Why didn't DTG just stop developing instead of completely removing it from Steam?

[WotanUK 289]

On 5/5/2018 at 12:51 AM, theohall65 said:

And one of the most high profile critics happens to be a guy who was part of the consortium that lost out in the rights bidding for the Microsoft license that DTG won.  PMDG's Robert Rendazzo from his 1.6 million dollar mansion was one of the loudest claiming all this money grab, steam only (both untrue) BS.  Know your source before trusting it as being factual and not trying to destroy a competitor.

God forbid someone mess with his profits or he will do whatever it takes to destroy your business.

A personal attack on an individual that is dangerously close to Libel.  To paraphrase The Dark Knight "you think that RSR destroys businesses for his profits and you want to libel him...good luck"

[fs4fun 366]

I think we just don't know all the facts surrounding FSW's demise. It seems clear DTG management decided to pull the plug on funding the project, but what lead to that decision? Was it bad sales? The way DTG was approaching development gave the impression they were in no big hurry to ramp up sales. Who in their right mind would expect FSW as-is to be a big seller, with only piston props, few native addons and poor backward compatibility, dated looking terrain/scenery, limited weather options and so on? Their public messaging was that they wanted to redo many of the sim's subsystems after modernizing the engine's core, and that they were going to take their time to get this done right. Then all of a sudden the plug gets pulled.

The FSW naysayers can say all they know all along that it was doomed, but had DTG continued to build a good team and kept working on FSW, it might have started winning more converts. Seemingly that would have been out of the norm for DTG but it sounded as though this was their plan. Maybe they realized the cost of getting to their goal was going to be much higher than expected? Was it because they realized bridges with top tier addon developers were burned? I dunno, but if they were expecting a quick sales ramp-up they brought entirely the wrong product to market, and their public messaging was not reflecting their actual intent.

[fs4fun 366]

7 minutes ago, Boomer said:

Just curious...how is forcing all 3d party developers to sell through steam linked to DTG not greed?  Steam takes what, 30% of the cut and DTG was going to take an additional 30%...?  Are these numbers correct?

My understanding is that this was the original business model and it went over like a lead balloon, so DTG backed off on it. But the problem is that maybe DTG could not come up with another plan that both worked for 3PD's and resulting in DTG making a profit given the high cost of platform development. The basic question is: Can anyone make money selling an entertainment-only sim given the small audience, ie. without also having high-price commercial or government (military) customers to subsidize the development costs?

[WotanUK 289]

1 minute ago, fshobby said:

I think we just don't know all the facts surrounding FSW's demise. It seems clear DTG management decided to pull the plug on funding the project, but what lead to that decision? Was it bad sales?

Personally, i don't think it was a bad product in of itself but it released at completely the wrong time into a saturated market with less features than either of it's two already established competitors. 

The problem was people who spend money on Flight Sims already had large investments in either X-Plane or P3D, FSW played for the new comers and causal simmers, the trouble is they are quite rare and even then FSW offered them nothing at all other than being half the price of X-Plane with half the features.  If i wanted to try flight sims, i would have downloaded DCS World and messed around with the Su25 and the Civ mustang.  i think that the career mode actually may have been the hook to bring people in, give the customers something like Euro Truck 2 give structure and progression, they may have killed it a little too early in all honesty.

[chelmo 42]

14 minutes ago, Boomer said:

Just curious...how is forcing all 3d party developers to sell through steam linked to DTG not greed? 

Indeed it is greed.

It's also totally untrue.

But what the heck.....it's Dovetail.....

[WotanUK 289]

2 minutes ago, chelmo said:

Indeed it is greed.

It's also totally untrue.

But what the heck.....it's Dovetail.....

I keep reading this, so what was the business model, selling on Steam for the audience with a 30% cut to DTG and 30% to Steam sort of made sense to me; sell the Sim really cheap, get the customers in and then start releasing the DLC claiming the 30% on each sale with the increased audience Steam (was said) to offer.

If this isn't the case, what was the DTG business model?  People can sell with no license fee to DTG?  If so I no longer think that they are greedy, i think they are stupid, how did they expect to make money?  If there was a license fee, what was it?  Was 30% enough, was it more?  Genuine question does anybody actually know?

[WotanUK 289]

10 minutes ago, fshobby said:

My understanding is that this was the original business model and it went over like a lead balloon, so DTG backed off on it. But the problem is that maybe DTG could not come up with another plan that both worked for 3PD's and resulting in DTG making a profit given the high cost of platform development. The basic question is: Can anyone make money selling an entertainment-only sim given the small audience, ie. without also having high-price commercial or government (military) customers to subsidize the development costs?

I once read (i forget where) that the reason game companies stopped making Sims in generally was that it was easier to make FPS games, so we lost the mid-level stuff like the fantastic Microprose sims of old that often acted like a stepping stone to sims like Falcon 4 and the MS series of flight sims, leaving just the entry level stuff (like HAWX and BF4) and the ultra complex end like DCS world and X-Plane / P3D and yes i know that you can get simplified aircraft for all of these but at first use they are quite intimating and have a high cost of entry (other than DCS)

[theohall65 64]

Seeing as Just Flight's Arrow III has always been available directly from their website and all of the FS-Flight Control DLC has always been available directly from their website...

 

This:  Just curious...how is forcing all 3d party developers to sell through steam linked to DTG not greed? 

is untrue and the first person to say this, even though he knew it was untrue, was a competitor named earlier in this thread and a large number of people continue to quote this as if it were true - when it is not.  Just look at the websites and it proves this quote completely false.

But keep on spreading misinformation....  Wonder how those other sims would fare if they were released with the same kind of nonsense reviews spouting incorrect info.

[188AHC 2,138]

And another one bites the dust.   All has been said that can be said and now we're off on debatable tangents.