Yet another quite expensive airport addon has appeared - Narita International from developers I haven't heard of before called Wing Creation.  Screenshots here look pretty impressive but I just wondered if anyone has an experience of this?

 

Once again I am very reluctant to fork out this sort of money on a single airport addon, even if the quality is astounding. If this is going to be the future trend, then I think many of us will be priced out of this hobby (certainly I will when I retire from work) and indeed it might be counter-productive for developers in terms of total sales. At this sort of price, sales may well mainly be confined to simmers who live in Japan or particularly want to fly in this area, with the rest of us shunning it. Developers need to take lessons from the financially very successful  low-cost airlines who charge low fares and sell huge numbers of tickets, generating profits from the sheer number of sales. If developers like Wing Creation cut their profit margin somewhat  and charged a price comparable to most existing developers then IMO they could sell much larger numbers of addons and perhaps make even bigger profits at the end of the day. I certainly like having good quality major airports dotted here and there around the world that I can fly to but I am not willing to pay these sort of prices for each one. This is a somewhat worrying trend.

 

Bill

 

 

 

 

Bill, I can only offer that your conclusions regarding how lowering prices increases sales is woefully wrong. In this niche market that has almost zero impact in the long run. You see a small increase in sales and a major loss in profit because the profit margin for this stuff is really not that large.

 

Now, I'm not arguing that pricing needs to make sense. I'll agree with you there.

It's a high quality airport, very detailed and accurate. About price, believe me it's very cheap for Japanese standards. The Japanese company called Technobrain is selling Haneda Airport addon for 70$ which texture quality is almost like default. Obviously, they're not targeting anyone outside of Japan. Contrary to that, Wing Creation (which is another Japanese company) is trying to keep price at affordable level and targeting non-Japanese customers as well (they've English website). Controlling cost if very difficult in Japan where everything is ridiculously expensive.