You might look at that as Microsoft taking away money from developers, but a developer would look at an in-game marketplace as a goldmine of opportunity to get their product in front of thousands of potential new customers who had never heard of PMDG, Aerosoft, Orbx, or the myriad other developers who live in reasonable obscurity here on the flight sim hobby sites.

Exactly.Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

(Chuckle - the facts!)You might look at that as Microsoft taking away money from developers, but a developer would look at an in-game marketplace as a goldmine of opportunity to get their product in front of thousands of potential new customers who had never heard of PMDG, Aerosoft, Orbx, or the myriad other developers who live in reasonable obscurity here on the flight sim hobby sites.

Have you already forget about this post # 102, http://forum.aerosof...ew/page__st__80 as Mathijs already explained that he is having a problems with the direction MS is taking for Flight since Aerosoft is a publishing house....is he not the right guys to make that kind of statement?The smart move is to get onboard with MS's store if you ask me (piracy, exposure ++) but what conditions is MS imposing on 3RD party developers, that is IF MS let them sale in the store to start with?

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So how is your Samsung Bert ?

An off thought. Flight gets 3rd party developers to do the dance making it better. They sell the goods through their online store, thus they become an exclusive middle man. They mark it up, thus free money for basically hosting files and invoicing, but... no torrents, and riddance of software pirates. Thus, the possibility of the maker of the goods, may end up making more $$$ in the long run because Little Johnny Rotten isn't supplying torrents for "free" stuff we, us honest simmers pay for. So, I have no idea of what the Flight business model consists of, but guessing, assuming, imagining, along with my comments containing more fiction than fact. Maybe fiction is closer to reality, but will find out someday. If Flight uses some exclusive selling scheme and 3rd party devolopers can be assured their stuff will not end up as a torrent, that may make them more money in the long run. I hope I am not off topic.

So how is your Samsung Bert ?

I like it a lot! Thanks for asking.Edit; switched of that signature

Have you already forget about this post # 102, http://forum.aerosof...ew/page__st__80 as Mathijs already explained that he is having a problems with the direction MS is taking for Flight since Aerosoft is a publishing house....is he not the right guys to make that kind of statement?

While that post (and his others from the months before) are thought provoking, I'm less inclined to let myself settle in behind the opinions of a publisher who has a vested interest in seeing X-Plane 10 succeed strongly, and may not have the full insight into what Microsoft is working on these days. Most telling to me is a quote from Mathijs himself in that very post, "But as we always said we'll look at Flight when it is released. For now we have no SDK, no good information, no nothing."We've heard a lot of the word "plausible" in various conversations about flight simulators these days. The idea of MS Flight being that closed and limited out of the box is not a plausible idea in my book. It is contrary to what their news/FAQ releases have indicated and goes against the near-30 year history of the product family. If past performance is an indicator of future behavior, we'll probably see things added into Flight which weren't there before but the same old trusty foundation for us enthusiasts to enjoy from day one... improved with a little spit and polish and ready for a new generation of expansion.Anything is possible - but we're all just looking at what is most likely to happen...

You are comparing the developing made on a simulator like FSX with Flight , so you already made the assumption Flight is gonna be a sim.I am under the impression Steve Ballmer is paying you 25$ per post, is that true ?

Which of these two options is more likely to occur, as it relates to a marketplace environment:

Microsoft forces all add-ons to be offered through an in-game/online marketplace, and they make it somehow cost prohibitive or otherwise restrictive that nobody ends up using it except for Microsoft themselves... or...

Microsoft creates an in-game/online marketplace in which developers can

choose

to sell their products (in addition to traditional download/CD/DVD methods), thus giving these developers yet another channel to sell their products and further expanding the sales footprint to non-enthusiasts?

It'll work like X-Box Live which is more the former than the latter.

You are comparing the developing made on a simulator like FSX with Flight , so you already made the assumption Flight is gonna be a sim.

Your inferring that it won't be is truly ridiculous. But we have been here too many times to perpetuate this line of commentary. Again

An off thought. Flight gets 3rd party developers to do the dance making it better. They sell the goods through their online store, thus they become an exclusive middle man. They mark it up, thus free money for basically hosting files and invoicing, but... no torrents, and riddance of software pirates. Thus, the possibility of the maker of the goods, may end up making more $$$ in the long run because Little Johnny Rotten isn't supplying torrents for "free" stuff we, us honest simmers pay for. So, I have no idea of what the Flight business model consists of, but guessing, assuming, imagining, along with my comments containing more fiction than fact. Maybe fiction is closer to reality, but will find out someday. If Flight uses some exclusive selling scheme and 3rd party devolopers can be assured their stuff will not end up as a torrent, that may make them more money in the long run. I hope I am not off topic.

That's my way of thinking also but if the 3RD party developers get onboard I don't think MS will let them sell their products out of the store.

