28 minutes ago, regis9 said:

Exactly.  People who are drawn into flight simulation by a cheap sim platform are not the same people who are willing to pay a pile of money for a single aircraft, very different markets.  Anyone willing to spend $80 on an aircraft wouldn't blink twice at buying p3d.

Maybe, but that assumes they know about it. Not everyone who likes flight sims visits forms and such. If all you knew about was FSX and FSW etc via Steam, that doesn't mean you wouldn't pay a lot for a flight sim add-on, but it also doesn't mean you'd automatically know about P3D, since it isn't widely marketed and certainly not via Steam or any other gaming outlet. But even if you don't think that is true, what is definitely true is...

A lot of people who buy 80 quid sim add-ons regularly are well down the road on investing in their chosen sim, and that means switching to P3D if you have the FSX versions of the FSL A320 and the PMDG 747-400 and 737 NG and IFly NG and Majestic Dash 8 and Active Sky and tons of airports and sceneries and meshes and so on, which people who will pay 135 quid for an A320 add-on will have, means switching to P3D is not going to be cheap to do, in fact it will cost them considerably more than their PC did when you add up the cost of a few of those add-ons for P3D, it just doesn't seem like it when sliced up into 100 quid increments for this or that add-on, but I bet you most of us who have been into flight sims for years could probably have bought a fairly decent used Cessna 152 (and I mean a real one) with the amount of cash they've spent on flight sim stuff over the years. And no, I'm not joking, I did a rough calculation of it and that is actually true for me.

14 hours ago, Chock said:

I can guarantee you there are still way more FSX users than there are P3D users, it's not even close numbers-wise. We get a misleading impression looking on flight sim forums which would lead us to think everyone is on P3D V4 and only interested in high end add-ons, but it is simply not the case, you can buy FSX-SE for 7,99 in a Steam sale and it's only 20 quid at full price. P3D costs three times that even for the academic version and ten times that for the other one. And despite what people might think, FSX-SE is Dovetail's only current fully released flight simulator platform, so it's not true that it is a dead platform as many claim,

I'd be interested to know whether the casual gamer who pays £7.99 for a base sim on Steam, would be willing to pay £80-£100 for one aircraft.  

15 minutes ago, ErichB said:

I'd be interested to know whether the casual gamer who pays £7.99 for a base sim on Steam, would be willing to pay £80-£100 for one aircraft.  

Well, some people make the false leap in logic that simply because someone pays 7.99 for a flight sim, it somehow means they wouldn't buy an expensive add-on for it. It may be true, or not, nothing can be determined either way simply from how much the base sim was; if someone buys FSX for 7.99 in a sale, or 20 quid at full price, that is what they pay, they cannot pay any more for it than the price it is being sold at, thus the fact that they got it for maybe less than a tenner is no indication of any lack of willingness to spend money. They just got a bargain instead of having paid 70 quid for FSX like we all did years ago when it first came out.

Any other conclusions on what someone would be prepared to spend on an add-on can only be conjecture, and presumably they bought FSX on Steam because they wanted to fly aeroplanes about and like aeroplanes, so there's really no reason to suppose they wouldn't be interested in adding a really good one, and they must know they are available because FSX-SE advertises them on loading up.

Yes some people will have bought it because it was cheap and they thought 'why not?', but then who is to say that doesn't end up being the catalyst for them really getting into flight simming? After all, if you don't like the idea of flying planes, then it doesn't matter if the base sim is 50 pence, you still wouldn't buy it just because it was cheap if you weren't interested in what it does, any more than you or I would buy a shooter game just because it was cheap if we did not actually like shooter games.

48 minutes ago, Chock said:

Well, some people make the false leap in logic that simply because someone pays 7.99 for a flight sim, it somehow means they wouldn't buy an expensive add-on for it. It may be true, or not, nothing can be determined either way simply from how much the base sim was; if someone buys FSX for 7.99 in a sale, or 20 quid at full price, that is what they pay, they cannot pay any more for it than the price it is being sold at, thus the fact that they got it for maybe less than a tenner is no indication of any lack of willingness to spend money. They just got a bargain instead of having paid 70 quid for FSX like we all did years ago when it first came out.

Any other conclusions on what someone would be prepared to spend on an add-on can only be conjecture, and presumably they bought FSX on Steam because they wanted to fly aeroplanes about and like aeroplanes, so there's really no reason to suppose they wouldn't be interested in adding a really good one, and they must know they are available because FSX-SE advertises them on loading up.

Yes some people will have bought it because it was cheap and they thought 'why not?', but then who is to say that doesn't end up being the catalyst for them really getting into flight simming? After all, if you don't like the idea of flying planes, then it doesn't matter if the base sim is 50 pence, you still wouldn't buy it just because it was cheap if you weren't interested in what it does, any more than you or I would buy a shooter game just because it was cheap if we did not actually like shooter games.

Agree.  

 

 

 

 

Steam FSX sales are not a reliable metric even if we could get those numbers.  Many people, myself included,  buy steam games that are on sale and hardly if ever find time for them.  A more telling Stat would be number of hours played, for me, for example, I have over 650 hours of fsx se.

1 hour ago, ErichB said:

I'd be interested to know whether the casual gamer who pays £7.99 for a base sim on Steam, would be willing to pay £80-£100 for one aircraft.  

