Request Q&A with Nick Grey (ED cofounder/owner). Ask hard questions.

[AndrewDCS2005]

@cfrag's thoughtful, empathetic and heartfelt take has really nailed it (and seems to resonate well with others here).

Everyone at ED and its subcontractors works really hard on so many, many, many things. And this is a problem. Continuing to add more stuff on already significantly overloaded team only makes the problem worse. 

ED has customers who are doing so much for ED and DCS success - very loyal and very engaged paying customers, spending years of hard unpaid work to enrich the otherwise near-sterile world with missions and mods and environment and scenarios which make sense and help create a purposeful story. Thousands of people making their best efforts over more than decade of contributions, repeatedly called out by Nick Grey himself in yearly videos, clearly stating ED and DCS won't be where it is without this community.

And yet, we keep hearing about priorities not aligned to the paying customer base. This is really puzzling and makes many of us concerned about future of DCS as a product and ED as a business.

And so, it would be great to hear from Nick directly what are the ultimate top priorities and future of the company - is it going towards next generation awesomeness of flight simulation, or towards yet another dusty bazaar of half-broken stuff.

 

[draconus]

On 11/10/2024 at 12:53 PM, Gary said:

It would also seem logical to me that "some" infrastructure improvements, or additions, are definately worth ED investing in. Simply because these additions would likely result in an increase in player numbers and interest and therefore module sales too. (Dynamic Campaign being the obvious example)

Exactly, and surely ED knows it that they couldn't just sell next aircraft for the old platform so they work on the core all the time, making things possible that were not possible before, adding features, units, reworking engine, optimizing and bug fixing on top of it. Some users just can't accept the pace or have their own view on priorities. Fortunately, ED knows what they have to do, listen to the feedback but doesn't follow home-grown business geniuses' advices so we can still enjoy DCS after 15 years and still kicking.

Edited November 13, 2024 by draconus

[AndrewDCS2005]

Poll results on this thread are clear: 75% are expecting Q&A with Nick Grey on the future vision for DCS.

@BIGNEWY please let me ask if you would be able to relay this to Nick?

[rob10]

7 hours ago, AndrewDCS2005 said:

Poll results on this thread are clear: 75% are expecting Q&A with Nick Grey on the future vision for DCS.

@BIGNEWY please let me ask if you would be able to relay this to Nick?

I hope your expectations for any response on this are tempered by the fact that this is less than 80 people total responding on a poll in a thread that's going to self select for a higher percentage of people wanting this.  I get you're keen for this, and yes the poll supported it, but only 80 people responding is not even a drop in the bucket of forum users, let alone DCS users so it's not likely to get a lot of traction.

[sirrah]

10 minutes ago, rob10 said:

I hope your expectations for any response on this are tempered by the fact that this is less than 80 people total responding on a poll in a thread that's going to self select for a higher percentage of people wanting this.  I get you're keen for this, and yes the poll supported it, but only 80 people responding is not even a drop in the bucket of forum users, let alone DCS users so it's not likely to get a lot of traction.

Exactly. Only 80 people, of which 20 even voted "no"

 

[AndrewDCS2005]

@sirrah and 60 people voted yes, which is 73% and counts as majority. This forum as a wishlist has representation by many different users passionate about anything from WWII land units to shape of panels on F-16 to naval missile models, and the resulting votes represent that too. But if you have ideas to get more votes - please go ahead.

 

And if anyone has more suggestions, comments or feedback on getting answers from Nick Grey where he sees DCS and ED in 3-5 years, please share.

[AndrewDCS2005]

Okay. Got the answers to most important questions I had - in the 2025/beyond and the discussion following in F-35 thread.

ED just made a bet with its brand existence, its entire frigging history since 90s, everything it has ever done so far, its identity and its soul.

This is all on the table now, for one and the only real reason - revenue and money making.

Fancy attention-grabbing 5th gen from USA and later Russia and China which will follow through the same door of "full fidelity as in best available in the sim market" - yep this will expand the userbase and create new sources of revenue. The number of years this feat will take is inversely proportional to current ARR - 2030+ might be good news, anything coming out in CY27 or earlier will mean a totally different ED than we knew all these years, desperately fighting for life.

I feel really sorry for ED folks who need to hold this banner now, coming with their bare hands and words against a tough hard reality.