My answer was not a political opinion but facts... You tell me why many Americans are buying from BP Oil (British Petroleum) and not Amaco these days. Tell me the concept of the word 'Deficit' and how that affects you (are you brain dead enough to feel that this has no affect on the dollar), you tell me why so many can get on these forums and complain about increasing prices and have no information as to why this is happening. In fact in all you guys infinite wisdom, you tell me why American FS add-ons cost less in Europe and European products cost more in the states. I don't want to hear its just greedy developers either, that

"you tell me why American FS add-ons cost less in Europe and European products cost more in the states."Let me rephrase this statement:"Tell me why $40 American dollars is worth less in many places in Europe than it was just a few years ago."

Dillon, I would be happy to give you my point of view and the facts to back it up but not in this forum. All I will say here is that you are right, prices are increasing but to put that all on one man is not proper thinking, there are so many world wide factors involved, but for most people it is easier to blame one man, the one "in charge". I am an accountant, I own my own computer company and a couple of other smaller companies and I do business globaly so I have to see the big picture on a daily basis. I am not putting you down because it is all but impossible to keep up with everything that goes on to drive world economies unless you have to. I am leaving for the airport in just a few minutes for a trip to Austin, Texas to purchase a head stone and bury my sister, I don't know that I will be able to explain my thinking to you until I get back on Sunday but I will try if I get some time. I can either email you or send you a private message, your choice. Until then my email address is [email protected] , I hope that you will give me the chance to explain myself to you. I guess being an accountant I have a thing about getting all of the facts straight and when I saw your post, along with my mood from my sisters passing I kind of jumped on you. Take care and I hope to talk to you soon. Philip OlsonI'm the luckiest man in the world, my girl friend has a yoke and rudder pedals! Eat your hearts out!http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

>My answer was not a political opinion but facts... >dead enough to feel that this has no affect on the dollar),>you tell me why so many can get on these forums and complain>about increasing prices and have no information as to why>this is happening. So I suggest you stay with FACTS. But please understand what facts are. Fact are numbers, and statemnts that something is more exzpensive. But your own interpretation why it is happening is an OPINION and has nothing to do with FACTS. And frankly we have no use of your half-baked opinions. Please post your political or world affairs opinion an other forums (preferably outside Avsim).Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2

Philip considering what your telling me you have to deal with now, this issue is not that important :-roll. Sorry to hear about your sister. Have a safe flight, what you have going on now is far more important than trying to explain why some Europeans feel FS add-ons are cheap these days and Americans think FS add-ons are at an all time high. Take Care Philip, if you want to reach me you know where to find me... I'm open for you to enlighten me on where you stand but it doesn't out weigh you taking care of your family...

Whatever Michael.... :-roll The only thing I agree with you on is that this is not the proper forum for where this conversation is headed and I'll leave it at that. There's many facts I can give you or you could just watch CSPAN sometime. The point I was trying to make had to do with nothing more than overseas puchases of FS add-ons, that's it....I suggest you produce some FACTS of your own that totally derail my points above as it seems you know more about the subject than me... We can take this issue to another venu if you feel so strongly about it, I'd love to hear your FACTS...

>Par I don't know where you live but you have to remember that>due to the war, the American dollar isn't worth what it used>to be. People still have to get paid. For Americans buying>products from say Lago, it

Lighten up! Did this thread even mention the value of the dollar vs the Euro, before you brought it up? NO!!!The thread mentioned that some Addon's are overpriced. It did not mention any specific company by name, nor did it mention anything about the state of the economy.I agree with the original sentitment that many addon's are overpriced. In the computer gaming world, which by the way, Flight Simulator IS. An 'expansion' pack which requires the use of the original product has NEVER been more expensive than the product it expands. Only in the flight simulation community, where most people seem to fall over themselves to purchase the newest addon, do people spend more for a single addon then they did for the entire piece of software it supports.Diablo II, Quake II, Command and Conquor, and many more have had expansion packs. All of them have been significantly less than the product they expand.Hey, I'm all for free market, and as long as people can get the price they ask for the addons they provide, long live free enterprise.However, that does not mean that a person who believes a certain addon is overpriced needs to be blasted with a simplistic and less than objective view on world politics and economics.Heck, as I said elsewhere in this thread, the A380 from Abacus is woefully overpriced even at $10.00. And I don't care where the product is produced, my personal feeling is that if I have to pay more for an addon than the original program itself, I'm paying too much. That's just my personal opinion. But that is what is great about the "free market". Just as I can feel that something is overpriced, others can feel differently. It's all good, and it makes the world go round. Flight Sim addons are just like any other commodity. Publishers will charge what the market will bear. If the market continues to support increasing prices, then prices will increase. If the market reaches a limit, then demand will go down, and prices will fall. But whatever the cost, Flight Sim still is cheaper than owning and maintaining the "real thing". It has been able to open the doors of flight and let me taste just a bit, the feeling of an experience that otherwise I would never be able to afford. And that, as Martha would say, is a good thing.

Par if you don't mind me asking, where do you live??? :-) Based on what's been dicussed above and what your telling me, you seem to be in a prime location...

Wathomas,The fatal flaw in your argument is volume. Addons can be at or above the cost of FS itself because the addons sell only a tiny fraction of the numbers that the main FS sim does. This is basic free market economics - supply and demand. The demand is low, so the price must rise. Believe it or not, the majority of people who buy MSFS are not hardcore users looking for hyper realistic simulations of the actual aircraft - they just want to trawl around their city in the default 172.Think of FS as the Windows of simming, the OS if you will, and the addons are the separate apps you buy. Windows XP costs $150 but Office costs upwards of $400 because not everyone who uses Windows also has the demand for Office. Likewise, my publishing company paid over $1500 for licenses for a music notation program to run on our $150 copies Windows XP - niche products carry niche prices.

Sweden :). It

Hmm, the most I've ever spent on a FS add-on is the approx. $40 cdn I paid for the ATR. I paid about $60 cdn for FS9 itself. Most FS add-ons are in the $25-35cdn range. Even if we accept the "game expansion pack" analogy, those prices aren't that far out of line. Now, if we allow for the fact that the market for these FS add-ons is hugely small compared to the market for say a Quake or Sims expansion pack, and if we allow that something like the ATR72 from Flight1 is probably several orders of magnitude more complex to develop than the average Quake expansion, it's not at all surprising to me that the prices might be a little higher for FS add-ons (in some cases depending on the kind of development costs incurred - such as the purchasing of specific navdata or what have you (which is the sort of thing no Quake dev needs to worry about) - maybe even a bit higher than the cost of the sim itself). But as you say, in the end the market decides if a product is priced too high. If a given add-on sells well at whatever pricepoint it's at, then by definition, it's priced right.

Well the production cost for most add ons is really lower than for those developing expansion packs. You won

I don't know, most expansion packs I've seen are little more than new missions and some new models. I haven't seen many that were nearly as complex as something like the ATR is. I think the notion that you "most often" get more for your money with game expansion packs is highly arguable. Afaic, some of the better flightsim add-ons I've purchased have really radically added to my enjoyment of the sim. I'd take the ATR or RealAir's Spitfire over all the defualt planes any day. Of course, licensing the engine is only necessary if the expansion is developed by someone other than the games orginal developer but definitely its an expense to consider. I'm not saying that there aren't some FS add-ons that I think are overpriced. I'm just saying that the suggestion that the market is saturated by add-ons that cost more than the original game is a mis-representation of reality.

"I sure wish you'd keep your fine political views as well as amatuer world economic theories to yourself."Roger that, couldn't agree more!Clay