42 minutes ago, F737NG said:

Detailed or not. Value for the quality or not. Rebate or not. We should all be able to agree that $140 (possibly ~2.5x the retail price of MSFS) is a lot of money for any product. Even more so if the usual additional expansion package that PMDG produces comes in at another $30 - $70.

As much as I like PMDG's depth and attention to detail, I hope that the sales numbers encourage them to bring the pricing back down.
Failing that, I would like other developers, whether Boeing specialists QualityWings or iFly, or indeed anyone else, take a look and realise there's a considerable gap left for them in the market at a much lower price point.
Considering that there's no guarantee that $140 will be the final price for the NG3, I'd hope that someone takes the opportunity.

I'm fortunate I can afford to buy at PMDG prices and have done with most of their products previously. However, I'm seriously hesitating on whether to buy or not and I cannot be the only one thinking that.
In the same way that Aerosoft doesn't appear to have really challenged FSLabs' A32x, it seems that a lack of a genuine rival has allowed PMDG to charge free rein. Serious competition can only be good for our wallets and make the community a healthier place.

I don't know whether it is you or me but your text is invisible to me. I've to left click, drag the mouse around to select it in order to see it.

Edited November 10, 20196 yr by domkle

2 hours ago, domkle said:

EDIT

PS do you have any idea of the margin on a Vuitton or Hermes or Gucci handbag made in a low wages country  ? The price is about 20 times the cost. PMDG has obvioulsy the strategy to position themselves as a luxury goods company. I encourage you to try to bargain at your nearest Vuitton shop and then tell me the discount you obtained.

That's actually quite an interesting sidetrack you bring up and this is exactly where I was going when I mentioned piracy, product clones, crime and poverty (although too steep prices almost always lead to one or more of the mentioned problems). Now I don't want to link the practices of these companies to PMDG as I think they are two completely different kind of animals, but this is exactly the point I was trying to make.

And no, I won't get a discount at these shops, they probably throw me about before I can even take a look at one of their products 🙂  BUT I DO know people who DO get discounts at these shops because of who they are or because of their purchasing history. Their products can also be obtained from outlet stores for a whole lot less, but you'll not have the latest model.  

In case of PMDG I see none of these problems (except maybe the piracy part), I think they are a reasonably fair company within a niche market who are trying to optimize their revenue and get a return for some of their long time investments. The only problem I see, which I was trying to point out, is that they may loose their more casual customers. But like someone else pointed out, the steep price might also be to keep their support department within certain boundaries in case MSFS becomes enormously popular. If they want their customers to only be really serious simmers than I absolutely see no problem with their pricing and in that case there'll be a clear gap for another company to jump in.  

I also came to the conclusion that PMDG might want to keep sales within a margin using inflated prices to control the demands for tech support for a very complex piece of software. I can see that they would be unindated with tickets from the great unwashed e.g. "I go to full throttle. The plane doesn't move even thought I can hear the engines going full blast and there is a loud beeping noise. What gives?" Its easy to see how one user could easily eat up hours of Tech Support time costing PMDG more than they even charged for the software. nearly all of us figure things out for ourselves or find tutorials on youtube or go to user support forums to iron out the wrinkles. I still use my AOA 737 training videos. But in the broader entertainment gaming world I am sure there would be a big demand for spoon feeding the masses. Why quadruple or perhaps octuple  your sales when the cost of after sales service will eat all your profits? It's a compelling argument and defence of PMDG pricing. One can see how PMDG themselves would be the only one's in a position to determine the sweet spot. Basically increase prices to reduce sales but also reduce tech support costs. One can see the bell curves on the wall in the PMDG board room. There'd be two and where the descending one crosses the rising one, draw a vertical line down to your x axis and the that's your retail price.

If it was my business though, that's not the strategy I would use to address that problem! You can have your cake and eat it here. Limitless sales and managed after sales service. Its easy, you sell the product and the tech support separately. If the above concern is in the ball park for why PMDG addons are so expensive. That's what I would do instead. The solution to that problem outlined above is akin to cutting of your nose to spite your face. 😁

Edited November 10, 20196 yr by Avidean

25 minutes ago, Raymond.Groenendijk said:

  

If you get a discount at Vuitton, you are a Saudi princess who buys twenty bags at at time. And even then.  And if you see them at a discount anywhere else than a Vuitton shop they are counterfeited. 

