Why Are We Being Taken For A Ride?

[Appliance 51]

Forum members ... I, like many of you I suspect, have spent considerable sums of money on our hobby/pastime/indulgence.  Many, many times the original cost of the sim.  We have done this for pleasure, of course, and sometimes we have taken advantage of so-called sales.  The unpalatable truth is ... we are being fleeced.  Yes secretly we realise it, we find justification for it, we may choose to ignore it but,  we are still being fleeced.

 

Yesterday I bought the Mass Effect Trilogy from Origin.  Cost me $A15.  Three titles, including extentions, probably over 70 hours of entertainment at one of three levels.  I also purchased Crysis 3 for $A10. An entire DX11 state-of-the-art game for half what an average airport costs these days whichever the platform.  Yes I realise our interest is small,  a niche, in the overall market ... but give me a break.

 

Another reason I bring this up is that Dovetail Games, of Train Simulator fame,  will shortly be placing FSX Gold on Steam.  Downloadable content will also be made available (Flight1 has already signed up) and you can be sure another conduit for fleecing the unwary will be introduced.

 

Fortunately there is only several more (about to be introduced) payware airports for FS9 I am interested in acquiring before I call it a day but when I look back on what I have expended over the years one can only conclude I've been taken for a ride. My choice admittedly, but dudded just the same. :mad:   

 

Beware friends.  Beware.  Your wallet is being taken for a ride.  See the light before its too late.  :rolleyes:

[sluggy 3]

I too grab some bargains at Steam sales, but remember before some of these big titles go on sale, they were vastly more expensive (take a look at new release games on Steam, many $90+ games there) and sold a hell of a lot more than an airport addon depicting an airport in, say, Trinidad ever will. I have felt that prices have climbed a bit this year, but it seems the evidence doesn't show it. I must be getting tighter with my money!

 

With FS9 we've had a long run with a stable platform that ran very well on the PCs available for years now. First time for me that I can remember not having to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade hardware chasing that 5 or 6 extra FPS, maybe add some AA, etc etc. Money saved on hardware then got spent on addon software in enough volume that addon companies kept (and in many cases still keep) churming out more and more addons. Maybe the dwindling number of users of FS9 will make more addons unprofitable to make, and think of the money we'll save. But I bet most of us will finally move to FSX or P3D, and the cycle will start all over again...

 

Cheers, SLuggy

[BMagann 11]

Flight sim developers sell their products for the highest price we will pay for them, same as everybody else. I agree that the prices are often ridiculously high, but if they couldn't get what they charge they would reduce the price. Basic capitalism at work. I'm not saying I am always a fan of that, but it is just the way it is.

[Freaknout 11]

I believe it's disingenuous to compare mainstream gaming titles against FS products. They markets, customers and volumes are so different....

 

The titles you're picking up now hugely cheaper have been through a number of rounds of pricing/demand cycles.

[ubersu 78]

If you look at cost per logged flight hour I think you will be surprised how cheap the hobby really is...

 

DJ

[vololiberista 205]

I have been using fs9 for 9 years.

I paid for:-

FS9.1

PFE

Addictive VC10 (the worst example of a VC in FS9) a Bad Buy
FS Panel Studio

 

I didn't pay for (i.e they were all free):-

LIMZ LIPZ LIMF LIRF LIMJ LIRN LOWI WSSS VHHX VHHH EGll EGKK EDLV EGBB EGLC EDDF DSDG HAAB TNCM Madeira Ascension Island Bahrain Bangkok Barcelona Madrid Beijing Bombay Madras Doha Dubai Paro

European scenery and mesh Costiera Amalfitana Alps Himalayas Nepal

FSMetar

Pablo Diaz Clouds

David Maltby's VC10, BAC1 11, Trident, Comet (his ten is the best 2D cockpit (wide screen version coming soon on avsim).

Various Boeings 737 747 757 777 all free

The list goes on!

