No one would dispute that, but I still have to ask would your plans actually earn MS more money?I know your answer…and that’s where the dispute is. :biggrin:This will be big news when we finally learn it; the opinions have been so strongly split. :(

I may be wrong, I'm just looking at this from a business point of view, the only other solution will be for the dev. to pay a % of their Flight's add-ons sales to MS no matter from what store the add-ons was sold from but that will not take care of the potential piracy problem....the MS store is a better solution...now lets wait and see.....:(

I may be wrong, I'm just looking at this from a business point of view, the only other solution will be for the dev. to pay a % of their Flight's add-ons sales to MS no matter from what store the add-ons was sold from but that will not take care of the potential piracy problem....the MS store is a better solution...now lets wait and see.....:(

what?? .. so far off

I may be wrong, I'm just looking at this from a business point of view, the only other solution will be for the dev. to pay a % of their Flight's add-ons sales to MS no matter from what store the add-ons was sold from but that will not take care of the potential piracy problem....the MS store is a better solution...now lets wait and see.....:(

:( IMHO, I don't think you are really looking at it from a business point of view. (at least how I see it ;)Like, what's the old adage about old vs. new customers?Or, how about the idea that FSX externalized more than half (in fact much more than 1/2) of their development costs by empowering it's users.Lot's of games live and die on what they can afford to build in-house...in say 3 years.FSX thrives because it has continuous intense development.There is a symbiosis between MSFS and 3PDs, just like a hippo with those birds on its back.But there is a big 'but', because you could be right...no one knows yet :) It’s not inconceivable :( PS. It's a lot to ask for a Flight Market to actually fix piracy...I don't expect they will suggest they can.

As it is, 99% of the users who buy FSX dont even know there is a big 3rd party market out there. There have been millions of copy's sold, yet 3rd party dev's fight over a few hundred or a few thousand sales. With a market directly tied too the sim, that gives the 3rd party a LOT more traffic. As it is, we pay low traffic web pages 20-30% to sell through them. I would jump at the chance to pay the same ammount, if not MORE, to sell though MS and get my products a LOT more exposure. Look around you. Creating a sealed eco-system is the new way to make money. You have Google, makes a free phone OS, but has there App store. Apple iPod/iPhone has there app store. Barns and Noble Nook has an app store and there own B-books, and same for Amazon. Even MS has Windows Phone Marketplace with games and apps, and Zune with music and movies, and Xbox with Live Arcade. Even online games with World of Warcraft welling mounts, and DLC for almost every game. Its not the next step in marketing, its the CURRENT step in marketing! Zynga made Farmville for the Facebook ecosystem and is filing an IPO for 25-30 BILLION. Figure it out.Also, another point, in all the examples above, piracy is MINIMAL. Sure, it exists, but the fact that its more difficult then just downloading a torrent and unzipping it into your simobjects folder means it eliminates 90% of the pirates out there, the casual pirates that would of paid for it anyways if it wasent so easy to get in the 1st place. Another benifit (for the dev's) of having a sealed eco-system. Time will only tell if this is the way MS wants to go with Flight. Im both for and against it in that it yes it protects and markets the developer, but sealed systems tend to exclude the small hobbiest that just like to tinker. Without them, you have less products on your shelf, and less skilled workers down the line. I myself was once of those hobbiest and everyone I know of that works in MSFS also started out that way.

Also, another point, in all the examples above, piracy is MINIMAL.

Great point, I don't think developers would worry about ms taking a 30% cut if piracy was eliminated.

