Looks like DT needs to change it's policy on 3rd party developers

[greggerm 312]

8 minutes ago, torium said:

Is it more expensive on Steam?

Steam incurs additional overhead - a portion of an addon's purchase price goes to Steam, a portion would go to Dovetail, and the rest to the developer. If a developer wished to maintain their revenue, they would need to increase their selling price to make up for that overhead. (*Steam would argue that this shortfall would be made up for in volume, but as Ilya asks, would a niche category like flight simulation actually benefit from a Steam bump?)

This debate should be focused on the SDK before anything else. There are probably many developers quite interested in what FSW will become and want to get started with it, but they're probably stymied by the lack of the all-important Software Development Kit needed to make things happen in the FSW environment.

[G-RFRY 1,710]

Steam also do seasonal sales on DLC products some developers however never discount there product and in there words never will.

Ray Fry. 

[ieydis 51]

Its not just flight simulation being a niche product, something like PMDG is a niche within a niche.  A flight sim by its own can maybe bring in some decent sales for the "lets fly and crash into stuff" crowd.  But a PMDG-level sim?  Forget about it.

Ilya

[SmokeDiddy 262]

Meh...."if you build it (and release an SDK), they will come".  I'm not concerned

[Holdit 551]

On 7/7/2017 at 11:03 PM, greggerm said:

Steam incurs additional overhead - a portion of an addon's purchase price goes to Steam, a portion would go to Dovetail, and the rest to the developer. If a developer wished to maintain their revenue, they would need to increase their selling price to make up for that overhead. (*Steam would argue that this shortfall would be made up for in volume, but as Ilya asks, would a niche category like flight simulation actually benefit from a Steam bump?)

Surely any sales (within reason) that came from Steam that wouldn't have come from the developers own online outlet would be worth having. To use the €10 software utility example, if the developer's sales via the normal outlet have met his development costs, then any sales via Steam are pure profit, and even Steam and Dovetail wetting their beaks would be more of a commission than a cost.

[zmak 331]

On 7/5/2017 at 9:58 PM, Chock said:

How many times does it have to be said? Dovetail are most definitely not pushing developers into selling through Steam, they are offering it as an additional outlet to sell through. DTG have said repeatedly that no product sold through Steam for FSW (or for their Steam incarnation of FSX for that matter) is, or will be, forced into being limited to that sales outlet, so your contention is completely incorrect. One look at the products on sale through Steam as DLC for FSX will confirm that; you've got Virtavia, Just Flight, HiFi, REX etc all selling their products through Steam as an additional outlet. You can buy all those products directly from the developer's websites and through numerous online stores too, so it is simply false to claim anything otherwise. You might just as well claim that FS Pilot Shop are forcing them to sell through their shop simply because the products are available on that store too.

The fact that many developers have chosen to make their products available through Steam for FSX, is because they realise the potential of that place as another revenue stream, if that were not so, they would not be doing it. Steam offers them the chance to have their products advertised directly on the opening splash screen of the simulation and be directly accessible through the sim's GUI. Yes there is a cost to doing this, but this is massively offset by the fact that there are no advertising costs at all to expose one's products to literally millions of registered Steam users. Not only this, Steam offers numerous additional sales tools to track buying trends, geographical sales info etc. Do you really imagine marketing departments are not going to be interested in that kind of facility as an additional sales outlet? Clearly the evidence shows that they are indeed interested in it.

Moreover, the developers which announced they were moving to LM's P3D did so because they were interested in the possibilities of a 64 Bit platform, not because they were allying themselves to LM's P3D alone. FSW is a 64 Bit platform too and is, like P3D, based upon MS ESP, so the development work, whilst not identical for both sims, is not vastly different, so it should be obvious to anyone that when making a product for one 64 Bit platform, it won't require that much effort to make it work for the two and have more places to sell. The fact that some developers have said 'we are going to P3D' is because that is a released product. When FSW is in that condition and there is an SDK, they will start developing for it too (in fact some already are doing just this as partners with DTG).

And it is incorrect to make the assumption that because a few scenery developers announced that they have made a decision to only develop for a 64 Bit simulation that 'major developers are walking away from FSX'. Only some developers have announced this (four or five by my reckoning, which hardly constitutes an exodus), vastly more developers are not doing anything of the kind, nor will they do so for a very long time, hell, we're still seeing announcements that some are gonna stop supporting FS9 lol.