I understand the point about casual customers but my point is that they don't care because tI think (my opinion, no insider view) they don't maximize their sales but their profit. More margin on each sale, even with less sale volume can make more money at the end of the year. Bluntly said, they may want to clear their customer base from the casual simmers. You read this thread, you can't blame them.   They then should rise their price until the volume is too small even with a much larger margin (equilibrium point). Again this is all conjecture from my side but in synch with a constant rise of their prices these recent years. 

Edited November 10, 20196 yr by domkle

5 hours ago, domkle said:

You know what ? It reminds me, in some ways, of some Marcel Pagnol’s movies. He was a French writer in the 30’s/40’s and also made movies from his delightful books about the common folks in Provence and Marseilles. That the kind of loud discussion we could have around some anised liquor (un pastis) in a bar on the Vieux Port of Marseilles 😁  !

we cant have fair discussions on here.  Not all opinions or facts are allowed. 

My opinion on PMDG is that they have positioned themselves as the source of the $200 hamburger and they also have an attitude that I dont care for.

I went with iFly before and I hope to do so again.

Edited November 10, 20196 yr by sightseer

3 minutes ago, sightseer said:

we cant have fair discussions on here.  Not all opinions or facts are allowed. 

I beg to differ, Dave. This discussion has been hot  but the Avsim moderators have not intervened to stop it, have they ?

2 hours ago, F737NG said:

 

 

I see a FS20 two-tier jetliner market :

- PMDG, FSlabs, Majestic : High fidelity, very high price.

 - IFly, QW, CaptainSim, Aerosoft : excellent quality but not high fidelity and a little less expensive.

What I wonder is, which of them will be the OEM for a jet sold under the MS brandname 😄 ?

4 minutes ago, domkle said:

I beg to differ, Dave. This discussion has been hot  but the Avsim moderators have not intervened to stop it, have they ?

It hasn't been that bad as we all are looking forward to 2020

It was a lot worse during the sim wars before MS showed up

5 hours ago, Farlis said:

The problem is that PMDG have a monopoly within the FS world. No one except I-Fly ever developed high fidelity add-on reprentations of these aircraft.

Your very statement shows PMDG does NOT have a B737 monopoly. And in addition, other developers like FS Labs, etc., are certainly free to develop a B737 if they want to.

I am not a PMDG fan. Years ago I bought their original B737NGX for FSX because I wanted to learn how FMCs work. While programming an FMC was interesting for a while, I quickly learned that sitting back and watching the FMC fly the plane halfway across the country from 2 minutes after takeoff to 2 minutes before landing was not fun for me. So I stopped flying the 737NGX and have not purchased any other PMDG products.

Folks certainly have the right to complain about the price of the 737NG3 if they are motivated to do so, and I do appreciate the unfortunate financial burden the price presents for some.  But the relatively tiny (compared to the size of the PMDG customer base) number of folks complaining here about the price won't make one iota of difference. The bottom line is just that, PMDG's bottom line. If enough of the faithful PMDG customer base want to have a B737NG3 to fly in their new MSFS, then they will buy it and PMDG's pricing strategy will be successful. My expectation is this is what will happen, but I've been wrong more than once in my life.  🙄

Al

 

Edited November 10, 20196 yr by ark

About the whole "why don't I get a discount for an update" story, just look at the major smartphone manufactures. Every year they release a new flagship phone that retails in the €1000 region (!) and you don't get any discount as a current customer (although I do know that Apple has some sort of "yearly refresh plan"). And sadly the differences between each new generation of phones is becoming smaller and smaller but still, each year they sell them like hot cakes, even at that price.

Now, I'm not defending or bashing at PMDG, I'm just saying that everything is relative. For one the $139 price tag might be too expensive and for others it might not mean much. Fact is that they're becoming (or already are) a premium add-on developer. I must be careful not to say the wrong things, but I feel like you're paying a premium just because it has "PMDG" written on it (just like you do when buying from Apple, Samsung, Louis Vuitton, or any other premium brand).

I do agree that their statement about the higher price for P3D is now somewhat busted but perhaps their overhead has increased since the FSX days. Maybe more people are now working for them, they have their own forum, an updated store interface and backend and so on. I do know that this is all guessing but I'm just trying to find reasons as to why they're going to release the NG3 at such an increased price point. Some people might argue that there are no reasons and that it's just a consequence of running a monopoly but I don't think that's the sole reason.

To give one last example, I bought RDR2 last year for PS4 and guess what, I didn't receive any discount for buying it again on PC (and that's only a one year gap). Even worse is that the game is severely bugged for some people so they can't even play it. Adding to that you can't even transfer the progression of your online character to PC. So don't think that these marketing tricks are only being applied in the simulator world, they're just copying it now from the big AAA developers and publishers.