As it is, 99% of the users who buy FSX dont even know there is a big 3rd party market out there. There have been millions of copy's sold, yet 3rd party dev's fight over a few hundred or a few thousand sales. With a market directly tied too the sim, that gives the 3rd party a LOT more traffic. As it is, we pay low traffic web pages 20-30% to sell through them. I would jump at the chance to pay the same ammount, if not MORE, to sell though MS and get my products a LOT more exposure. Look around you. Creating a sealed eco-system is the new way to make money. You have Google, makes a free phone OS, but has there App store. Apple iPod/iPhone has there app store. Barns and Noble Nook has an app store and there own B-books, and same for Amazon. Even MS has Windows Phone Marketplace with games and apps, and Zune with music and movies, and Xbox with Live Arcade. Even online games with World of Warcraft welling mounts, and DLC for almost every game. Its not the next step in marketing, its the CURRENT step in marketing! Zynga made Farmville for the Facebook ecosystem and is filing an IPO for 25-30 BILLION. Figure it out.Also, another point, in all the examples above, piracy is MINIMAL. Sure, it exists, but the fact that its more difficult then just downloading a torrent and unzipping it into your simobjects folder means it eliminates 90% of the pirates out there, the casual pirates that would of paid for it anyways if it wasent so easy to get in the 1st place. Another benifit (for the dev's) of having a sealed eco-system.

For sure that you, along with probably most of the other small to medium addon developers, would jump at the chance to publish addons for Flight via the MS Store. Why on earth would you not? 30% commission as quoted elsewhere seems a fair bet so it will cost ya! However, Aerosoft, Just Flight, Flight1, Wilco, A2A, PMDG et al. will most likely NOT want to jump at this chance for reasons outlined on previous pages, and many others besides. Let's not forget about the likes of SimMarket, FSS, FlightSim Pilot Shop, AVSIM's own addon store and others. Consider also the thousands of hobby shops out there which derive a part of their income from selling boxed addons for FS. In my opinion those peddling the idea that the MS Store will be a closed eco-system are simply not thinking this through far enough.Yes, for certain services such as those you mention a closed ecosystem is currently in use (for better or worse). The problem starts when you try to compare these services to the now decades old MS Flight Sim franchise as if they have something in common. They do not. For one thing none of the services you mention have long established developer/publisher/distributor businesses on which thousands (if not tens of thousands) of individual livelihoods depend. That fact alone will likely be enough to give MS serious pause for thought.Another fundamental difference is the fact that most FS addons are still sold in boxes on store shelves and that is not the case with any of the services you mention (with xbox perhaps the exception). Sure, digital delivery is gaining ground everyday but we are not there yet. Not by a long way.Anytime you attempt to seal something you set yourself up for jail-breaking and the associated pains in the arse that brings. That has been the nature of humans since our history began and as much as Apple&Co may try their attempts to lock people in will ultimately prove futile. Of course they will ride the wave to the very last minute but as can be seen with DRM'ed mp3's the future in that particular direction is not as rosy as it may at first appear.

It won't stop piracy. How do you expect the store to eliminate piracy when MS can't even stop it's own operating system and products from being pirated? Forget about these kids that pirate add-ons and put your focus into the legitimate customers. They are all just arbitrary numbers anyway. At the end of the day I think that looking at ways to improve/expand your products and increase your reputation will be far more beneficial to sales than trying to eliminate pirates. I agree that exposure will be one of the greatest assets the marketplace could bring to the 3rd parties. Something else I might hope for is that MS would govern the overall quality of add-ons being sold through their portal, in the current market it is a bit of a mixed bag.