 

So perhaps the OP should check first before he forks out any more money. Yes he's been had because the quality of a lot of payware leaves much to be desired and he didn't bother to check what's out there for free first!

[PittsS2B 33]

MSFS is more of a cottage industry, with low volumes and small development teams.  As has been already pointed out, it's really not comparable with the mass market video game industry.  It's certainly possible to reach personal bankruptcy in this hobby if one is not careful - I still fly FS9 for this reason, as well as for performance.  The mass-market in video games now outgrosses most Hollywood features, so they can afford to cut their prices to low levels to chase that last bit of revenue once a title has been out for a while.  

 

You'll enjoy Mass Effect, although it's pretty tough in certain areas.  

[JSkorna 137]

No one forced you, or will force you in the future to purchase a single thing for FS.

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[Werner747 107]

I think that one should not always try to measure everything in monetary value.   Gauge it by means of the enjoyment that you are getting from it.   Just my 2 cents...

 

Regards

[WotanUK 289]

You might get 70 hours out of Mass Effect, around 45 of which is time wasting activities like mining and running back and forth for trinkets, you'll be lucky to see 5 hours out of Crysis 3 (excluding multiplayer).  I get more use out of a single airport in FSX than most of the AAA titles released now.  It's also a little unfair to compare titles released 7 years ago (Mass effect 1) with new FS releases, had you bought each release new you would have paid over £150.  The last AAA title i bought that lasted over 20 hrs was Rome 2 Total war.

[MrSpeaker 122]

I don't think I'm being taken for a ride. I consciously choose what I want. If it's something I like and that will give me enjoyment. I don't care if it costs five dollars or fifty dollars.

 

[gfd 15]

MSFS is more of a cottage industry, with low volumes and small development teams.  As has been already pointed out, it's really not comparable with the mass market video game industry.  It's certainly possible to reach personal bankruptcy in this hobby if one is not careful - I still fly FS9 for this reason, as well as for performance.  The mass-market in video games now outgrosses most Hollywood features, so they can afford to cut their prices to low levels to chase that last bit of revenue once a title has been out for a while.  

 

You'll enjoy Mass Effect, although it's pretty tough in certain areas.

 

 

John,

 

Your comment is spot on. Many, if not most, addon titles are from very small, part time operations. It really is a rather bizarre business. If the numbers rivalled the main stream video game segment, things would be different. Perhaps then we would see better value for our money; in terms of price, quality and support. But it is what it is.

 

On the other hand, if it all ran properly, the forums would go out of business. What would we talk about?

 

Graham

[sascha 314]

All the games mentioned by the OP were much more expensive when they were first published. Some payware content for FS now even is freeware, which is less common for other games.

 

You are not being fleeced because you don't need to actually buy any addon, you can always stick with freeware.

 

Some of the addons for FS require a hell-of-a-lot of work!

 

A major gaming title will have dozens of people working on it in different departments.

 

The only reason it sells for only 50$ is because the publisher knows it will sell a couple of hundred thousand copies at least.

 

Some FS payware will only sell a couple of dozen, some a couple of thousand which would already be tops for most.

 

Cheers,

Sascha

 

Edit:

I'm sorry if my comment came over as know-it-all, you probably wrote your intitial comment with tongue firmly in cheek I am usually weary these days because people often complain about prices because they feel that they really should get what they want for free, this sense of entitlement just makes me mad.

[vololiberista 205]

 

Some of the addons for FS require a hell-of-a-lot of work!

 

 

Cheers,

Sascha

 

They certainly do! For example engine parameter changes have to be tested across the entire range. The same goes for the sounds. How quickly does the EGT rise and so on. If I charged £5 for each update I would have made about twenty grand by now!

There's plenty of stuff that's over priced and stuff that shouldn't be charged for as they are of such poor quality and vice versa.

With the likes of PMDG on the market people's expectations are much higher making it much more difficult for one man band developers.