Xbox store will be coming for MSFM, and all the other Xbox releases. 

It will be interesting to see how freeware developers are accommodated, as Milton and many others gave given the hobby many unusual aircraft and scenery. 

It will be a pity if the hobby is controlled solely by a single vendor (Microsoft). 

We must have freedom of choice, else all our sims will be mostly clones of everyone else's. 

The response from you guys with development experience to a relatively new and obviously enthusiastic aspiring developer is disheartening. Yeah, it's true that wisdom comes with experience and to ignore the wisdom of those that have already put in the hard work of plowing the field is foolish. But it also takes the @nickhods of the world to naively ask questions and start dreaming of new ways to proactively push past (or find new ways around) barriers in what, as of right now, is largely unknown to anyone outside of MS. My career in IT for the past 20+ years has taught me that when a when a very smart and experience senior developer tells me that we can't do something because reasons A,B, and C exist, we nearly always find a way to get it done and that usually involves creating options D, E, or F.

Edited August 23, 20196 yr by snglecoil

32 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

but I would prefer to see the payware DLCs being curated by the MS team. Quality control to avoid all the issues we have right now with current sims.

One of the many difficulties with this approach is that such process cannot begging until your product has been completed (for obvious reasons, but just in case, they cannot test or curate your product if you haven't finished it yet!), so imagine you have been developing some content for 1 or 2 years (some take longer, up to 5) to find out later MS would not approve or allow your product to be available on their market place.. that would be a disaster.. it would make any planning becoming uncertain and many vendors on this niche market would just stop taking the risk.

It would be better to explain the terms and conditions and the requirements for such products to be compatible with the platform, or what we call the SDK Requirements, so as long as you do not break any terms and your product is following all the guidelines, there is no reason why you shouldn't be allowed to proceed with your plans.

S. 

 

13 hours ago, pracines said:

Talking about behind schedule - shouldn't MS already have somebody in place??? 😧

All this planning, and talking about plans, and they still need to hire a person who would be extremely important this very day, NOT tomorrow … right now!😕

 

Oftentimes, a person is already heading up that function during the planning and early execution phases, along with other responsibilities, so there comes a time when official positions are created to divide the workload more efficiently as the project kicks more into gear.

 

13 hours ago, pracines said:

How can there be a 3rd party progress update today? Maybe the update will be;... 'we have an ad for a position'.🙄

 

Even so, that is progress...

 

14 hours ago, pracines said:

But anyway to have an "executive producer" for an add-on market place, for flight simulator, indicates to me that there is like 50+ people in that department alone. If that exec is for the whole xbox game thing, that's another matter. But "high horse" titles like that also indicate to me, a bureaucracy that slows a process down.🤢 If we flight simmers have to wait for add-ons because Minecraft (or whatever games/add-ons) takes precedence, then MSFS will die fast.

 

Would you rather have a small team that can't produce enough, or a large team that can? The larger the team, the more need for structure / coordination etc.

We flight simmers have been waiting over 10 years for the next generation sim...and now MSFS is on the horizon. 

14 hours ago, pracines said:

 

To me its (the 3rd party bit) not looking attractive at this juncture.👎 

YES YES we will wait and see, this is just my feedback on the matter as I currently understand it. 

Yes, we will see if that view changes over the next 2 or 3 months. I suspect that it will.

6 minutes ago, snglecoil said:

The response from you guys with development experience to a relatively new and obviously enthusiastic aspiring developer is disheartening. Yeah, it's true that wisdom comes with experience and to ignore the wisdom of those that have already put in the hard work of plowing the field is foolish. But it also takes the @nickhods of the world to naively ask questions and start dreaming of new ways to proactively push past (or find new ways around) barriers in what, as of right now, is largely unknown to anyone outside of MS. My career in IT for the past 20+ years has taught me that when a when a very smart and experience senior developer tells me that we can't do something because reasons A,B, and C exist, we nearly always find a way to get it done and that usually involves creating options D, E, or F.

