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Payware makers speakout Re: MS Closes Aces

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Whilst I am aware that buying multiple addons for MSFS doesn't come cheap, I find it hard to understand how anyone can fly around using the default scenery. It simply does not look realistic enough.


Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

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Nobody releases sales figures, but from some chance remarks in a restricted access forum, it would seem more probable to believe that a sales volume of 500 units is closer to the average. Of course, there are numerous exceptions, both airplanes and scenery, that perhaps sell 5000 or 10 000 units, and maybe even some that sell more than that. But, it is doubtful that anybody has sold anywhere close to 100 000.It is an extremely small market, and the great majority of users probably do not even use freeware, let alone commercial add-ons.Best regards.Luis

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If the FS series stops with FSX, it isn't really a bad thing. There are enough add-ons out there already to make the sim (very) interesting and certainly many, many more to come. Perhaps now we'll have a chance to play catch up with the hardware and actually see the potential of FSX, a potential no one has seen yet. I ran FS9 on several rigs but it was only when I ran it on a fast dual-core rig with a 640 MB 8800GTS video card (a PC config FS9 developers probably never dreamed of) that I was able to fly FS9 with no restrictions. Meaning using every add on, all the GE and FE and UT there are, along with payware planes and scenery and full AI, with maxed AA & AF and getting fluid FPS in all situations. That's when I truly felt like I had FS9 running as it was meant to be.We're still (at least) a year or two from pulling this off with FSX, but it just might be worth the wait. When we can takeoff from a custom JFK in a CS 757 and fly over custom Manhattan, with full AI and all the ORBX and GEX and FEX and UTX running, at high res with 20+ FPS in all situations, then we can talk about what's next. For now, I think we have lots of catching up to do with what we already have.


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In general, most MSFS add-on developers don't understand what a "volume" based model looks like. ... They haven't figured out if you sell 100,000 items at 19.95 what kind of money that would make. Instead MSFS add-on developers want to sell 10,000 copies at $40. $1.9M Vs 400K..
I suspect you don't understand "volume" pricing, otherwise you wouldn't made the foolish assumption that halving the price will result in a ten-fold increase in sales - $40->$19.95 and 10,000->100,000.If you took Marketing 101 you'd learn about price elasticity of demand which a the measure of responsiveness in the quantity demanded for a commodity as a result of change in price of the same commodity. It varies commodity by commodity and sector by sector. It's quite possible that halving the price would result in less than a doubling of demand. In that case the developer would be worse off! Of course you prove me wrong by developing your own add-on and selling 100,000 at $19.95.

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Based on the closure of ACES and the world economy in general, I would hope to anticipate price reductions, especially for the $50+ MSFS add-ons.
Don't hold your breath :(

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In general, most MSFS add-on developers don't understand what a "volume" based model looks like. Just take a look at all the commercials on TV for the $19.95 and below price points.
You are overlooking what should be blindingly obvious. The root problem faced by anyone with a "widget" to sell is consumer awareness, i.e., advertising!Addon developers are faced with the same core problem as book authors; the opacity of the marketplace. There is simply no way that any developer can reach more than a tiny fraction of those who use any version of flightsimulator, much less a specific version of a flightsimulator such as FS9 and FSX.It's a very simple concept, all things considered: No product will ever sell at any price if the potential market does not know that it exists!How does any book make the "Best Sellers list?" Those who's publishers have invested the huge number of dollars to advertise! Believe me, there are far better books available than those that make such lists, but they languish in relative obscurity because of marketplace opacity. They are simply never "discovered" by potential readers except by word-of-mouth.As a case in point, I've been a huge fan of Science Fiction ever since I first read "Space Cadet" by Robert Heinlien some fifty years ago, and had invested thousands of dollars ever since. I recently donated my entire hard cover collection of ~4,000 books to my local library, among which was a complete first-edition collection of Heinlien, Asimov and Clarke. I remain a very active member on many Sci-Fi websites, forums, newgroups and so forth...Yet even so, it was only by complete accident that I learned about several "new authors" that've totally blown me away with their prodigious and awesome novels. Eric Flint (one of my "new authors") turned out to be a close neighbor, living as he does less than six blocks from my house! Incidentally, it was from Eric that I first learned about the "opacity" of the bookmarket...http://baens-universe.com/articles/salvos7
What do I mean by an "opaque" market? The concept is simple, and is closely related to the concept of information asymmetries as used by some economists. A lot of economic theory is based upon the presumption