In fact, many major developers are quite evidently supporting both Dovetail and Lockheed Martin's sims, for example, you can find Carenado aircraft in both FSW and P3D as default aeroplanes, you can find Just Flight products on sale via Steam for Dovetail's FSX and as default aeroplanes in P3D, A2A's Accufeel is built into FSW with A2A also developing for P3D and FSX, and there are many more examples of this which I could mention.

No developer is going to announce that they are 'moving to FSW' until it is released and they know exactly how to go about that courtesy of a finalised platform and a suitable SDK. But when that becomes the case, I can guarantee you that you'll see tons of developers going for it, because if they ignore a potential 125 million registered Steam users as a possible market, they'd need their heads examing.

And this is especially true when a company like DTG is driving that sales effort, because it is a company which built its foundations on making a success out of creating a platform and then going for it in a big way with additional content sales, as evidenced by the fact that around a million people bought their train sim and then started buying DLC for it. Just imagine you made a ten quid add-on utility for that train sim and sold it on Steam to half those users, then Steam/DTG took a 25 percent cut of that RRP. How much would you get? Yup, 375,000 quid.

Still think developers won't be interested in that kind of cash? If they've got any sense whatsoever, they'll be all over it like a cheap suit, trust me.

"And it is incorrect to make the assumption that because a few scenery developers announced that they have made a decision to only develop for a 64 Bit simulation that 'major developers are walking away from FSX'. Only some developers have announced this (four or five by my reckoning, which hardly constitutes an exodus), vastly more developers are not doing anything of the kind, nor will they do so for a very long time, hell, we're still seeing announcements that some are gonna stop supporting FS9 lol."

And you can take it from the guru himself JV from ORBX stating just a few days ago that ORBX have no intention of dropping FSX.

of course FSDT can say what they like but if the masses dont follow they will do a very quick back flip on the matter

[greggerm 312]

35 minutes ago, Holdit said:

Surely any sales (within reason) that came from Steam that wouldn't have come from the developers own online outlet would be worth having.

True - but what if a sizable percentage of a dev's customers shift their purchasing from developer-direct to Steam? Assuming the product and the price are both the same, the developer will be losing revenue to the Steam/DTG overhead. The developer would need to hope that the Steam channel could generate enough additional customers to make up for that difference, and in a niche market, it could be a gamble. 

This is likely one of the reasons why Orbx offered "lite" versions of certain products on Steam for FSX:SE, but only offers their full package airports developer-direct. They're taking the calculated risk that certain Steam users who don't care about ObjectFlow and other features will be satisfied with a basic airport version, while their core customers will hold out for the full version which is only available from the developer. This gives them "extra" income from the Steam audience, while retaining their revenue from those with more discerning tastes.

The Steam overhead may also contribute to the fact that the FSX:SE 3rd party market on Steam seems to be dominated by older addons. Many of these addons have already had their day in the sun with traditional sales, and anything on Steam would truly be extra revenue (icing on the cake).

There's a lot at play. Steam invites an interesting discussion, but I still contend that DTG's FlightSimWorld needs to get its SDK out to the developers as quickly as possible. It just feels a bit claustrophobic to use a sim with no current addon market...

[A32xx 129]

1 hour ago, greggerm said:

I still contend that DTG's FlightSimWorld needs to get its SDK out to the developers as quickly as possible.

I agree, but not before it's finalised. The most frustrating thing I found about X-Plane is that freeware planes made for earlier versions won't work properly in the latest version, because the SDK changes with each version. Nightmare.

[Paraffin 2,197]

5 minutes ago, A32xx said:

I agree, but not before it's finalised. The most frustrating thing I found about X-Plane is that freeware planes made for earlier versions won't work in the latest version, because the SDK changes with each version. Nightmare.

Nightmare for the developers, but good for the end-users, when those changes result in more advanced flight and engine models with each major version going forward.

You can't have it both ways. You either get a static sim that never advances and is therefore a perfect platform for developers (FSX), or one that does (X-Plane) and causes a headache for developers and sometimes users. Like the current XP11 upgrade cycle with Carenado, which basically means re-buying all your planes for v11. Personally, I'll take continuing progress, even if it means a little more expense, and waiting a while for the plane models I want to fly. 