You can see how this kind of system for add-ons works already if you look at Steam, and in particular as a good example of a simulation within that sales system, Railworks 2. There is the 'official' Steam way to buy things, directly via Steam's own store, or you can buy things outside of that and manually install them via a number of both small and quite large third party operations such as Just Trains etc.Sometimes there are differences in the products depending on whether you get them via Steam or the third party and in fact there are also on occasion differences on how fast things get patched, with the Steam route often being slower as far as getting the latest patches is concerned as opposed to buying directly from a developer's site. I've bought stuff both ways and there are advantages and disadvantages to both and sometimes different procedures in getting things up and running, but what it does show, is that it is a workable system, and if MS will be looking at anything as a prototype, then it will surely be simulations within the Steam framework, where there are on average approximately four million players on the system at most times. This is particularly true since they will know the developers of Railworks, because they were the developers who actually created MS's own Train Simulator some years ago, and they have made a great success of Railworks by going along that flexible route; they didn't need MS to make that happen, and it isn't even the best train simulator you can get either.Conversely, if they were to keep things completely in house, whereby sales would be gained via a menu from within the simulation as a direct route to a store, that would be a bad way to go, since it is inward-looking; only those who are already caught in the net as far as being customers is concerned would be browsing, and that would inevitably limit the marketing potential. Additionally, RW's developers have found that while their customers like to be informed, they object to having new releases rammed down their throats, thus they have had to back off somewhat on being to pushy where marketing is concerned for every new thing that becomes available. There is a fine line to be walked when maintaining the appearance of offering plenty of choice as opposed to appearing to be a simple money-making exercise, which of course such things are, but it's not always a great idea to wave that about like a big flag.How many of us have bought a product when flirting around a third party store which we would otherwise have never even contemplated had we not chanced upon it that way? I did that very thing this morning, simply because I happened to catch a product on Simmarket which looked impressive, and it wasn't an add on for a flight sim, even though that's what I initially went there to look at. And I've done the same thing on Steam as well.Al

Although none of can know exactly what Microsoft intends let's consider some points.Why do so many seem to think that Microsoft has any obligations to third party developers, on-line stores, hobby shops etc etc? After all, these have made their money on the back of the Flight Simulator franchise and contributed a negligible amount (if anything) to Microsoft. I'm aware of the argument that add-ons encourage sales but from Microsoft's point of view I imagine they are lost in the noise and unquantifiable. These organisations don't feel they owe Microsoft anything as shown by Aerosoft's reported decision to go with A-Plane rather than Flight, presumably because it decided that would give a better return. That’s a rational commercial decision which Microsoft will also make.Why is it assumed the there will be separate store solely for Flight. All the indications are that Flight will be marketed under the Games for Windows Live franchise. surely it's possible that Microsoft will set-up an single store to sell all its Games for Windows Live products rather than fragmented them between different store. This would widen the opportunities for sales - buyers of other games might be tempted to buy Flight and vice versa. How big is the flight simulator community? AVSIM's members list has filters and its possible to use those to estimate the number of enthusiastic members. I choses a generous definition of enthusiastic member as one who posts more than once a month, that's more than 12 times a year - some might argue that 12 posts a year doesn’t show much enthusiasm. I filtered the members list to find how many members who joined in since 30 June 2010 had at least 12 posts. I found that there were some 440.I filtered again to find how many members who joined since 30 June 2009 had more than 24 posts - 620. There's a degree of over counting because that number includes those who joined since 30 June 2010 and had at least 24 posts. To avoid this over counting I filtered again to get the number of members who joined since 30 June 2010 and who had more than 24 posts - 220. I subtracted this from 620 to get 400. I repeated this to AVSIMs formation in 1996 year and added the yearly totals to arrive at 3500 current members who make at least 12 posts a year. Assuming that there are 10 other major sites and that, on average, we're members of 2 then there would be about 17,5000 enthusiasts world-wide. That's 1.75% of, say, 1,000,000 sales.