Fr. Bill    

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--------------As I said, this marketplace opacity issue should be self-evident. For example, given that we know for a fact that FSX sold over one million copies in the United States during the fiscal year 2008, where are they? How many millions of copies of FS9 have been sold since its release? Even if we reduce those numbers by one fourth, that still leaves a staggering number of potential sim users......so, where are they? ...how does anyone reach them?
Fr Bill- From some years as a realtor and seeing the inside of many homes- I can tell you where many of those FS copies are :-In a basement junk room filled with hundreds of unused toys and games. I would be willing to bet that 50% of those million copies of FSX never saw a plane leave the ground. "Dad, the plane keeps crashing- tomorrow, can you get me a new game ?"Flight Simming requires more than a 15 minute attention span.Alex Reid

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Guest christian

byoung - whatever you do, never, never start your own business. Unless you quickly change your perception of pricing.I'm a 3rd party developer. My most expensive product runs at $100, my cheapest at $20. After your logic, the cheapest should generate the most money, yes? Surprise, surprise. Not only does my most expensive product make the most money by a wide margin, it also sells the most copies by a wide margin!Also, in terms of sales numbers, as others have reported, popular add-ons sell maybe 1,000 copies a year. The best sellers sell 10,000 copies and those are probably only a handful each year. Not one developer has become rich doing this, in fact almost everyone is doing this while having a full time job.Yes there are millions of people owning MSFS. However just have a look at how many people actively post in this forum. Suddenly makes the market a whole lot smaller doesn't it.Christian

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The risk of following the 'volume based' plan is you could sell the product to customers that would have paid higher for it, and the much lower price and don't make up with it for the additional sales at the lower price.You might make the bulk of your unit sales in the first 6 months the product is released. If you priced it too low, and you don't get theanticipated high volume of sales you can't get that lost income back.But if you are losing sales solely due to the high price, there's an opportunity to entice those prospective customers to pony up lateron by lowering the price.Regards.Ernie.


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Fr Bill- From some years as a realtor and seeing the inside of many homes- I can tell you where many of those FS copies are :-In a basement junk room filled with hundreds of unused toys and games. I would be willing to bet that 50% of those million copies of FSX never saw a plane leave the ground. "Dad, the plane keeps crashing- tomorrow, can you get me a new game ?"Flight Simming requires more than a 15 minute attention span.Alex Reid
Which is why I brought up the point about only considering one fourth of the total. That's still a huge number. For that matter, even one TENTH of the total sales of FS9 and FSX would be much larger than the best "guesstimates" of the potential marketsize...

Fr. Bill    

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     Avsim Board of Directors | Avsim Forums Moderator

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Guest acebrando7

Payware add-on developers simply need to study and take into account the current market. Certain payware add-on developers must be making a fair amount of money. Take PMDG for example; they advertise on sites such as AVSIM, and I doubt if that is really cheap. They also give presentations and setup shop at flightsim conventions to my understanding, and that cannot be cheap either. Furthermore when you look at their site you will see that they are still selling add-ons for FS9 that are more than just a few years old. How long has their B737-NG's been on market, 4 or 5 years? Guess what, they are still selling their B737 add-ons at a price higher than what you can buy FS9 for new ($20). Those guys are still milking that product line for all it is worth, and they must still be selling the B737-NG add-on series at a fair volume because why else do they still have them for sale? It is still $45 for the base B737-NG package and $35 for the add-on of the B737-800/-900's. Those two prices have not changed hardly at all in years. Look at it this way: $80 plus for four B737's with liveries at your disposal with the same flightdeck, because -600's, -700's, -800's, and -900's all have the same flightdeck. Their tech support for this product line is probably extremely minimal; the last time I looked at their support forum, questions per this B737-NG line were being answered by fellow PMDG supporters, not PMDG staff.In fact, I remember posting a reply in PMDG's forum a couple of years ago when Robert Randazzo of PMDG stated that their MD-11 was only going to be for FSX; Randazzo stated that it WOULD NOT be available for FS9 users. My comment as a businessman was that the decision to not make it compatible with FS9 was not a wise choice. Randazzo's arrogance spewed forth immediately, made fun of my comments, etc. He also told me that 80 percent (if my memory serves me correctly) of their client base was in Europe; therefore in my mind the American market for people who could not afford to upgrade to a computer to handle FSX was, and would be, left out in the cold. I laugh at his stubborn and arrogant reply just as much now as I did way back then, because of the following: go to their website and look to see if PMDG sells the MD-11 add-on for just FSX, or for both FSX & FS9. Interesting, No?If I had a product that was as old as PMDG's B737's, I would lower the price. An example if you will: Why would an auto-dealer try to sell a brand-new 2005 model at the same blue-book price as of 2005 in 2009? According to PMDG's list of personnel, that is one group of guys that for the most part should not be hurting financially, even in these turbulent economic times we are all facing.I have both FS9 and FSX SP2 on a very "beefy" computer. I still use FS9 more than FSX SP2 Deluxe because I like my FS9 hangar alot more.With all of that being said, my suggestion to all payware developers is to be as flexible with your add-ons in regard to dual compatibilities of FS9 & FSX as possible.Brando