Yeah, it stuns me sometimes.  I'm not saying that, for me, a great airplane isn't worth it...but it's a rare aircraft that is worth that much.  There are some products, not just aircraft, where I look at the price and think "Are you kidding me?"...sometimes asking double or more of the price of the base sim.  Are they not aware that they're eliminating many buyers?  Having said that, from first impressions of this 787, the pricing looks okay...not that much more than a Carenado.  The reviews coming in seem to say it's a well done aircraft.

I have met several people who own the steam edition FSX and are extremely happy with the default aircraft because all they do is turn it on, load a jet and do barrel rolls all day long. They won't upgrade hardware for it, or spend time making JFK look as real as it can be. So steam customers might be abundant because they saw that they could add FSX to their arsenal and fool around once in a while. However I don't believe 90% of their customer base will be interested in becoming hardcore as we are. They most likely will at some point move on to the next flashy thing.. The other 10% that gets Hooked will look for more immersion and realism and those will be the ones that spend 1000's of dollars in upgraded peripherals, add-ons and will start getting frustrated with the limitations of FSX. That is where I believe we see a disconnect with the FSX user ideaology that because it's on steam there are more customers to sell too. 

 

In the other hand the 787 us a very popular aircraft. The kind even a non avgeek will know and that might push them to buy it to explore more and learn more. Much like the 747 and A380 are.  But by that logic most companies argument that long haul aircraft don't sell would be incorrect. 

3 hours ago, Gregg_Seipp said:

Having said that, from first impressions of this 787, the pricing looks okay...not that much more than a Carenado. 

That is more an argument why the QW 787 is totally underpriced. Carenado kicks out 4-5 planes a year full of bugs whereas the QW was 6 or 7 years in development. Not to speak about the difference in complexity. Thinking about it this way, one can understand why some of the add-on aircraft actually cost more than $100.

20 hours ago, Chock said:

Because I've seen some sales data for a few online stores. I can't say which ones because they didn't want me to reveal that info (it was when I was doing some web design work for one or two of them), but as much as I can't say which places it was, I can say that it was fairly apparent from the numbers that there were far more FSX sales than would ever be the case for P3D.

And how would you know it was being installed in FSX only?  Most installers are multi-platform and not all installers require a internet connection and report back to a server to ID which platform option was being selected ... easy to determine, monitor port activity and run the installer and see if it pops up on a port.  Over the last 3 years or so, there are very few FSX only products.

I recall DTG tossing out FSX:SE sales numbers in the 389,000 range, then the next week that suddenly jumped up to over 500,000 pending on who was doing the interview (BTW still relatively  small numbers compared to AA game titles ... I mean goat simulator had over a 1M sales, and major AA titles will be over 8M US sales).

Anyway, this is way off topic and doesn't really make a difference because it is what it is ... I'm sure QW will deliver a P3D V4 version because there is a demand (that's very apparent) and unless they are allergic to money, they'll want to see that potential revenue.  We just have to employ patience and I'm glad that they be able to ID possible issues in the FSX platform first, fixing them, and then moving forward to P3D V4. 

Cheers, Rob.

1 hour ago, carlito777 said:

That is more an argument why the QW 787 is totally underpriced. Carenado kicks out 4-5 planes a year full of bugs whereas the QW was 6 or 7 years in development. Not to speak about the difference in complexity. Thinking about it this way, one can understand why some of the add-on aircraft actually cost more than $100.

Yeah, I agree.  I've nearly stopped buying Carenado...to save money for airplanes that are done better. On the other hand, the really, really pricey addons (I have two in my head)...they do need to think about what people can/will invest in an add on.  If they want to sell a smaller number then their price is helping them.  Only they know what their sales are and where they sit on the the cost/demand curve.

1 hour ago, Gregg_Seipp said:

Only they know what their sales are and where they sit on the the cost/demand curve.

Fully agree. Most developers seem to set prices based on their development costs (+ margin). This way they rationalize prices in excess of $100. However, this must not be the ideal price from a profit maximization perspective as I‘m pretty sure demand is highly elastic around the $50–60 range. Unfortunately, some developers don‘t seem to understand this. But QW apparently did. Good for them. But their clever pricing is currently undermined by the lack of a clear upgrade path to P3D.

24 minutes ago, carlito777 said:

But their clever pricing is currently undermined by the lack of a clear upgrade path to P3D.

Agreed, need more specific info sooner than later.

Just to bring some perspective back to the discussion, particularly those who are going on about the lack of P3D support:

 

https://www.facebook.com/notes/qualitywings-simulations/ultimate-787-status-update-the-first-36-hours/10155050170834639/

 

I have seen the flight sim community do some pretty neat things for nothing in return when those of our own and even some not of our own get stuck. I wonder how many of us would be willing to pull together on this one?

4 hours ago, JB3DG said:

Just to bring some perspective back to the discussion, particularly those who are going on about the lack of P3D support:

 

https://www.facebook.com/notes/qualitywings-simulations/ultimate-787-status-update-the-first-36-hours/10155050170834639/

 

I have seen the flight sim community do some pretty neat things for nothing in return when those of our own and even some not of our own get stuck. I wonder how many of us would be willing to pull together on this one?

 

The most shocking thing about his post, is that none of the subsequent responders actually gave a damn.  They just carried on bitchin'

11 minutes ago, ErichB said:

 

The most shocking thing about his post...

To me the most shocking thing is that he has time to browse and post to a FS forum while standing in the rubble of his home and business.