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

Sorry if I came across a bit strong, my post was a bit tongue in cheek and not meant as a personal attack. The point I was trying to make is that there's always more to what meets the eye. For example you're specials example. This is a big mistake a lot of novices make. You don't run a special to make money. The most effective way to run specials is to make a loss during the special, but gain customers. It's a marketing exercise. Once you gain customers you sell them more product (it's a lot easier to sell products to existing customers). That's where you make your profit - in the long term. Price is overrated. Most people pay more for quality and service. There is a reason the iPhone is the most popular mobile - despite its price.Christian

Marketing captains, this is all about marketing. MS has set its cards on Xbox, that

MS has set its cards on Xbox, that’s the main reason ACES had to go.

That is simply not an accurate statement on so many levels... :( It's apparent that you either haven't read what current MS employees and former ACES employees have posted and/or blogged.......or you've simply chosen to disbelieve them. :(

Regardless of why ACES was let go, if MSFS ends up on XBox, I won't be buying it, period. Especially after reading that FS11 was gearing up for more game sh** like FSX has. They simply didn't want to give us serious users what we want, like better ATC, AI, upgradable navdata, DP/STARs, and so on. It looks like my future with FS will forever be locked in place with FS9 and maybe FSX. Unless someone else picks up the ball and creates an experience that equals or tops FS9/FSX with add-ons, I'm done. Right now, X-Plane and others (e.g., FlightGear) don't have what it takes to impress me at all, and that happens to be complex add-ons that equal real world flight. If someone like PMDG, Level-D, Flight 1, DreamFleet, and all the top developers were able to build for X-Plane or another sim, I'd likely be there with money in hand.Regardless of why ACES was let go, if MSFS ends up on XBox, I won't be buying it, period. Especially after reading that FS11 was gearing up for more game sh** like FSX has. They simply didn't want to give us serious users what we want, like better ATC, AI, upgradable navdata, DP/STARs, and so on. It looks like my future with FS will forever be locked in place with FS9 and maybe FSX. Unless someone else picks up the ball and creates an experience that equals or tops FS9/FSX with add-ons, I'm done. Right now, X-Plane and others (e.g., FlightGear) don't have what it takes to impress me at all, and that happens to be complex add-ons that equal real world flight. If someone like PMDG, Level-D, Flight 1, DreamFleet, and all the top developers were able to build for X-Plane or another sim, I'd likely be there with money in hand.Regardless of why ACES was let go, if MSFS ends up on XBox, I won't be buying it, period. Especially after reading that FS11 was gearing up for more game sh** like FSX has. They simply didn't want to give us serious users what we want, like better ATC, AI, upgradable navdata, DP/STARs, and so on. It looks like my future with FS will forever be locked in place with FS9 and maybe FSX. Unless someone else picks up the ball and creates an experience that equals or tops FS9/FSX with add-ons, I'm done. Right now, X-Plane and others (e.g., FlightGear) don't have what it takes to impress me at all, and that happens to be complex add-ons that equal real world flight. If someone like PMDG, Level-D, Flight 1, DreamFleet, and all the top developers were able to build for X-Plane or another sim, I'd likely be there with money in hand.

Regardless of why ACES was let go, if MSFS ends up on XBox, I won't be buying it, period. Especially after reading that FS11 was gearing up for more game sh** like FSX has. They simply didn't want to give us serious users what we want, like better ATC, AI, upgradable navdata, DP/STARs, and so on. It looks like my future with FS will forever be locked in place with FS9 and maybe FSX. Unless someone else picks up the ball and creates an experience that equals or tops FS9/FSX with add-ons, I'm done. Right now, X-Plane and others (e.g., FlightGear) don't have what it takes to impress me at all, and that happens to be complex add-ons that equal real world flight. If someone like PMDG, Level-D, Flight 1, DreamFleet, and all the top developers were able to build for X-Plane or another sim, I'd likely be there with money in hand.