While that post (and his others from the months before) are thought provoking, I'm less inclined to let myself settle in behind the opinions of a publisher who has a vested interest in seeing X-Plane 10 succeed strongly, and may not have the full insight into what Microsoft is working on these days. Most telling to me is a quote from Mathijs himself in that very post, "But as we always said we'll look at Flight when it is released. For now we have no SDK, no good information, no nothing."We've heard a lot of the word "plausible" in various conversations about flight simulators these days. The idea of MS Flight being that closed and limited out of the box is not a plausible idea in my book. It is contrary to what their news/FAQ releases have indicated and goes against the near-30 year history of the product family. If past performance is an indicator of future behavior, we'll probably see things added into Flight which weren't there before but the same old trusty foundation for us enthusiasts to enjoy from day one... improved with a little spit and polish and ready for a new generation of expansion.Anything is possible - but we're all just looking at what is most likely to happen...

Maybe Mathijs is leading us in the wrong direction, I can't see why he will do such a thing as we can always call him back on what he said futher down the road, as he also said "Well I am not at liberty to write down all we know" but it's like you said anything is possible...

You are comparing the developing made on a simulator like FSX with Flight , so you already made the assumption Flight is gonna be a sim.

Which still seems, as far as most of us are concerned, by far the most plausible assumption.

Which of these two options is more likely to occur, as it relates to a marketplace environment:

Microsoft forces all add-ons to be offered through an in-game/online marketplace, and they make it somehow cost prohibitive or otherwise restrictive that nobody ends up using it except for Microsoft themselves... or...

Microsoft creates an in-game/online marketplace in which developers can

choose

to sell their products (in addition to traditional download/CD/DVD methods), thus giving these developers yet another channel to sell their products and further expanding the sales footprint to non-enthusiasts?

With only a fraction of flight simulation users frequenting sites like AVSIM, flightsim.com, and others, add-on developers and Microsoft alike would be thrilled to have another channel to get addons in front of users. People like us may go straight to the source and download/purchase our addons directly... other less enthusiastic players would see the new product in the storefront in-game, and get it there. The more people buy addons, the more invested in the game they become. The more invested they are, the more interested these new users might be in purchasing MS Flight 2 in several years time.To make an in-game storefront cost prohibitive or otherwise restrictive now or at any time in the future is not in Microsoft's best interest whatsoever.~~Then again, MS Flight is going to be a steaming pile of Fisher-Price/Playskool kids entertainment that I can't even figure out why we're so concerned about 3rd party developers selling addons... right? right? (eyeroll)

What about:Microsoft forces all add-ons to be offered through an in-game/online marketplace, and they make it fairly priced that everybody ends up using it ....

Because we do not like neither the fact the Flight is gonna be a Fisher-Price/Playskool toy nor the fact that MS will try to grab free money from who makes professional products instead, like f.i. PMDG or Aerosoft.

That's just silly.Microsoft, love it or hate it, has a right to make money off of people who make money off of them. Aerosoft and PMDG would be nothing without Microsoft creating the base product. Which is why I find Aerosoft's attitude pretty immature lately.

IMHO, anything more than 25-30% would be shooting themselves in the foot. Changing the buisness model on software that is not going to be cheap to begin with and add-ons costing an arm and a leg is going to pi$$ the current dedicated user base and will put most casual users, especially the newer younger crowd beyond reach.Apple has a store but the apps are reasonable if not dirt cheap. M$ could learn a few things from Apple - an understatement if there ever was one !

Anything more than 25-30% is the going market rate.Simmarket charge a commission between 25 and 35% depending on whether you distribute exclusively through them or not.http://secure.simmarket.com/authorsprog.phpFSPilotshop's commission is 30%:http://www.fspilotshop.com/software_publishers.php?osCsid=d65f5d823f836fa5bfc556bd6c2aef9fFlight1 take only 12% for their wrapper system. BUT with Flight1 you won't get listed on their website and they don't handle the downloads for that 12% so you can add the costs of advertising and download bandwidth to your expenses. Flight1 will list your software on their site but I think the commission goes up to something like 30%.I'm not really sure what MS charges for software on the Live site or even if they charge an upfront fee (to cover the cost of checking that software meets the Technical Certification Requirements) + commission

That's just silly.Microsoft, love it or hate it, has a right to make money off of people who make money off of them. Aerosoft and PMDG would be nothing without Microsoft creating the base product. Which is why I find Aerosoft's attitude pretty immature lately.

Does that mean that authors will need to pay MS a cut of their book sales if they wrote it using MS Word?

Does that mean that authors will need to pay MS a cut of their book sales if they wrote it using MS Word?

That's a completely non-sensical comparison.PMDG, Aerosoft, and others have made tons of money changing code, manipulating features, and creating additional content for a program Microsoft created. To this point they've allowed it to happen but it's well within Microsofts right to start taking a cut now if they choose to.Microsoft doesn't owe it to those companies to create a product they can profit off of.Furthermore, a massive online market place, available in the UI of the sim would open up 3rd party developers to millions of new customers. It's a win/win for both sides.You think anyone would know what Angry Birds was if not for it being readily available in the App Store? That kind of mass exposure is what leads to mass sales. Maybe Aerosoft should think about that before whining about the fact that they might not be able to independently publish anymore for a sim they didn't create.