The principle of justifying costs. Payware or Corporations

[Guest Zevious Zoquis]

yeah, well compare it to the cost of a nice electric train set (I mean a real "hobbyist" set), or perhaps RC cars or planes which can run to the thousands of dollars or any number of other hobbies that people get deeply involved in. It seems to me that as a hobby, FS is hardly more expensive than those. BTW, when these discussions come up I don't include the cost of the hardware in the equation. I've spent alot on PC equipment over the years, but I don't only use it for FS. It's not even just a "gaming" machine. I do all sorts of work on it that has nothing to do with the sim. Sure, when I think about upgrading, flightsim plays a big part in what hardware I choose, but it's still a tool I use for far more than "just" the sim.

[Guest RonB49]

>Haggling over price is not the norm for wholesale and retail outlets as far as we know...I have to disagree with you Ron. I spent the first 25 years of my life paying whatever a merchant asked, the so-called retail price, until my best friend (and 41 years later he still is my best friend) told me that the marked price is just the price that the merchant is asking for the item. It isn't binding on me. If I am unwilling to pay that price then I can leave (and not buy the item) or I can tell the merchant what I am willing to pay. He can say "yes" or "no" or make a counter offer somewhere between the asked and bid prices.I am always friendly and cheerful and if the merchant gets upset, then I apologize for offending him and wasting his time and I either pay the asking price or I leave. This works best on real estate and cars (you'd be surprised at the deal that I got on a new Ford Five Hundred last week) but, as someone mentions below, I have done the same thing at department stores and electronics houses. I find it fun and profitable. Properly executed, the merchant enjoys it too.Sadly, purchases on the Internet don't lend themselve to this negotiation technique; you really need to be face to face to make it work. R-

[Guest Shalomar]

Donny AKA ShalomarFly 2 ROCKS!!!It's not advertised, but Home Depot, Walmart, Kmart and Sears associates can forward discrete (key word) reasonable offers to their superiors for authorization, your best chance of success is toward the end of the month. Often they will go as far as writing up a clearance tag to get you past the cashier, at least in my Lehigh Valley area. The worst they can do is say no, and if they consistently see you walking out, they might be more inclined to make counteroffers or say yes.I offered $200 for a mountai bike listed at $495 at Sears. Just lowballing, cuz I wanted some room. I was told I had to pay the $25 assembly fee. So it was $225 plus tax instead of $495 plus tax. You never know.Best Regards, Donny:-wave

[N400QW 205]

Disagreement is fine with us. Glad to hear that you are able to haggle with retail merchants succesfully.:-)We did take pains to point out that haggling seems to work with used motor vehicles and a few other exceptions. Just pointing out that the majority of retail consumers are unable to change retail merchants minds on price points and are left with the option of either purchasing at the set price or not making the purchase.Note that in the the case you make that "I either pay the asking price or I leave" is the normal experience for a majority of consumers and it would seem you are in the same category with the few exceptions where haggling has worked for you.Our statements about the "norm" in business were not intended to be taken as absolutes because we are aware that there "exceptions" to nearly everything in life. The intention was to help some who may not understand these principles a lot of disapointment in case they are unable to get haggling to work with the next addon that comes down the pike:-)We are fairly certain that many of the vocal outcries and complaints heard from certain flightsimmers regarding the price point of XYZ addon are from frustration caused by lack of understanding of these basic principles.:-)

[mgh 89]

Nice try to avoid answering by pointing me to YOUR posts.I'll make it easy for you, just give me just one link to someone whining etc.

[N400QW 205]

:-)

[Jeff Nielsen 1,386]

Let me make this simple. I know of no FS add-on company that is an actual public company with shareholders, so the answer is NO we don't have to open our books, period, to anyone.Even if we were public we still wouldn't have to disclose most costs involved in order to maintain our competive edge.

