This is really bad news for us Canadian Simmers.

It basically means that addon's are going to cost us about 50% more than they used too:-)

 

I invested in my System and most of the addons I own when the Canadian dollar was about 1 to 1 with the US dollar.

I have certainly slowed down with my purchases except for sales.

 

I have been waiting for Concorde X for P3D for a very long time after I buy that, its over for me.

I have enough material to keep me happy to years to come.

 

What about the rest of you Canadian Simmers will this effect your FS investment?

It just makes me more picky with my purchases.  The loonie is what it is unfortunately...

Not Canadian however our Australia dollar is the same. We've been around .70 for a while now.

 

Jason

If Canadians are buying from FlightSimStore in Australia they won't really notice a difference. Canadian, Australian and Kiwi dollars are close together and the USA dollar is up which means Canadians, Aussies and Kiwis buy from Australia instead of the US stores

 

Everything fluctuates as lower Canadian dollars means more exports which means more jobs and better paychecks, etc. Alberta will loose due to declining oil and Ontario will gain from increased manufacturing, people adjust and people will still spend

 

I used to be a welder in Canada in the early 1990's when the last time the Canadian Dollar was in the .68 cent region which was a boom time for jobs. We didn't like when the dollar went up as that meant orders went down

Not happy with it.  Likely wont be travelling anytime soon but wont stop me from purchasing future addons....hopefully there will be some recovery in the loonie in the short term.

I have been waiting for Concorde X for P3D for a very long time after I buy that, its over for me

...

What about the rest of you Canadian Simmers will this effect your FS investment?

Most definitely. I also buy mainly from Flightsimstore these days, in particular ORBX products.

 

I will also likely not re-buy the Concorde X for P3D. I have to wait until the bird is released, but if there is not a dramatic improvement in the VC I see no justification in buying it again at a substantially increased price in CAD.

 

Peter

Right there with the $AUD. Gone are the days where our $ was almost at parity.

I make use of a lot more sales in the future and cut back as well, FS is still not nearly as bad as RC flying which I do.

I've been trying to put together a N scale train layout for the last few months... the low loonie makes it hard to even look at EBay.  A person tries hard not to think about how much more stuff your dollars could of bought a few years ago.

 

A shift in my thinking in flight sims (try and put more hours on what I already own) has meant that the higher US$ costs hasn't really hit me much.

Not only Canadian and Australian simmers are affected.

The Polish Zloty rate is such that 1 euro costs 4.41 zloty today. In May 2015 for instance it was just below 4. I remember it being 3 something.

Planning to buy more addons the difference is noticeable.

 

The general tendency doesn't add a smile to my face (euro price in zloty):

 

Still climbing to cruise level.

I'd love to see a nice descent.

With the Aussie dollar stuck at about .70 USD it is making the purchase of premium FS addons very expensive eg PMDG - have been eagerly awaiting their 747 v2 but not any more as the cost is likely to be well north of 100AUD for FSX and a stratospheric 200AUD plus for P3D!

 

Bruceb

Seems a lot of us are feeling the pain. Don't want to bring politics into it but I don't believe that the current circumstance are anything like they where in the past in Ontario or Canada as whole when the loonie was this low. Ontario for a start is not the manifacturing power house it used to be thanks to the 10+ years of incompetent liberal mismanagement of the economy and Provisional utilities etc.And now that we have a liberal government in Ottawa too its only going to get worse.

Don't want to be pessimistic but I would say that we are in for rough ride economically here in Canada for the foreseeable future. In tend to agree with the prediction of a sub 60cent loonie buy the end of 2016. All round the pulse I have my finger on is pretty pessimistic. I think we are in for far worse than 2008 and not just us.

I traveled the US in '98 and I was getting 64 cents for our $A, I'm not complaining until it get's that low (if). Just to make it a little easier for we Australians, it should be considered that FS products and addons have come down in price because of increased competition. We always complain about the price but it never stops us buying.

Ontario for a start is not the manifacturing power house it used to be ...

True, but I beg to differ on your analysis of the causes. To me, this is simply a consequence of an economy that relied too much on the resource sector. High oil prices kept the Loonie so high that manufactured goods were not competitive in the US and elsewhere. Another consequence: car manufacturers were able to produce more cost-effective in Mexico and moved away from Ontario.

 

However, I am very optimistic for the future. The low exchange rate hits us flight simmers hard, but it also helps to boost Canadian exports and tourism. In a few years, Canada will have a nicely diversified economy again.

 

Natural resources are a nice thing to have, but their price and abundance is unpredictable and can ruin a country if it relies too much on it. As an example, Nauru (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru) was once the richest nation in the world (per capita) due to phosphate export. They wasted their wealth (in part on an airline that was highly unprofitable) and are now a very poor country that can only survive through (unusual) deals with Australia.

 

Peter

Being from the great white north myself, my simming purchases have been curtailed greatly. Like others have mentioned, sales might entice me into purchasing something. However, it becomes also the old allocating game as we. Groceries have shot up quite a bit as well and I have expensive food tastes as well. Beef tenderloin is up quite a bit as is fish.

 

This was supposed to be the year that I was going to buy a new high end system and make the switch to P3D, but that will have to wait until an improvement in the dollar. The dollar has been substantially below par for the majority of my life. I look at anything $0.80 - $.085 as a reasonable exchange. I live in BC so at that exchange, any sim purchases, in my mind would be at par as that essentially negates taxes on those purchases. At that exchange rate, I can drive to Oregon, pick up some go flight stuff and still be ahead of the game, no sales tax in Oregon.

 

But until the dollar goes up, maybe in 3 - 4 years, I'll make do with what I have.