1 hour ago, Raymond.Groenendijk said:

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. 

 

I agree having all users on a single place would be useful, however anyone thinking that MS will do the marketing and promotion for 3rd party providers doesn't really understand how this and any gaming business works.

As with any marketplace, it provides the platform, but it is up to you to do your promotion, marketing and support, nobody is going to do that for you..by the contrary you need to provide lots of the marketing materials to the market place if you wish to stand a chance against the user search so your products are found..

Regards 

S.

1 hour ago, simbol said:

I agree having all users on a single place would be useful, however anyone thinking that MS will do the marketing and promotion for 3rd party providers doesn't really understand how this and any gaming business works.

As with any marketplace, it provides the platform, but it is up to you to do your promotion, marketing and support, nobody is going to do that for you..by the contrary you need to provide lots of the marketing materials to the market place if you wish to stand a chance against the user search so your products are found..

Regards 

S.

Hopefully Microsoft will set up a separate area that addresses only MSFS and it's related products.

 

59 minutes ago, simbol said:

I agree having all users on a single place would be useful, however anyone thinking that MS will do the marketing and promotion for 3rd party providers doesn't really understand how this and any gaming business works.

As with any marketplace, it provides the platform, but it is up to you to do your promotion, marketing and support, nobody is going to do that for you..by the contrary you need to provide lots of the marketing materials to the market place if you wish to stand a chance against the user search so your products are found..

Regards 

S.

While that might be true for generic app stores which are overpopulated by lots and lots of clones (Play Store and Apple App Store are good examples) that doesn't really go up for new stores and targeted stores (as long as they don't become overpopulated). With a flight simulator store a lot of people already know what they want, be it a fighter jet, or maybe even specifically an F-16. But it might also be a more detailed version of a specific airport or airports for a specific country or region. Or maybe they are looking for something that will make navigation easier. You see, that's a big factor where you won't have to spend money (on Google Adwords for example). 

A lot of online stores also have spotlight presentations for new and/or interesting apps/add ons, which will help you get your new add on off the ground a bit. And then you have the popular/trending section for add ons which are being sold/downloaded a lot or are gaining popularity quickly. Rating and review functionality might also give your product a boost.

So don't tell me MS won't do ANY marketing and promotion with their marketplace, because they probably will in some form or the other. Of course you will still need to create good screenshots, videos and product texts and you might still want to spend additional budget for marketing your product, but a central marketplace will probably still save you money in the end.

On 8/22/2019 at 8:43 PM, 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!😕

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

 

Isn't there a big difference between someone managing a storefront and MS reaching out to third parties to talk to them about the technical side of getting content to work on the sim?

1 hour ago, Krakin said:

Isn't there a big difference between someone managing a storefront and MS reaching out to third parties to talk to them about the technical side of getting content to work on the sim?

MS just has to provide a concise SDK, the third parties will do the rest, technically speaking.

 

If we compare to DCS to stay in the flight sim domain the market place there has some good point for the user in terms of simplicity of installation and update. The fact that DCS is still an ongoing sim also have some drawback as they keep selling beta product but to be fair when a new version  of dcs come out all is updated automatically with one click. If you compare to the burden it is with P3D... so as a user I wouldn't necessarily be against a MS marketplace provided it guarantee a level of quality compatibility and ease of installation and update. If it means paying my add on 10% more so be it. Anyway no market place did not prevent a significant raise in the ad ons price over the last few year. And a continuing flow of revenue for MS through the market place could also meand continuous improvement. Time will tell but again this could be a neat system.