It's too early to tell which way FSW is going -- whether it's planned as a static platform that's great for developers, or the "shifting sands" approach of X-Plane. Come back in a few years and we'll know. 

[A32xx 129]

44 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

You can't have it both ways.

With MSFS you could. FSX was the 10th and last version of MSFS, and unusually different to previous versions, which were usually backwards-compatible to the last one or two versions. Evolution is better than Revolution as they say, and making haste slowly is very good for business. The MSFS franchise ran for 20-odd years by making gradual additions and improvements every two or three years, rather than a drastic rebuild every 18 months.

[WotanUK 289]

I think the Steam angle is over-blown to be honest; it's obviously correct that Steam has a radically bigger exposure than any Flight Sim only website, it's not even close when comparing a large retailer like Aerosoft...but and it's a big but, that doesn't directly translate into sales, i'll give you a personal example.  I love strategy games, i am a huge fan of the Total war series and the Paradox games (i often play Hearts of Iron IV whilst in cruise on P3D), so on Steam i saw a new Strategy game that looked interesting "Romance of the three Kingdoms XIV", it looked great (i have also read the books), then i saw the price...£70, nearly a £100 with the DLC, after that didn't touch it with a barge pole (UK expression).  So, imagine a casual simmer seeing the FSL-A320 available for FSW costing £120, that is most certainly not going to be a one-to-one translation of views to sales; then take into account they see Aerosofts A320 for £40, or perhaps a model only improvement on the FSX default A320 for £15, which are they going to buy, unless they are prepared to do there homework (at which point i content they cease to be casual simmers) i imagine that the vast majority will go for the cheapest option.

 

[A32xx 129]

Spot on, Wotan! These things are emphatically NOT pocket-money prices. I doubt whether any kid today is going to get a Flight Simulator for his birthday if it needs a PC upgrade costing hundreds to run properly. The average family can't justify that expense on what may only be a passing interest. That's why consoles and smartphone/tablet games are the mainstream these days, and that in turn is what makes PC-based flight sims and their add-ons so costly. Only time will tell whether FSW appeals to both simmers and gamers, one or the other, or neither...

[Paraffin 2,197]

1 hour ago, A32xx said:

With MSFS you could. FSX was the 10th and last version of MSFS, and unusually different to previous versions, which were usually backwards-compatible to the last one or two versions. Evolution is better than Revolution as they say, and making haste slowly is very good for business. The MSFS franchise ran for 20-odd years by making gradual additions and improvements every two or three years, rather than a drastic rebuild every 18 months.

Isn't it the general Avsim consensus that MS Flight, with all its other flaws, had a superior flight model compared to FSX?

Correct me if I'm wrong about that. I don't remember all the conversation (drama) back then, and never bought Flight myself. But I remember hearing that the Aces team couldn't make the changes they wanted to improve the flight modeling in MSFS without breaking backwards compatibility. So that's what they did, with MS Flight. That sim failed for many other reasons, but it wasn't the flight modeling. 

If nothing else, X-Plane is proving that you can keep improving (breaking) things while keeping users and developers onboard over a period of years. P3Dv4 has had a smooth transition to 64-bits, like XP10 did, a couple of years ago. But LM may get to the point where they need to break at least some backwards compatibility to keep improving the sim. Unless y'all think it's perfect, as-is. 

[A32xx 129]

57 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

If nothing else, X-Plane is proving that you can keep improving (breaking) things while keeping users and developers onboard over a period of years.

Yes, but unfortunately not enough users to finance the two changes which everyone else is asking for: seasonal textures and ATC

[Paraffin 2,197]

8 minutes ago, A32xx said:

Yes, but unfortunately not enough users to finance the two changes which everyone else is asking for: seasonal textures and ATC

I don't think that's a question of financing, just development priorities. We know the ATC is being worked on, and seasonal changes (procedural, not textures) are out there in the pipeline somewhere. Its one of those "Nine women can't make a baby in one month" situations, where more money and a larger development team wouldn't necessarily make it happen sooner. .

It will get there eventually, and meanwhile there are other sims to fly if someone wants seasonal changes as an essential feature.