Never liked the STEAM concept

[Woozie 732]

55 minutes ago, domae001 said:

Wow, that's a lot more than I expected and puts things a bit in perspective. Thanks for the info!

yeah, 1/3 is a massive chunk, i assume that all other major platforms have very similar conditions. Thats why the big devs are selling through their own storefronts exclusively 

[beechcaptain 105]

46 minutes ago, Murmur said:

The deluded self-appointed "serious" simmer who presents himself in opposition to the inferior masses of "gamers", has to be one of the funniest characters in the flight sim community...

Hardly the case and unless you can point out how someone posting here is "in opposition to the inferior masses of "gamers",", I believe your comment to be in a condescending manner.  Unless I am reading into your post. 

Do you consider yourself a "serious simmer" or just a casual simmer?  I am a serious flight simmer.  I get very involved with flight planning, prepping, preflight, use GSX to load fuel, pax, etc., use real weather and PMDG's great a/c, along with detailed addon scenery.  It is what I like to do.  I do not put down the "inferior masses of gamers".  My take is, to each, their own. 

 

[kingm56 1,031]

18 hours ago, edpatino said:

What I think is the issue here is the high costs associated to the Steam distribution channel. If the Steam platform is interested in growing itself, they would need to approach all single developers and offer something financially feasible. Forcing, pushing someone to do something not feasible is not going to be a successful effort at the end. So please, DTG, with that in mind, sit down and negotiate in fair conditions and do your homework!.

Cheers, Ed

 

Ed, Steam has 125,000,000 subscribers and controls over 75% the digital distribution marketplace.  Moreover, it's worth around $3.5B, which is crazy for a PRIVATE company.  To date, the have sold 2,472,586,972 games...that's BILLIONS.  Yet, you want them to change their business model by approaching their 14,516 vendors to offer a "financially feasible" solution?  Steam has a highly successful model and they would be foolish to alter it.  Moreover, Steam's 'rake' is no different than simmarket, pcaviator, or pcpilot commissions...in fact, it's lower.  The difference?  Steam exposes the vendor products to literally millions, vice thousands of potential customers.  

DTG is not Microsoft; to that point, they don't have the marketing budget or distribution mechanism to independently sell their products; thus, they would be crazy to sell via any distribution platform other than Steam.  In fact, they already realize the power of Steam, which is quantified via their FSX SE sales (810,121 units sold); that's almost a million copies sold for a 10-year old simulator. Couple those numbers with their train simulator sales (983,575 units) and you'll realize that DTG has already done "their homework."  There's no way DTG could have duplicated this success via their own distribution channels.  In short, DTG is making money BECAUSE of Steam.  You should really do some research concerning Steam and you'll start to understand how it could inject some much needed 'new blood' into the marketplace.    

The flight sim space is well behind the curve, but if it's going to truly grow, it needs to be sold via modern distribution channels....

[skelsey 765]

12 hours ago, tjstreak said:

The munchkin power gamers one finds on Steam want first person shoot em ups which they can buy cheap.  Highly detailed professional level sims, like those from PMDG do not appeal to these gamers.

I see a lot of this sort of characterisation of Steam users within the FS community, and it's just silly.

As I said earlier -- in the past if you wanted to buy MSFS, you had to go to a high street store like GAME and buy it in a box. That is certainly where I bought every single version of MSFS from FS5 upwards, along with a good chunk of boxed third-party addons before the Internet was a (big) thing.

Did the fact that MSFS being sold in Game, alongside exactly the same first person shooters that are now on Steam, mean it was just for the "munchkin power gamers" who weren't interested in an accurate simulation?

Of course not. It was, however, a mass-market product -- which is the ONLY reason that we're all still here with it more than ten years on!

[HiFlyer 9,358]

53 minutes ago, skelsey said:

I see a lot of this sort of characterisation of Steam users within the FS community, and it's just silly.

Yup.