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It's a pity that there isn't any way of finding out why the majority of FS users don't seem to be interested in addons. Or maybe there is? How many registered users of Avsim are there? What percentage use add ons? The majority? If not why not? It's all very well trying to make contact but, if people aren't interested in the message, then it's a waste of time. Perhaps they do know about Avsim, Flightsim etc but just aren't inclined to improve their sim experience. As a matter of interest does anybody know how many people responded to the survey that MS did prior to the release of FSX or how many registered with FSInsider? I suppose what FS needed was something to make it more interesting to Joe public. Missions were, I think, an excellent idea - even if some people seemed to think it was sacrilege!

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Without the availability of scenery addons, I wouldn't have even considered purchasing FSX. That's because the default scenery is nowhere near good enough for my tastes. However, many people might be more concerned with the cost of buying multiple addons. FSX : Gold Edition cost me


Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

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Guest byoung
byoung - whatever you do, never, never start your own business. Unless you quickly change your perception of pricing.I'm a 3rd party developer. My most expensive product runs at $100, my cheapest at $20. After your logic, the cheapest should generate the most money, yes? Surprise, surprise. Not only does my most expensive product make the most money by a wide margin, it also sells the most copies by a wide margin!Also, in terms of sales numbers, as others have reported, popular add-ons sell maybe 1,000 copies a year. The best sellers sell 10,000 copies and those are probably only a handful each year. Not one developer has become rich doing this, in fact almost everyone is doing this while having a full time job.Yes there are millions of people owning MSFS. However just have a look at how many people actively post in this forum. Suddenly makes the market a whole lot smaller doesn't it.Christian
Hi Christian,Gee, I was only talking about the typical retail model that has been around for say a hundred years. The problem is that the $100 add-on probably has NO direct competition comparing apples to apples. Would you pay $1000 for the same add-on? If I was going to spend $1000, I would probably purchase hardware upgrades in the future so that the basic core performace point of FPS would be significantly enhanced. Would you spend $100 on a novel? I could site many examples here, but I would be beating a dead horse.What if the developer ran a special sales period for a week at a 50% discount, he has to bank on volume, it is as simple as that. Unless there is some urgent reason, or you want to be the first on your block to own one, typically people will ONLY purchase it if it is on sale. If money is no object or you have a sense of urgency then you will pay the going market rate.. Or if there is no other alternative, you'll pay whatever the market will bear. But most wealthy people didn't get to where they were by splurging and pay a price over retail. I would think that these developers price their products according to market standards with the goal to sell as many units as possible. I don't know of one business model whose purpose is soley to manufacture one unit (unless something rare that can demand huge money). Numbers are numbers. Units sold x selling price = revenue. revenue- cost = profit. I don't think this is rocket science. Most developers don't have to outlay millions of dollars for manufacturing costs, in creating And as a courtesy, please don't attack a person directly on this fourm. If you want to enlighten the subject, you are welcome to comment. Please assume ignorance and not stupidity. There is a huge difference.Thank you Christian for your insight. I appreciate your time in effort in your thoughts.Take care!The bottom line is that you should price your product at the price point

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No product will ever sell at any price if the potential market does not know that it exists!
I know exactly what you mean. I created a Manchester Airport DVD 2002-2006 in my spare time, but I don't have the money to start advertising it. Just look on eBay if you're interested.

Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

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