Upon it’s initial launch in 2011, Infinite Flight had costed $5.99 AUD and the options to purchase additional aircraft was available at an extra charge. Since then, the base price of the sim has moved up to $7.99, which in reality isn’t too much, however to obtain the premium features such as global flight and multiplayer, you must pay a minimum of $14.99 AUD. This totals up to $22.98 AUD, if you of course are purchasing the game as a new player. After the one time payment of $7.99, the subscription is $14.99 AUD minimum per month. This pricing is uneconomical in my opinion as in order to make this payment worthwhile, you need to be on Infinite Flight all the time, which is not always possible. To make it worse, the subscription runs out while you aren’t playing the simulator, so good luck playing Infinite Flight during your finals. So what I propose is that the subscription system is modified so that an active subscription does not run out while you are away from the sim. Continue reading below to see how I think this should be approached.
As stated above, Infinite Flight’s subscription model is not economic for the customer as to access premium features, you must pay a considerable amount of money and to make this investment worthwhile, you must play the sim regularly. What I suggest is that the devs create an in-game timer which counts down from 31 days (a month) and whenever you close Infinite Flight or are idle in the menus, the timer stops. Other games have incorporated this system however with in-game items which are valid for when you are actually playing the game. From a logical stand point, the maximum amount of hours you can play in a month of 31 days is 744 hours, which is plentiful considering that to play exactly 31 days of IF, you would be able to achieve 31 24 hour flights. And in terms of the now, this is still the same principle except that when you participate in a long haul flight, you obviously lose the time of the long haul flight but the subscription continues to run down when you’re away from Infinite Flight. So to demonstrate this concept, lets say I bought a one month subscription of Infinite Flight Live. I then decide to do a 1 hour flight from Paris to London. After I exit to the menus, provided I leave the servers exactly after an hour, the timer which I was talking about would be now down to 30 days 23 hours. I then decide to exit the Infinite Flight app. The timer wouldn’t continue to run down as it does now in Infinite Flight, saving you money and enhancing your flight simulator experience.
So you made it to the end. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this topic. I know it was a long one but I hope you guys now have a grasp of this concept. Please leave a vote if you like this idea and leave a comment below on anything I may have missed.
Not necessarily. You could (if there was 31 days in each month) achieve around 8,000 hours of flight. In fact for annuals, it would be economical as $150 AUD is pretty hefty for a mobile sim. You would get more flexibility with when you can fly and you wouldn’t have to worry about being on the sim all the time. And you wouldn’t have to worry about paying monthly and even still, a yearly subscription turns out to be cheaper than paying for a montly subscription for 12 consecutive months.
This isn’t economical for the devs though. It would take too long to get resubscriptions (I’ve had global for nearly four months now and I have 700 hours) therefore a long time without revenue. They need to have a constant flow of income to break even (idk how to phrase it)(and I might be wrong) 8,000 hours is extremely long.
In the users point of view, in my opinion this is beneficial. However, from the developers point of view, it may not be ideal. In my opinion current tariff plans are good. However, on a promotional basis, to encourage new members to join, your idea might be good.
I am just speaking from the absolute maximum amount of hours you could obtain within a year. Of course no one will consistently run IF for 24 hours a day for a year but you have a very good point :)
Your idea is really cool. The only problem is that without money, FDS wouldn’t be able to continue developing as fast as they have been doing recently.
You pay for cable or internet each month, they dont care how many shows you watched or if there was a day you were on vacation and did not use internet. The price is the same each month. You are basically turning it into an hourly subscription service where you buy actual flight time.
Personally I think it is just unrealistic. I can see some headaches happening with this model. (I left my device on, brother played, i crashed but I lost my hour, etc) Just my thoughts.
Technically speaking, you would still lose the time on your device if the game crashed or if you exited accidentally. The time spent flying is in real time so your still losing your time you invest in the game. Either way, you are still getting more time for your money to enjoy the game rather than have to consistently play to make the investment worth it. For instance, last month I bought a 1 month and would’ve played not even 20 hours. If this system was a thing, I would still have my subscription and would have perhaps played more in my free time but it has expired and I feel like I didn’t really get my money’s worth in enjoyment. Just my sense…
No sure who among the Pro subscribers, or how big/smal percentage of the subscribers for that matter, are constantly playing IF to “make the investment worth it”…🧐
I thought most of us, if not almost of, are flying the sim for the sake of having fun or even having feelings of accomplishment, etc.
Am I right? 🛬😎🛫