Gosh Chris, are you so in love with your own words you had to post the same paragraph four times? :( How many times must folks post that whatever is coming next will be for the PC... not XBox! :(

I don't quite get where this "game" tag came from, especially with the items listed in that article:

• voice recognition with air traffic control - this sounds like a brand new ATC system to me (you know, that item that is on just about every Wish List entry I've seen); there's no way voice rec could have been grafted onto the front of the existing ATC system
• first-person mode - that would allow things like Virtual Aircraft Inspection walk arounds (yet another wish list item)
• a full fledged career mode with a job board and a currency system - I would say at least 20% of the folks at the last couple of AVSim FanCons have asked about this sort of feature (and I see several 3rd party addons that also provide this style of feature). This is the closest to a "game" feature, and I would call it "directed game-play", which might help to retain more new users long enough for the simming bug to bite them big time.
• a lighter-then-air aircraft class - Hot air balloons and blimps, sound like valid parts of the "as real as it gets" aviation genre that FS is/was.
• skydiving - I'll admit, I can't understand why anyone would jump out of a perfectly good aircraft, but folks do it in real life, and they start out in an aircraft, so again, that sounds like a valid aviation feature to me

Sorry guys, I don't see a single "game" feature up there, and like most FS features, any of them you don't want to use, you don't have to (if you don't want to do Career mode, then don't open that dialog, ever :-> ). What I see is a bunch of wish list items that were being tackled for inclusion in the next release.

quote name='beatle' date='Feb 15 2009, 02:56 PM' post='1542400'My question is, how did beatles manage to post that last post at on Sunday Feb 15th @ 2:56 PM, when it's only 9:09 am ????Assuming the TIME displays are UTC, they are still one hour out.I posted this at 9:09 am EASTERN TIME which is 2:09 UTC ( +5 hours) ... NOT +6

I am always interested in the "serious" and "us" which seems to be those that fly complex airliners/stars and want more realistic atc.I am a serious simmer and care about none of the above. Doesn't mean that those needs are not legit-but why are the needs of others always considered not "serious" and not "us".Complex airliners-I am only interested in what I fly in rw. Simming in something that I have no experience in and only perhaps a handful can verify is realistic is not my cup of tea.Sids/stars -18 years of flying ifr I've only flown one. I have been given perhaps 20 that I never flew one part of as vectors came before any of the waypoints. So, I really don't care about sids/stars.Better atc-it is such a complex thing with real human personalities and negotiating that I don't see a programmed version can ever do justice-so again not high on my priority list. I get enough experience with that in rw that it doesn't really interest me that much.I have a retired pilot friend who spent 8 years flying small aircraft counting game in Africa. He is delighted with the elephants he can follow in fsx that many like to call gamelike.One of my Baron partners also is a commercial glider pilot-he can't get past the glider simulation in fsx as he is so delighted to even try out any of the other aircraft yet-and it has been two years.My other Baron partner fly's only the missions-he thinks they are the greatest.I am using xplane right now- the following was a very "serious' flight for me-yes it was ifr-I have only basically flown ifr for the last 18 years. Yes-xplane seems to make this one more serious than even fsx:http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=243813So I always take exception to "serious" , "us" and "gamelike". Serious is however you personally use the sim-your serious may be gamelike in my perspective. All uses are legit. As Beatle explained above for the plans to the future fs.Some of those future features features are gamelike to me and some are not-probably just the inverse for many other simmers.We are all "serious" and all "us".

I'm sorry, but the idea of anyone in the FS addon industry selling 100,000 copies of an addon is absolutely laughable. I obviously can't post our actual sales figures but it is not even remotely close to that figure. The problem with "volume-based" sales at $19.95 or whatever is that this is 100% a niche market, it always has been and always will be. It takes many years to develop a truly good addon product and even at the prices developers charge, it's not like we're getting rich off of this. A few thousand copies at $80 may sound like a lot, but it's not when you consider that it represents the total money made on years of work and that it's split out between the many individual developers involved.I can't tell you how many times I've had friends call me crazy for wanting to sit in front of a computer "flying" airplanes. FS by itself is already niche - even FSX selling a million copies isn't that great compared to mainstream games like Grand Theft Auto, Half-Life, or Call of Duty. High end addons are a niche market within a niche market. The vast majority of people who bought FSX are actually just casual users who probably loaded it up once or twice, realized it wasn't a traditional "game", got frustrated and uninstalled it. The leap between flying the default FSX planes and flying a high-end addon is a very large one - maybe we don't step back often enough to realize it because we're so used to it, but essentially we become actual pilots in terms of our understanding of aircraft systems and methodolgy when we learn to fly a high-end addon well. That sounds an awful lot like hard work to most people... We're a rare breed folks.