Good post. My (perhaps unfair) perception of flight sim developers is that most of them know all the ways you can’t do something. Judging by (perhaps unfairly, again) the standard of a lot of stuff that gets released in this market, some new blood with modern ideas is a good thing. 

21 minutes ago, snglecoil said:

The response from you guys with development experience to a relatively new and obviously enthusiastic aspiring developer is disheartening. Yeah, it's true that wisdom comes with experience and to ignore the wisdom of those that have already put in the hard work of plowing the field is foolish. But it also takes the @nickhods of the world to naively ask questions and start dreaming of new ways to proactively push past (or find new ways around) barriers in what, as of right now, is largely unknown to anyone outside of MS. My career in IT for the past 20+ years has taught me that when a when a very smart and experience senior developer tells me that we can't do something because reasons A,B, and C exist, we nearly always find a way to get it done and that usually involves creating options D, E, or F.

More concerning to me than naivety about how to create add-ons, is the naivety about how the community uses the products (the market, you know those that pay). See other discussion about what kinds of addons will be developed for new MSFS. 

Asking questions of the community is good, pre-supposing the answers is a path to failure.

Edited August 23, 20196 yr by yurei

I understand that a lot of the development community are probably very apprehensive about what a potential distribution model looks like under MS. I don't know for sure as I'm not an add-on developer, but I imagine it is sort of like a local specialty store thriving in their niche...right before Amazon changed the way retail is done. A lot of local vendors suffered and folded for sure. But there are success stories where a local specialty store partnered with Amazon using their incredible distribution channel (because Amazon's brilliance is not in retail, it is in distribution) and grew their business exponentially.

Yes right now it is too early to successfully chart a path other than through sheer luck, but it is never too early to start asking questions and generating ideas. 

1 hour ago, yurei said:

Certainly appreciate his enthusiasm and am not discounting his potential. However, he is obviously very naive, not only about the many, many ways flight simulators are used/played but, more importantly, about the BUSINESS of development for flightsim. 

Undoubtedly, MS has a some kind of vision for how their new sim will drive the market. Without making it transparently open to 3rd party development (SDK)  and embracing community talent, that vision will be very near sighted and potentially short lived.  

Our young friend (and MS) would do well to study how Lockheed Martin has driven the market thru 3rd party development and spend less time, at this stage of his development, hitching his wagon to what is, right now, vaporware. 

Being 38, I'm overjoyed at being called young. 😀

I started my own software company at 28, which now employs people. We develop 3D industrial simulation software and have contracts in the US and Europe. (What do I know about making money from simulation software or graphics programming though, right?).

Believe me, if I'd have listed to the naysayers (of which there were many), I'd never have even tried.

"Stay hungry, stay foolish" as Steve Jobs said. So, we'll see.

Edited August 23, 20196 yr by nickhod

1 hour ago, nickhod said:

Being 38, I'm overjoyed at being called young. 😀

I started my own software company at 28, which now employs people. We develop 3D industrial simulation software and have contracts in the US and Europe. (What do I know about making money from simulation software or graphics programming though, right?).

Believe me, if I'd have listed to the naysayers (of which there were many), I'd never have even tried.

"Stay young, stay foolish" as Steve Jobs said. So, we'll see.

I'm...uh...well lets just say north of my mid 40s leaving a comfortable IT career to pursue commercial aviation. How's that for staying foolish?!? 😂

Edited August 23, 20196 yr by snglecoil
Spell check doesn't help when you type a correctly spelled word different from the word intended :)

1 hour ago, simbol said:

One of the many difficulties with this approach is that such process cannot begging until your product has been completed (for obvious reasons, but just in case, they cannot test or curate your product if you haven't finished it yet!), so imagine you have been developing some content for 1 or 2 years (some take longer, up to 5) to find out later MS would not approve or allow your product to be available on their market place.. that would be a disaster.. it would make any planning becoming uncertain and many vendors on this niche market would just stop taking the risk.

 

It also might not allow the release of early access versions by vendors.

Can I direct you to Robert Randazzo's comments here:

https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/14257-12jun19-pmdg-and-the-microsoft-flight-simulator-2020-question

and in particular:

All of us would love to see a new, modern technology platform that remains open-world to developers like PMDG, but it is highly unlikely (given recent history) that this will happen. I will not be surprised to see this title marketed more toward the game community based upon my historic conversations with Microsoft as they tried to find ways to expand their customer base. I will also not be surprised to find that Microsoft has it's eyes set firmly on raiding the space in which many of your favorite expansions exist: Aircraft, scenery, airports and apps............ 

If that marketplace ( foe MSFS ) is constructed similarly to the effort with Flight or Dovetail- then it is a horrible thing indeed for customers in the long term.

 

It also must be considered that PMDG is not the most important addon, and that there are those that do not want such intricate addons. Remember that the sim will also be available on Xbox, and their 60+ million users, who expect an easily accessable game/sim, of which PMDG and their ilk are most certainly not. The sim will need a very balanced range of addons to reach their mass target market, and not scare them off. 

Yes, obviously there is a niche market for the serious summer, but the entry level addons must be considered for the potential mass target marget. 

1 hour ago, ailchim said:

Can I direct you to Robert Randazzo's comments here:

https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/14257-12jun19-pmdg-and-the-microsoft-flight-simulator-2020-question

and in particular:

All of us would love to see a new, modern technology platform that remains open-world to developers like PMDG, but it is highly unlikely (given recent history) that this will happen. I will not be surprised to see this title marketed more toward the game community based upon my historic conversations with Microsoft as they tried to find ways to expand their customer base. I will also not be surprised to find that Microsoft has it's eyes set firmly on raiding the space in which many of your favorite expansions exist: Aircraft, scenery, airports and apps............ 

If that marketplace ( foe MSFS ) is constructed similarly to the effort with Flight or Dovetail- then it is a horrible thing indeed for customers in the long term.

 

There's nothing there but uninformed supposition from a developer that we know has an ax to grind. The shots at it being targeted at the gaming community aren't even true. It's just PMDG trying to temper expectations because it helps them continue to sell planes. 

It's fairly clear from numerous comments that PMDG is not open to MS taking any percentage, even a fair cut, to run a marketplace. That's fine. They can keep selling $120 planes in P3D and see how far that takes them. 

MS is going to have to have a system where they take a cut. Without that, they won't be able to sustain future development. The gaming industry has changed dramatically the last decade. Very few developers can survive on selling millions of copies of a single piece of software. 

There's noway around this reality. 3rd party developers can either adapt, or they will eventually lose in the long run. Just my opinion. That may not be fair, but the business world isn't fair. 

 

Edited August 23, 20196 yr by bonchie

2 minutes ago, bonchie said:

MS is going to have to have a system where they take a cut. Without that, they won't be able to sustain future development. The gaming industry has changed dramatically the last decade. Very few developers can survive on selling millions of copies of a single piece of software. 

I don't think it's valid to compare Microsoft with other game companies. The game division is heavily subsidized by sales of Windows clients and servers, Office software, Xbox consoles, and everything else Microsoft does as a huge corporation. They could even use MSFS and the next Halo as a loss leader to help sell the next Xbox, if they wanted to.

As a general principle, the idea that a flight sim needs a cut of add-on sales is also disproved by the healthy state of P3D and XP11, where the developers manage to survive without taking a cut of add-on sales. If they can do it, then Microsoft can. 

I'm not saying they should, or predicting what the arrangement will be. If there is a single sales portal, then fees could be justified for credit card processing and bandwidth. I'm just pointing out that "they won't be able to sustain future development without taking a cut" isn't a very good argument considering the size of Microsoft, and the fact that Lockheed-Martin and Laminar Research have survived for years without it.

On ‎8‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 11:40 AM, bonchie said:

There's nothing there but uninformed supposition from a developer that we know has an ax to grind.

They want to monopolize the market, but don’t like the developer to monopolize the market.

Meh. 

Edited August 24, 20196 yr by n4gix
REMOVED EXCESSIVE QUOTE!!! Please stop quoting the entire post you are replying to!