22 hours ago, Alec said:

While I believe we all aim at the most realistic and closest to real life experience, there´s an invisible line, separating what´s possible, to what´s viable financially.

*SIGH*

I'm having a deja-vu here... 

You seem to think, that you speak for everyone on the planet, with your highly personal and subjective claims!

First, let's get something straight here - PMDG (and PMDG alone) dictates and decides their own pricing. Quite frankly, I have a strong feeling, that they know juuust a tidy bit more about the market and their customers (which clearly you are not, given your recent posts), and what their pricing strategies should be towards them. Yet it's quite bewildering, that you seem to think, that just because you have an issue with the pricing, that everyone else share the same feelings?! I'm literally baffled...

Second, I'm a little mystified as to what you hope to accomplish, by constantly complaining about these things? I'm fairly certain, that you won't get the price lowered, since PMDG most likely has already heard this rant a number of times - yet they continue to ask these incredibly unrealistic and insane prices (by your account). 

The only thing I can see you may possibly can achieve from this, is a headache, an ulcer and probably stirring up the rest of the "This-Pricing-Strategy-Is-Completely-Unrealistic-And-Unfair"-crowd, while marching towards PMDG's HQ, with lighted torches and pitchforks.

This is just futile... but good luck to ya.

Cheers, people.

19 minutes ago, domkle said:

I beg to differ, Dave. This discussion has been hot  but the Avsim moderators have not intervened to stop it, have they ?

The moderators want this website to be all about flight sim but many of our discussions include topics like "the market" and no one can have as complete a discussion as any human can have on "the market" without involving politics or even what appears to be religion to some.

For all the thinking we do and all we think we know, its all based on what we have known. All of us know so little and none of us knows everything.  I remember watching Judge Judy tell a disabled woman that she was lying about her income.  "You couldnt feed a small dog on $500 a month", she said.  The rich judge called a person who told the truth a liar because she herself hadnt lived that life.

If I post "The Love of money is the root of all evil", will it be deleted?  How can I contribute to any discussion involving the manmade money centric market if I must exclude my experiences and thoughts because they might be offensive?

No discussion of the market would be complete without acknowledging those who are paid to sway public opinion or those who pay the lawmakers to control the market.

These are my thoughts on why our discussions will always tend towards a pro money, pro corporate viewpoint and they have very little to do with Precision Manuals Development Group (who you would think could write a manual to keep "the masses" from bothering them for assistance on how to use their product) so Ill stop here.

Dont like the pricing. Its very expensive and keeps going up.   But then again , I cant seem to recall a hobby that wasnt expensive and linear price increases as time went on to have more advancement.  Its the nature of the beast.   More wages, more overhead costs, more resources equals final product price increase.   And to think we paid for 200$ for a GPU upgrade and yet these days its over 1000$ for the RTX 2080s.   Go figure.   

1 hour ago, domkle said:

I see a FS20 two-tier jetliner market :

- PMDG, FSlabs, Majestic : High fidelity, very high price.

 - IFly, QW, CaptainSim, Aerosoft : excellent quality but not high fidelity and a little less expensive.

What I wonder is, which of them will be the OEM for a jet sold under the MS brandname 😄 ?

"a little less expensive" you're talking about 50 to 100 dollars less expensive products, I woudn't call that "a little"

I would put Majestic on both of the lists because they sell the same product with 3 differents prices that has different features. The Q400 starts from 40€, it goes up to 60€ if you want a version with thing like shared cockpit, failures, and 122€ if you add maintenance features etc.. So the Majestic could actually be considered high fidelity, high quality AND low price (except if you pay for the maintenance features but nobody uses these stuff anyway, it's for airliners and training)

Edited November 10, 20196 yr by cepact

Just now, cepact said:

"a little less expensive" you're talking about 50 to 100 dollars less expensive products, I woudn't call that "a little"

I would put Majestic on both of the lists because they sell the same product with 3 differents prices that has different features. The Q400 starts from 40€, it goes up to 60€ if you want a version with thing like shared cockpit, failures, and 122€ if you add maintenance features etc.. So the Majestic could actually be considered high fidelity, high quality AND low price 

I don't disagree, that was a Q&D representation.

The little less expensive because I think that all their prices will be higher than now. I wouldn't be surprised for instance to see MJC inflate their prices.