@ mgh, Microsoft never had any obligations to third party developers, they closed Aces din't they?Why closing Aces if they are to restart with something like Flight and a new team, what will be the incentive for them to do that?Let say I'm a trird party developer and I got the news that Aces closed, that equal to no Flight simulator 11, what does that mean for me, it means that I'm stock with FSX with the sales of my add-ons staying at the same level as they are right now unless I build more scenery for FSX but how many add-ons can I sale to the same customer, I also have to fight for my place in the small part of the market against other developers PLUS the free add-ons.So as a developer what can I do to try to talk MS in doing another sim. (Flight) for my business to grow bigger, about if I try to convince MS that making a sim. more appealing to the mass market like other games will generate a lot more revenue for MS and at the same time regrouping all the approved payware developers in the same store for more exposure will also generate more revenue for MS as I and other developers will give them a % of the sales of our add-ons in exchange for that ENORMOUS exposure from the store.Now how can that be accomplished without spending a lot of MS money, I have to make it appealing to them if they want to invest in that kind of project right, so as a developer I know what are the limitation and the bugs in FSX as it stand right now because I have to deal with that in every scenery I make for FSX, as I'm trying to make my add-ons more appealing to my customers with more eye candy it is costing my customers a lot of FPS and they don't like that, it's not easy on a developer because the customers want more eye candy and I need to make a buck, so my solution to save MS money and have a decent simulator without spending four years building a new engine and one or two more years beta testing will be to convince MS to fix FSX, to make it work on today's mid-range PC's including DX10 or DX11, repackaging it with a new name and sale it.With this new Flight simulator I as a developer will be able to pack more eye candy in my scenery making it more appealing to my customers knowing they will have a ball using it on a mid-range PC, happier customers = more sales = more money = everybody is happy.The flip side of that is this, no more Flight1, flightsim stores or others where you can buy your add-ons from unless you can still shop in these store but are redirected to the MS store for purchases, something I don't really see happening.Just my 2 cents.

I think you have to be careful reading too much into how many post threads there are on Avsim as an indicator of interest in flight simulators. Aside from the fact that there are many 'lurkers', more importantly, we are for the most part the enthusiastic rivet-counting 'nerds', which are only a small percentage of the whole where the total number of people who bought FS is concerned. Just look at which company sells the most FS add-ons for confirmation of that, it isn't Captain Sim, PMDG or Carenado, it is Abacus, by a very long way, and - rightly or wrongly - you know what most people on this forum think of Abacus, so there is an indication of how our presence tallies with what MS will be aiming at. Sure, they know we are the most vocal, and they won't completely ignore what we say, but they won't treat it as their unbreakable vow either.Al

It won't stop piracy.

I never said it could stop piracy. It would greatly help REDUCE piracy. Point in fact, when a game is released on both the PC and Xbox, the PC version is pirated 10x1 more then the Xbox version. Why? Simple. Its easier since you need to chip mod your 360 and run the risk of MS banning your box. PC has no such restrictions. The more you do to make pirating your software more difficult, the less it will be pirated. Right now, FSX will run any add-on no matter what you throw at it. All you need to do is copy the files into your simobject folder and bam! You have a new aircraft! Almost everything I have ever worked on is on torrents and easy to get. There is also documented proof that once the files hit the torrent sites, sales drop off massivly, so it DOES affect sales. If its a closed eco-system like Apple or Zune, then it will only run add-on's with a spacific license. Maybe even an online verification system like we see in Steam to make sure you own the products before running it. Sure, people could crack it, but it would make things more difficult, and in turn, help reduce pirating to only the people who most likley would not of paid for it anyways! Thats the point of a closed eco-system.

I never said it could stop piracy. It would greatly help REDUCE piracy. Point in fact, when a game is released on both the PC and Xbox, the PC version is pirated 10x1 more then the Xbox version. Why? Simple. Its easier since you need to chip mod your 360 and run the risk of MS banning your box. PC has no such restrictions. The more you do to make pirating your software more difficult, the less it will be pirated. Right now, FSX will run any add-on no matter what you throw at it. All you need to do is copy the files into your simobject folder and bam! You have a new aircraft! Almost everything I have ever worked on is on torrents and easy to get. There is also documented proof that once the files hit the torrent sites, sales drop off massivly, so it DOES affect sales. If its a closed eco-system like Apple or Zune, then it will only run add-on's with a spacific license. Maybe even an online verification system like we see in Steam to make sure you own the products before running it. Sure, people could crack it, but it would make things more difficult, and in turn, help reduce pirating to only the people who most likley would not of paid for it anyways! Thats the point of a closed eco-system.

