PMDG and MSFS2020

[TechguyMaxC 516]

4 minutes ago, rjfry said:

Well I wonder if MICROSFT will eat the cost of MSFS and give away free they can afford it is an update on there sim after all.

MSFS/Asobo has a team of 200, engaged in development for something like the last 5 years producing tens or even hundreds of thousands of hours of labor.  No one expects them to give this away for free.

PMDG on the other hand, have already done the work to develop their products for FSX.

Let me attempt to simplify this to avoid further hot takes:

If PMDG doesn't need to expend significant effort to make their existing products compatible with MSFS, they should do so as a courtesy to their customers.  No one is saying they should invest thousands of man-hours into giving us all something for nothing.  

Edited October 2, 2019 by TechguyMaxC

[MattNischan 3,820]

Just now, TechguyMaxC said:

If the compatibility is sufficient that there is little development time required to make existing products available to your LOYAL customers, why would you not do this?  It's simply a good business decision.

Now if the effort is non-trivial that's a whole different ballgame, and no one has suggested devs should eat the cost in this case so please, don't over-react.

Just to be extra clear here as well: I was expressing my own opinion of what I would do in their positions, if I was in a good enough fiscal position to do so. I certainly don't expect or feel entitled to a free product that took work to produce. In fact, I expect most devs will probably have to charge, since the market is so niche that they aren't sitting on mounds of capital they can just burn.

The cost of testing is not insignificant, and can be a large percentage of or even equal to your dev team cost. So, I know I threw testing out there without a lot of context, but if you take a few people two weeks of quick playability testing (which is going to be a low figure for these types of products), that can already be 1 to 1.5 man months, and you could easily be incurring 5-10K in costs. That is no small number for a niche developer.

[G-RFRY 1,717]

5 minutes ago, TechguyMaxC said:

MSFS/Asobo has a team of 200, engaged in development for something like the last 5 years producing tens or even hundreds of thousands of hours of labor.  No one expects them to give this away for free.

PMDG on the other hand, have already done the work to develop their products for FSX.

Let me attempt to simplify this to avoid further hot takes:

If PMDG doesn't need to expend significant effort to make their existing products compatible with MSFS, they should do so as a courtesy to their customers.  No one is saying they should invest thousands of man-hours into giving us all something for nothing.  

A few thousand for a third party developer is about the same as millions to MICROSFT the largest company on the stock market overtaking Apple worth billions.

It would not surprise me if Microsoft marketing  budget in a year is almost the same as the cost of MSFS.

Edited October 2, 2019 by rjfry

[TechguyMaxC 516]

11 minutes ago, rjfry said:

A few thousand for a third party developer is about the same as millions to MICROSFT the largest company on the stock market overtaking Apple worth billions.

PMDG isn't selling their products for peanuts.  They're doing quite well, I'm sure.  

Those of you arguing against this proposition must understand: there is precedent.  PMDG made their FSX-native aircraft compatible with 32-bit P3D, and again 64-bit.  They did not charge for these updates.  I'm sure if they lost money on this endeavor they would not have done it - TWICE!

Edit: rjfry pointed out that PMDG did in fact charge for the FSX to P3D initial conversion, though they provided the 32-bit to 64-bit update at no cost

Edited October 2, 2019 by TechguyMaxC

[G-RFRY 1,717]

1 minute ago, TechguyMaxC said:

PMDG isn't selling their products for peanuts.  They're doing quite well, I'm sure.  

Those of you arguing against this proposition must understand: there is precedent.  PMDG made their FSX-native aircraft compatible with 32-bit P3D, and again 64-bit.  They did not charge for these updates.  I'm sure if they lost money on this endeavor they would not have done it - TWICE!

They did not charge for 32bit to 64bit I had better put a claim in then I purchased the 747 twice.

[irrics 1,517]

Careful making predictions about how software developers will handle things moving forward based upon the past.

Things have really started to change in that space in the last couple years 

[Kevin_28 165]

They did not charge you if you went from v3 P3D to v4 P3D.

[irrics 1,517]

This all sounds a lot like:

“my wife didn’t cheat on me last year, so she won’t next year”

[TechguyMaxC 516]

2 minutes ago, irrics said:

Careful making predictions about how software developers will handle things moving forward based upon the past.

Things have really started to change in that space in the last couple years 

I'm not saying PMDG won't charge, in fact, I predict they will, as I said much earlier in this thread.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

3 minutes ago, rjfry said:

They did not charge for 32bit to 64bit I had better put a claim in then I purchased the 747 twice.

You are correct.  I must have been confusing them with another developer, perhaps FSLabs or Majestic.  

I still believe there is a strong business case to be made for converting their FSX products to MSFS if the incurred cost is trivial.

[Greazer 1,338]

Converting to 64 bit is relatively easy. Reworking the aircraft for a different sim and flight modeling engine is not. Customers will likely have to pay, it's real work.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

Just now, Greazer said:

Converting to 64 bit is relatively easy. Reworking the aircraft for a different sim and flight modeling engine is not. Customers will likely have to pay, it's real work.

No one is asking them to do this.  Please read the posts in this thread more carefully before making an argument against a position that NO ONE is espousing.

[Kevin_28 165]

One thing that I am hopeful for is that they won't feel the need to charge us an additional % because MSFS is used for entertainment.

[irrics 1,517]

1 minute ago, TechguyMaxC said:

No one is asking them to do this.  Please read the posts in this thread more carefully before making an argument against a position that NO ONE is espousing.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

3 minutes ago, irrics said:

I wasn't responding to you, and the person to whom I responded doesn't exactly have a great reputation round these parts.