[edpatino 1,964]

3 hours ago, kingm56 said:

Ed, Steam has 125,000,000 subscribers and controls over 75% the digital distribution marketplace.  Moreover, it's worth around $3.5B, which is crazy for a PRIVATE company.  To date, the have sold 2,472,586,972 games...that's BILLIONS.  Yet, you want them to change their business model by approaching their 14,516 vendors to offer a "financially feasible" solution?  Steam has a highly successful model and they would be foolish to alter it.  Moreover, Steam's 'rake' is no different than simmarket, pcaviator, or pcpilot commissions...in fact, it's lower.  The difference?  Steam exposes the vendor products to literally millions, vice thousands of potential customers.  

DTG is not Microsoft; to that point, they don't have the marketing budget or distribution mechanism to independently sell their products; thus, they would be crazy to sell via any distribution platform other than Steam.  In fact, they already realize the power of Steam, which is quantified via their FSX SE sales (810,121 units sold); that's almost a million copies sold for a 10-year old simulator. Couple those numbers with their train simulator sales (983,575 units) and you'll realize that DTG has already done "their homework."  There's no way DTG could have duplicated this success via their own distribution channels.  In short, DTG is making money BECAUSE of Steam.  You should really do some research concerning Steam and you'll start to understand how it could inject some much needed 'new blood' into the marketplace.    

The flight sim space is well behind the curve, but if it's going to truly grow, it needs to be sold via modern distribution channels....

Thanks for writting, quite interesting indeed. So, let PMDG and others negotiate. For me, even if I understand your valuable comments, I would prefer to have several options from where I should get my products. As you probably know, PMDG, ORBX, Aerosoft, SimMarket, F1 and some others have their own distribution channels already in place and it would be good if there's enough freedom to compete with such a big platform as Steam is.

Thanks again, cheers, Ed

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

All PC  gamers owe a debt of gratitude to Valve as Steam saved gaming on the PC from complete  collapse. Consoles and phones still own most of the gaming market but at least the PC is still alive as a  platform.

I do want to take issue with the statement that FSX sales on Steam show that flight simming is not a niche market. The top selling games sold on Steam have grossed roughly $ 75 million  US. When one considers that DTG  mostly gave way FSX for a few dollars, its large sales numbers translate to only a tiny fraction of   what a top game generates.

And add to that the fact that overall PC Game sales are but a fraction of of total market. For example, GTA  5 has sold a total of 70 million copies and grossed over $4 billion US.

[tjstreak 53]

In reviewing the comment from PMDG, the problem is fairly obvious.  Steam takes a 30% cut of all sales.  Dovetail wants another 35%, leaving PMDG with a 35% cut.  For all intents and purposes, it is a three way split between PMDG, Steam and Dovetail.  By the way, this is a rather high cut for a distributor/store front.

In the past, I have owned a brick and mortar book store.  The size of the discount would vary with the nature of the product.  I could get a 40% discount on most mass market products.  I would typically get a 20% discount on non mass market products, but it could be as low as 5%.

Of course, the discount the retailer gets depends on the size and market power of the retailer.  For example, large retailers like Amazon and Walmart enjoy really large discounts.  In fact those discounts were large enough to allow these retailers to sell their products for less than what I would pay my distributor.

Moreover, it costs a lot less to operate an online store than it does to operate a brick and mortar store.

I can understand PMDG's reluctance to give Steam and Dove Tail a 65% cut of their sales.  After all, neither Steam no PMDG is taking the risk of an unsuccessful product, licensing fees, the costs of development, or the costs of providing support.  For Steam and Dove tail, their 30% and 35% cut, respectively, is pure gravy without risk or any real cost.  All the risk and expense is borne by PMDG.

Plus, PMDG has to wonder if placing items on the Steam Store will take away from their own webstore, where they get to keep 100% of the sales.  If customers move from a webstore where PMDG gets 100% of the sales to one where PMDG gets 35% of the sales, PMDG is really losing out.

