesting how many users DCS currently has. Could the ED officials provide us with such information? For example, how often was which module sold? If ED can't or doesn't want to call numbers, perhaps ranking lists could be provided to us, to see which modules were sold most often. :smartass:

This question has been asked many times before and no you're not gonna get answer from ED :) . We can only make estimation, just look at number of forum members then double or triple it

An interesting thought is, that it seems the majority is enjoying DCS in Singleplayer and are not present on these forums.

So even if we take the forum members and steam sales together we may add a considerable number on top.

Sometimes it seems small factions on these forums appear to be "speaking for a majority" while in fact they may represent a small, but vocal part of the community. There is always a very large group of "unknowns" in the background we cannot be too sure of.

So it is a wise approach, to consider "opinions" and "factual knowledge" on these forums carefully, as they may not represent any majority... Oh, and that includes me and my rants as well. ;)

Small, very small.

How long is a piece of string?

Have a look at STEAM figures, they keep public stats. Then try to consider forum views. Then you need to add the iceberg under the tip. There's no UK companies registered that provide sales, though the Fighter Collection owned by Nick Grey has published assets and they have an exemption from Audit for small companies, I don't know if Russia holds any specific details on companies in the same way, I don't think so, besides ED is hidden underneath a network of charities so public records will be vague and misleading.

TLDR; no and unlikely to.

How long is a piece of string?

Twice of half its length

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Sometimes it seems small factions on these forums appear to be "speaking for a majority" while in fact they may represent a small, but vocal part of the community...

Spot on.

Same goes with other forums too (BIS, BMS, IL2).

Count what sales a few hundred MP screamers account for and see how many months 5 developers salary can be payed from that.

I remember that on the "pro" branch website of the simulator they talked about "a large community of over 200 000 beta testers".

I really appreciated this way of speaking btw...

But IRL, most modules don't sell more than 5 000 to 10 000 copies. So I guess that 30-50 thousand should be a good approximation.

But IRL, most modules don't sell more than 5 000 to 10 000 copies. So I guess that 30-50 thousand should be a good approximation.

How is is possible to make a profit on that level of sales?

5,000 @ $50 = $250,000. Not a lot for a few devs spending a year or two researching and coding.

How is is possible to make a profit on that level of sales?

5,000 @ $50 = $250,000. Not a lot for a few devs spending a year or two researching and coding.

But then you've have the cost of the man hours, overheads of electricity, rent etc and it dwindles down quite a bit.

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How is is possible to make a profit on that level of sales?

5,000 @ $50 = $250,000. Not a lot for a few devs spending a year or two researching and coding.

You just had ask didn't you? :P

IMO thats why modules have a hard time reaching the feature complete milestone. Which then leads into the rush for the next plane while the previoius isn't feature complete.

Its like a giant ponzi scheme.

I suspect that the community of DCS would be a lot larger than it is at the moment had the "merge" already happened.

Eagle Dynamics has to support three different branches of their "base" product, while at the same time creating new content, modules, and supporting third party development. This is no doubt very difficult, time consuming and frustrating, however it was in all probability necessary. I doubt it was by their intentional design that they painted themselves into this corner. It also means that many improvements and bug fixes that they probably already have in the pipeline also need to wait.

This is why I will breathe a huge sigh of relief next friday, if everything goes according to plan and they get 2.1 out the door. It's of course the prelude to 2.5 but I suspect a vast majority of DCS WWII users will shift to the Alpha branch, which will sort of become a beta test of what is to come and ED can shift all their energy and focus on getting to the merge.

Hint: This Forum has over 60.000 users.

I keep hearing that flight simulators are a very niche market. With all the different company's developing products, not just software for this niche market, leads one to believe that this is not a niche market. There are many segments to this market.

Perhaps it may be true that only a diverse customer base wants a study type simulator....having to spend too much time learning to use it and the manual studying......and listening to the rivet counters expressing doubts about the authenticity of something they have no knowledge of other than their opinions tends to put off lots of folks who may interpret that as characteristic of a title they will not be interested in... so they chose to use a non-study sim and get the enjoyment from that. Each to his own.

One has to remember that this is a simulation of a programmer's idea after their own experience/knowledge of how it is. Its also a estimation of how said simulation is to real life if that is what is wanted.

Laz

IT's this big

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