Having him 20 minutes away from me wouldn't be horrible!

 

I did my instrument and commercial training at KDVT (Deer Valley) North Phoenix, WestWind School of Aeronautics.

KDVT was very close to Glendale. The city started building the new stadium for the Cardinals, and my neighbor moved his retirement to the senior Glendale community. Phoenix isn't the greatest place to earn an instrument rating. No clouds at all, I obtained my instrument rating without flying through a single cloud. Hahaha. Would have been much better to do it here in my hometown KPDX and get some real IFR time, with icing avoidance, in the mountains, etc.  I finally got my loans paid off last year. What a relief!!

If it isn't at least a million they are shy of what they deserve!

I hope they have or will sell as many NGX's as Microsoft sold FSX's

And if P3D V2 never materializes I hope the top 5 or 6 Addon Devs

get together and make a new FS from scratch

I did my instrument and commercial training at KDVT (Deer Valley) North Phoenix, WestWind School of Aeronautics.

KDVT was very close to Glendale. The city started building the new stadium for the Cardinals, and my neighbor moved his retirement to the senior Glendale community. Phoenix isn't the greatest place to earn an instrument rating. No clouds at all, I obtained my instrument rating without flying through a single cloud. Hahaha. Would have been much better to do it here in my hometown KPDX and get some real IFR time, with icing avoidance, in the mountains, etc.  I finally got my loans paid off last year. What a relief!!

 

I used to work at the other flight school on the field.  I'll let it remain nameless with everything that's happened there recently, but I have a feeling you know which one I'm talking about.

 

There were many late-night discussions between myself and the other flight instructors about the quality of the IFR time in the PHX area.  This, of course, is one of the many points in my hours argument: I'd take a 1000 hour pilot from a hard IFR part of the country over a 1000 hour pilot with all of his hours from PHX any day.  Quality over quantity.  You can't beat being able to have so many flying days, but the quality of those flying hours is sacrificed when it comes to gaining flight experience in poor weather.

If it isn't at least a million they are shy of what they deserve!

 

Trust me, if we'd sold a million NGX's we'd all be retired on the beach in Fiji 

Trust me, if we'd sold a million NGX's we'd all be retired on the beach in Fiji 

There are million simmers?

There are million simmers?

 

If there would be the prices for addons would be only around half or even less than what they're at now.

Not all purchasers of complex payware planes are hard core. I only use a fraction of the features of the 737 NGX that most of you guys do, and yet it was worth every penny to me. That's because I am prepared to pay a lot of money for the very best quality 3D models, VCs, flight dynamics, and sound effects, and the PMDG 737 NGX is easily the best combination of those that I have ever seen in a flight simulator.

If there would be the prices for addons would be only around half or even less than what they're at now.

Interesting theory. Xbox and PS3 gamers would disagree however.

It would be interesting to know how much additional business the NGX spurred across the Flightsim industry.  Think about it.  When you bought the NGX you probably didn't just buy it alone, at least not for long.  If you didn't have them already, you likely bought a solid weather addon, a few heavy airports, probably some terrain mesh and perhaps some photo scenery, and some utilities (how many of you will buy PPFX when it comes out because of the NGX?).  Maybe even some hardware like I did.  Personally, I probably spent easily over $1000 because of the NGX.  Figure a conservative 10,000 buyers (I think it's probably much more), multiplied out by at least two or three $30+ addons each, and you're getting close to the million dollar mark (again, probably much higher).

Not less than 1 - mine!

Interesting theory. Xbox and PS3 gamers would disagree however.

 

The budget to make a AAA game is tens of millions, and rumoured to be reaching $100 million in some cases. If you figure half of the retail price going to the retailer (which is pretty common) even if you have 2 million sales you will have to charge $60 for a copy just to break even. The increase in the number of gamers (whether on consoles or PC) has led to an increase in production budgets, rather than a reduction in sales prices. I'm not sure whether the same would happen in the FS add-on market.

The increase in content has lead to increased development costs. A larger audience does not mean it costs more to make. Case in point - Minecraft.

 

To get away from semantics and back to the original issue though, ultimately I'm sure, just as with AAA games, the price is a function of development costs over time + margin / expected number of sales. That's no doubt how the price was set on the NGX and thus if the sales had exploded then, as Rob said, they'd have been a ridiculously happy island living dev team.

The increase in content has lead to increased development costs. A larger audience does not mean it costs more to make. Case in point - Minecraft.

 

To get away from semantics and back to the original issue though, ultimately I'm sure, just as with AAA games, the price is a function of development costs over time + margin / expected number of sales. That's no doubt how the price was set on the NGX and thus if the sales had exploded then, as Rob said, they'd have been a ridiculously happy island living dev team.

 

Very true. What I meant to say is that the increase in the number of gamers / games sold could have been used to bring down the price of games (if development costs had remained static). Instead it has been used to justify increased development budgets, causing the price to remain relatively static.

Price elasticity of demand.

Yay econ classes.