I completely agree. Just one thing to add; if developers could somehow make demo's of their products, ones which you could actually test yourself, I think that would greatly improve how many sales they may achieve. Well this is what I believe anyway. I will not buy a single add-on unless I know its right for me, I know it preforms okay, and more importantly... Is it worth the money? If It isn't, then there may be a different option for the same product (as in e.g. the same aircraft, but different company that made it). That's why I may decide to torrent something, and I hate doing that. Unless I can get free review copies (only if I actually did reviews) then that is my only option to test things on my PC, because I'm 15, and I cant afford to spend £60 on something whenever I want, I might have to save up for it. But, there are a few instances where I don't need to look at it for myself, things like REX, and 3D cockpit Effects are just two that I can think of at the moment... that I have bought, without needing to test them first, just because of other peoples videos and screenshots made by the dev team. I don't want to download torrents, I wish they didn't exist! I am completely against torrents, heck I have reported at least 4 of them. I just wish people didn't steal at all. But for people like me, would you class it as stealing If I've bought every product I've 'tested'? Its only a few cases that I've downloaded them though, but I'm not gonna pretend like I haven't. Most of the time I just borrow a copy of the product from a friend, or watch a live stream where my friends can like show me what its like. Please don't ban me for sharing my opinion on a forum... I love you :D , wait that might only work with friends and family... at least I tried Jamie ♥

alainneedle: My point about Microsoft’s lack of obligations is aimed at those who argue Microsoft can’t/shouldn’t do some thing because of its effect on third parties. As you rightly say, Microsoft closed ACES regardless.The general view seems to be that ACES was going in completely the wrong direction in developing SA11 and when it couldn’t/wouldn’t change direction Microsoft axed it. I believe the underlying reason was that ACES were developing more and more details features that were only going to be of interest to fewer and fewer buyers. Microsoft eventually decided there was money to be made out of a flight game and gave its development to those in Games for Windows with experience of developing mainstream games. Much of what Microsoft has actually said has been related to the social and game play aspects of Flight. All it’s said about other features is enhanced scenery and terrain to new aircraft (FAQS) That could be it, plus a bit of tidying up of FSX’s loose ends.I suggest a consequence is that Microsoft’s business model has changed and that arguments such as Microsoft has always previously done it this way and will do so in the future are not valid.Chock: I agree care is needed but I think defining an enthusiast as someone who po sts more than once a month is generous. I still think my estimates are possibly over estimates- even if I’m wrong by a factor of two, enthusiasts are still a small minority. I take your point about Abacus but are Abacus purchasers really enthusiasts - surely they are much nearer Microsoft’s target market?

alainneedle: My point about Microsoft’s lack of obligations is aimed at those who argue Microsoft can’t/shouldn’t do some thing because of its effect on third parties. As you rightly say, Microsoft closed ACES regardless.The general view seems to be that ACES was going in completely the wrong direction in developing SA11 and when it couldn’t/wouldn’t change direction Microsoft axed it. I believe the underlying reason was that ACES were developing more and more details features that were only going to be of interest to fewer and fewer buyers. Microsoft eventually decided there was money to be made out of a flight game and gave its development to those in Games for Windows with experience of developing mainstream games. Much of what Microsoft has actually said has been related to the social and game play aspects of Flight. All it’s said about other features is enhanced scenery and terrain to new aircraft (FAQS) That could be it, plus a bit of tidying up of FSX’s loose ends.I suggest a consequence is that Microsoft’s business model has changed and that arguments such as Microsoft has always previously done it this way and will do so in the future are not valid.Chock: I agree care is needed but I think defining an enthusiast as someone who po sts more than once a month is generous. I still think my estimates are possibly over estimates- even if I’m wrong by a factor of two, enthusiasts are still a small minority. I take your point about Abacus but are Abacus purchasers really enthusiasts - surely they are much nearer Microsoft’s target market?

OK I see now that we are saying the same thing using different words.