There is no guarantee that Flight Sim World will be all that successful.  It faces stiff competition from X-Plane, Prepared, DCS World, Aerofly and FSX.  It is only offering GA aircraft.  It may not be backwards compatible with FSX, which may be a deal killer for many of us.  PMDG would be well advised to hold off any development on FSW until it has proven itself to be a successful platform with a large and relatively wealthy customer base.

[Zatoichi 45]

As an alternative to Steam there are distributors such as GOG.

[n4gix 4,947]

8 hours ago, jaydor said:

FSW was given the kiss of death even before it is born, when they tied it to DTG sales only..  No one will support it..

Where did you come up with the idea that the scheme is "DTG sales only?" DTG's two reps (Aimee and Cryss) have both stated that devs can continue to sell via their existing channels provided they also offer their product for sale via the Steam portal.

[n4gix 4,947]

2 hours ago, tjstreak said:

It is only offering GA aircraft.  It may not be backwards compatible with FSX, which may be a deal killer for many of us.  PMDG would be well advised to hold off any development on FSW until it has proven itself to be a successful platform with a large and relatively wealthy customer base.

GA only for now, the rest will follow as developed. It will NOT be backwards compatible, or at least not entirely. Some things may work such as scenery or other things that are 32/64 bit agnostic..

[Paraffin 2,197]

17 hours ago, RichieFly said:

Steam has and does make me nervous.

Why, you may ask? Internet based DRM. Or more precisely, Steam running, internet based DRM. (yes, I know you can pick a game to run off-line, but it's not really a solution.) 

If you don't have internet access, no games/simulators. Any number of causes here---moving, living in a low reliable or intermittent internet area, no money, aliens..

Steam does have an offline mode you can select. It's designed to be used for things like travel, remote cabin vacations, etc., not full-time use. But it is there. You still may need occasional connection for individual apps that use a second layer of periodic authorization, so it's hard to escape entirely.

Quote

I understand that almost all simulators and add ons require internet access to download and activate. But, once activated and downloaded, you're golden. At least with DCS and P3D (i think.) Some even allow for activation via a phone call. Some (Aerosoft for sure and X-Plane 11) sell boxed versions of products.

X-Plane does sell a boxed version, but It may also require periodic phoning home. This happened with XP10's boxed set, I haven't kept up with how XP11 works because I'm using the digital downlad version. I wouldn't be surprised if there is at least some periodic authorization going on under the hood.

Finally, as pointed out earlier, the "normal" use a flight sim requires a connection for many of us. I use it for real weather updates. With a sim that's under constant development like X-Plane, it's also nice to have the launcher log in and tell me if there are new beta or official updates to download, every time I start the program.

That's something FSX pilots aren't used to, because the main flight engine hasn't changed in years. I suspect with a new product like DTG FSW, you're going to want to keep updated with bug fixes and new features. In other words, probably not a great choice to begin with, if you don't have reliable Internet access.

[Zatoichi 45]

Other than a multiplayer game, if you navigate to the proper exe you can launch any Steam title offline and play for ever.

[tjstreak 53]

6 hours ago, n4gix said:

GA only for now, the rest will follow as developed.

Until it is in my greasy little hands, it is all lies and propaganda.

The question is what will be developed.  We don't have an answer to that.  It does not sound like we are even getting something comparable to the FSX default tube liners.  Certainly anything approaching a study level sim will depend on the likes of PMDG and Flightsim Labs.

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

11 minutes ago, tjstreak said:

Until it is in my greasy little hands, it is all lies and propaganda.

The question is what will be developed.  We don't have an answer to that.  It does not sound like we are even getting something comparable to the FSX default tube liners.  Certainly anything approaching a study level sim will depend on the likes of PMDG and Flightsim Labs.

FSX came out in 2006....It was not until 2010 that third party development caught up to it.

Therefore if FSW is released in 2017 don't expect the same until around 2020 or so

I bought FSX in 2006 when it first came out and didn't start using it until 2009, I was still happy with FS2004 and its third party development until FSX started to catch up. It wasn't really until 2011 that ORBX PMDG and REX started to turn things around for FSX, being 5 years after its release date.

Flight Sim Development has always been SLOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW