On ‎8‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 12:02 PM, Paraffin said:

I don't think it's valid to compare Microsoft with other game companies.

I think those are bad comparisons.

XP11 is a labor of love by one obsessed individual (and I thank him for it). Most major studios would have stopped production of the XP series a decade ago. P3D is a defense contractor project that's making most of it's money in certified simulation.

MS is still just a traditional software house in the end. They've got bean counters that will want to see a certain ROI. That's unlikely to come from straight sales. Nearly every game in existence today relies on monetizing post-initial purchase DLC of some kind. You can 100% bet MS is going to want to benefit from the same.

Now, perhaps they something else in mind, like directly partnering with 3rd party developers to produce DLC that's "official." That would be interesting.

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

3 hours ago, Paraffin said:

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.

Unless MS uses a different sale model than other flight sims, i.e. a one time purchase granting indefinite future upgrades to the user (like win10), with development funded by marketplace DLCs.

As someone who buys very very few add-ons, this would be a best case scenario for me. But of course it's subjective. 🙂

5 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

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.

The 8/22 update said they are in the process of 3rd party talks but they have incomplete staffing. There was talk of screenshots from Feb that look pretty good, did they not realize to post the job back then? Like I said - behind schedule and likely over budget with all these "high horse" titles!

PMDG and Orbx (a couple of the largest developers) should have been contacted months ago one would think, since or if 3rd parties was such a huge deal. At least talks on what is trying to be accomplished. Some early interplay would likely be extremely valuable to the final product.

DTG did something similar - develop a plan, and then try to talk to 3rd parties; most of the 3rd parties said no; FSW died. This could happen with MSFS, I hope not, but we'll see. 

5 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

Even so, that is progress...

Did you know that a thief is making progress with every theft? 

 

5 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

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. 

 I don't care about the size of the team, I care about quality and efficiency. I would rather have 5 excellent people who care, are honest, and are full of integrity, than 50 people who sip coffee and smoke outside half the day. The larger the team the more potential for a loss of quality control and increased costs for everybody. A team of 50 excellent people would be fine, but we flight simmers know that will not happen; hence the reason I don't want to hear "exec producer" here. 

Just because MSFS is on the horizon does not mean it is an automatic success. My concerns are being expressed, because I have been down this road too many times.

6 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

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

I hope I have reason to have a better outlook.

You will never see me being politically correct, but at the same time you will see me give high praise where it is due. 🙂

I guarantee pmdg would most like for none of this to be happening. 

1 hour ago, pracines said:

I hope I have reason to have a better outlook.

You will never see me being politically correct, but at the same time you will see me give high praise where it is due. 🙂

Really, I would just rather see you contribute something of value to conversation.

Your "rants" in response were over the top, and not worth engaging given that MS knows how to survive in this arena much better than you, and has been fairly candid with their direction (at this early stage) and desire to interact with the community.

 

6 minutes ago, FlyBaby said:

Really, I would just rather see you contribute something of value to conversation.

Your "rants" in response were over the top, and not worth engaging given that MS knows how to survive in this arena much better than you, and has been fairly candid with their direction (at this early stage) and desire to interact with the community.

 

So far Microsoft is running 0-2 success to failures in this market place. They abandoned FSX because it wasn't profitable enough. And Flight was a flop because of their lack of 3rd party developer involvement.

I've been working professionally with Microsoft as a vendor, a partner and a support organization since 1991...never assume they know better than the consumers.

Just saying....

OK. Here is some advice for everyone in this Forum.

No more personal shots. If it happens again the person doing the shooting will get a vacation. We frown on that here.

Thanks

17 hours ago, yurei said:

So far Microsoft is running 0-2 success to failures in this market place. They abandoned FSX because it wasn't profitable enough. And Flight was a flop because of their lack of 3rd party developer involvement.

I've been working professionally with Microsoft as a vendor, a partner and a support organization since 1991...never assume they know better than the consumers.

Just saying....

Wasn't "profitable" enough, or had just run its course????

DTG picked up FSX and continued to run with it....with over $5k in DLC that "depend" on it.

P3D picked up the base code, and ran with it...with 3P vendors that "depend" it.

That does not sound like a failure to me...

So they failed at "Flight", that's 1-1, check your counting...

Failures are not "just failures" it if you can learn from the mistakes, come back, and take the crown. Any champion knows this...

And with just a 2-minute video, MSFS upstaged everything that went on at a 3 day flight sim convention that MS didn't even "need" to attend; and MSFS is what everyone has been taking about since then.

Sounds like the champ is coming back to me...to reclaim that title...

Your credentials sound impressive (vendor, partner, and support), so it sounds like you "depend" on MS for a few things as well.

So...as I said, MS "knows" how to survive in this business better than anyone criticizing them on these forums.

Just Saying...

15 minutes ago, FlyBaby said:

 So they failed at "Flight", that's 1-1, check your counting...

To me they are more like 12-0 as Flight was never part of the MS Flight Simulator franchise, it was a new model/strategy.

The decision to pull-out the plug on the Aces Studio seemed to be more like an strategy to cut costs as they closed a lot of other studios. We have to remember we were in the middle of a big financial crisis.

On ‎8‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 9:01 AM, snglecoil said:

 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.

Having myself pioneered several new techniques for advanced aircraft and VC lighting over the past few decades, I concur with your opinion. Long before ACES was disbanded MS invited me to submit a few "White Papers" on the subject for them to publish. Sadly, since their closure those have been lost to the bit bucket. They are however still available at both Free Flight Design Studio and FS_Developer.

Because a few others have stated their ages, for the record I am 70.5 years old...

The Marketplace platform is the way to, like Steam keeping everything up to date, instead of going to different venders or load up multiple clients. A Marketplace is much more consumer friendly and that is what Flight Simming is desperate need of to grow. PMDG of course is afraid os this, but honestly their prices are ridiculous and MS might not want a $120 DLC on their Marketplace anyway. FS2020 has great potential to attract new flight simmers, but it has to be accessible and consumer friendly. 

Marketplace? Tell that to Venders , cutting into their profit?

10 hours ago, Adrian123 said:

Marketplace? Tell that to Venders , cutting into their profit?

You make it sound like doing your own promotions and stuff doesn't cost a thing. Marketing can be really expensive (let alone the time spent on it), especially if you need to do it on a global scale. Furthermore I can't imagine that the online stores for flight simulator add ons out there do not take a piece of the pie.

On the contrary, I think a single marketplace will actually save vendors (a lot of) money, though it may depend on the amount of money MS will want to have per purchase. After all a single marketplace will have a really large percentage of the active user base as a frequent visitor and you won't throw money away on incorrectly targeted ads. 

 

Like many others here I agree. MS is doing a big investment in the new iteration of MSFS. For that to prevail outside the enthusiast corners of the internet like this forum they need a steady stream of cash over the years to come. So getting a fair share of the revenues from third-party developers that will benefit a lot from the investment by MS is the only way. And to take off, this product needs a professional, industry standard online store where you buy all your addons and they are automatically updated etc - like on all other modern digital distribution platforms... 

And let's keep the "Flight" failure out of this discussion. The bean counters at MS knows better than us that was the wrong way to do it. Quite a lot of water has flowed in the digital distribution rivers since that fiasco...

It has been said that the online store will be the Xbox store, that will contain ALL Xbox games (100's of them), and obviously MSFS will fall amongst them all. Nothing has been said if there will be a separate and unique outlet for the sim.