[N400QW 205]

Exactly Jeff:-)

[Sonar5 3]

>Nice try to avoid answering by pointing me to YOUR posts.>>I'll make it easy for you, just give me just one link to>someone whining etc.I'm not avoiding answering, you have been around long enough to know they exist in my opinion, and were just playing a little game to bait me, so I played along, and had a good time doing it too. :-) Talk about being unable to use a SIMPLE SEARCH TOOL. I even showed you how to use it. :-lolI typed this in the search fields:"payware doesn't make money"I hope it meets your burden but if it doesn't I really don't care, as those conversations have been pretty apparent over here.Here is but one:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=search"payware developers just do not make the volume sales to be able to lower their prices."Of course then you'll probably say its old, or it isn't relevant or something ridiculous like that. :-lol :-lolWell I'm off to coach my son's baseball team to victory, which is better than doing your research since it seems too difficult a task for you. Have a day, :-lol :-lolSonar5 Grab My FREEWARE Voice recognition Profiles here:[a href=http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fs2004misc&DLID=58334]Cessna 172 Voice Profile[/a][a href=http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fs2004misc&DLID=60740]FSD Avanti Voice Profile[/a].You will need the main FREEWARE Flight Assistant program to use it, get it here:[a href=http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=genutils&DLID=39661]Flight Assistant 2.2[/a]

[Guest Zevious Zoquis]

See, you call that "whining." To me and most of the rest of us, it's simply a dev offering a reasonable explanation in response to a posted criticism/complaint. If you don't like the answer or don't believe it to be true, fine, but don't try and turn it into some sort of federal case when it just isn't.

[N400QW 205]

>See, you call that "whining." To me and most of the rest of>us, it's simply a dev offering a reasonable explanation in>response to a posted criticism/complaint. If you don't like>the answer or don't believe it to be true, fine, but don't try>and turn it into some sort of federal case when it just isn't.> Have to agree Zevious! Here we have an individual making accusatory posts that appear to be bordering on paranoia about payware developers and their "whining", "schemes", and other misc. negativity.Such post do not have that "ring of truth" that we would all like to hear. We doubt that any of the developers who have been addressed by this individual have the "ulterior motives" he would like to tag them with:-)

[Sonar5 3]

Like I said, Baseball Game. :-lol :-lol

[N400QW 205]

Hope you win...wasn't addressing you:-)

[Sonar5 3]

"Hope you win...wasn't addressing you"....Yeah well, read my post again ron, I wasn't replying to you either time.The Avsim forum system shows which post I was replying to, so maybe look at that next time.Oh and we will win. :-) Grab My FREEWARE Voice recognition Profiles here:[a href=http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fs2004misc&DLID=58334]Cessna 172 Voice Profile[/a][a href=http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fs2004misc&DLID=60740]FSD Avanti Voice Profile[/a].You will need the main FREEWARE Flight Assistant program to use it, get it here:[a href=http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=genutils&DLID=39661]Flight Assistant 2.2[/a]

[Holger 0]

Howdy,one thing I find a bit ironic about this price debate is that the "critics" tend to suggest that payware development is some secret society, when, in fact, a lot of the information to evaluate the truthfulness of a dev's claim is readily available.When I first started thinking about making a payware project it took me just a few emails to publishers and distributors to get the necessary information to evaluate whether the project would be economically feasible for me. Some distributors even post their conditions on their websites.As for assessing sales numbers and other factors you may find some helpful hints in a summary I posted a while back in the scenery developer's forum: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=searchAre there unreasonable or false claims? You bet! But, if you don't believe someone, take a moment to do some background research yourself so that you have more to offer in response than just unproven counterclaims of your own.----Another thing I'd like to point out is that add-on development is not the black & white situation that some would like to believe: many developers contribute to both payware and freeware projects. I know, "I was attacked by an Avsim Bravo Zulu award holder for Freeware!" doesn't have that nice negative ring to it but unless a post by a developer is clearly in support of his product, he's just another member of the Avsim community like yourself - one opinion, one vote!Cheers, Holger