Thoughts regarding third party pricing...

[Chock 17,769]

Just now, Mroberts95 said:

I would say the Majestic is up there as well. I dont own it and for some reason I though the Pro version was like 80-90eur.

Nope, either 40, or 60 or (for the training version which includes maintenance modes for engineers) 99. The 60 quid version is the one you want. And yes, it probably is coming to the new sim apparently at some point.

[Chock 17,769]

4 minutes ago, Mroberts95 said:

I will never buy an aerosoft plane

You're missing out. Catalina, Bronco, Antonov An2, Wilga. All of these are brilliant.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Chock

[Mroberts95 136]

Just now, Chock said:

You're missing out. Catalina, Bronco, Antonov AN2. All of these are brilliant.

To each their own. Those aircraft do not interest me in the slightest. I am glad people are buying their products. 

[Chock 17,769]

1 minute ago, Mroberts95 said:

To each their own. Those aircraft do not interest me in the slightest. I am glad people are buying their products. 

DC-8? That's good as well. CRJ is too.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Chock

[Chock 17,769]

10 minutes ago, Mroberts95 said:

However flight sim is a hobby and not just a "game".

I'm pretty sure that people who play loads of shooter games, or MMORPGs regard that as their hobby.

[Mroberts95 136]

1 hour ago, Chock said:

I'm pretty sure that people who play loads of shooter games, or MMORPGs regard that as their hobby.

And alot of them purchase addon dlc, spend money on micro transactions etc.

Ive dropped over $300 on cod this year

[eslader 1,783]

I tried that pseudo-MMO Second Life once. Within 30 minutes one guy had tried to sell me illegal drugs. I don't mean actual drugs, I mean drawings of illegal drugs that my avatar could carry around in its inventory. Not long after that another dude tried to sell me genitalia that I could attach to my avatar, and actually seemed surprised when I declined the opportunity.

Spend one hour in that game looking at the bizarre things people buy and suddenly a PMDG plane seems downright ordinary. 😉

 

 

[pmb 5,137]

11 minutes ago, eslader said:

I tried that pseudo-MMO Second Life once. Within 30 minutes one guy had tried to sell me illegal drugs. I don't mean actual drugs, I mean drawings of illegal drugs that my avatar could carry around in its inventory. Not long after that another dude tried to sell me genitalia that I could attach to my avatar, and actually seemed surprised when I declined the opportunity.

Thanks for the reading. I am not in that stuff, only flightsims and a bit truck driving, so it's interesting to learn about other worlds...

Kind regards, Michael

[Der Zeitgeist 1,575]

20 minutes ago, eslader said:

I tried that pseudo-MMO Second Life once. Within 30 minutes one guy had tried to sell me illegal drugs. I don't mean actual drugs, I mean drawings of illegal drugs that my avatar could carry around in its inventory. Not long after that another dude tried to sell me genitalia that I could attach to my avatar, and actually seemed surprised when I declined the opportunity.

Spend one hour in that game looking at the bizarre things people buy and suddenly a PMDG plane seems downright ordinary. 😉

 

Oh yes, Second Life was just totally on a different level. You had people actually marrying each other in there, or their "avatars", for that matter.

The whole ingame economy and its effects was really fascinating, because the ingame currency can be more or less freely exchanged with real-world money, which leads to all kinds of interesting social phenomena ingame, like prostitution.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Der Zeitgeist

[Virtual-Chris 682]

I have no idea how many planes these companies sell for $130 each, but I’m guessing it’s a VERY niche market. 
 

MSFS 2020 is about to blow the doors open on the market for flight sim add ons. I don’t think many people here realize just how massive this is going to get. We’re possibly looking at 10s of millions of players once it hits Xbox. 

The math is simple. If you can sell 1M planes for $10 that’s $10M in your pocket. Do you think these companies making study planes realize this?

I mean they can still sell them for $130 but how many people will buy a plane that cost more than the game? Very few. 

As I said earlier, their best strategy is to come out of the gate at the same pricing as before, get the enthusiasts to pay top dollar and then rake in the cash selling at a “sale” price to the masses. Ultimately, the sale prices and volumes establish a new economy. 
 

Time will tell. 

[Chock 17,769]

If you ask me, the people who played Second Life needed to actually get a first one.

[ShawnG 1,823]

Just now, Virtual-Chris said:

I have no idea how many planes these companies sell for $130 each, but I’m guessing it’s a VERY niche market. 
 

MSFS 2020 is about to blow the doors open on the market for flight sim add ons. I don’t think many people here realize just how massive this is going to get. We’re possibly looking at 10s of millions of players once it hits Xbox. 

The math is simple. If you can sell 1M planes for $10 that’s $10M in your pocket. Do you think these companies making study planes realize this?

I mean they can still sell them for $130 but how many people will buy a plane that cost more than the game? Very few. 

As I said earlier, their best strategy is to come out of the gate at the same pricing as before, get the enthusiasts to pay top dollar and then rake in the cash selling at a “sale” price to the masses. Ultimately, the sale prices and volumes establish a new economy. 
 

Time will tell. 

it is a niche market.  I don't think most new (or existing, tbh) flyers of the sim will really want what the PMDG and FSL is.  and if they were to sell it for ten bucks and they get a million simmers who own a product that they don't appreciate the complexity of, you have a support nightmare.  and that would be even a nightmare for a company that is wonderful at providing friendly support.  These guys... do not suffer fools gladly.

as I've said a few times here on this subject, the real problem is that nobody wants to make a lower grade competitor of the planes they model, because the avsim sim police will throw poo at them until they go away.  That is what I hope will be solved with a wider market.

[aleex 551]

6 hours ago, Virtual-Chris said:

I’m new to flight sims and was shocked to learn that people will pay $130 for a plane. But then, I suppose these are the same buyers that spend $1000 on a yoke. I think the flight sim enthusiast economy is really screwed-up.    

Well, I've been in sims for years and I get shocked everytime I see one of those prices too.

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

16 hours ago, mazex said:

There definitely is a small enthusiast market right now where there are enough customers willing to pay 50-150 USD for aircraft both in P3D/FSX/XP and DCS to cover the costs of producing them. The buyers are people like us here in this forum. I guess the median customer here is 47 years old and works as an engineer. Maybe has a PPL and to some extent regret that we did not go for a professional pilot career when we were young. But we didn't and it's too late now 🙂 And to be honest it's nice to be home the same time every day... But the median customer does not have financial problems and our main problem is actually to hide our software and hardware purchases from our wives/husbands/partners that would get very upset hearing that we spend hundreds of dollars a year on this hobby.

But anyone that has the most basic understanding of the economics of supply and demand know that if the potential customer base is ten times larger a lower price of 30-40 USD might very well bring more revenue to a company selling an advanced model of a 737 than 100+ USD. What happens otherwise is that someone else understands the market potential and does it. And if you sell it at 100+ now, it will be very hard to go down to 39 USD in a couple of months without getting loyal customers annoyed.

There is no doubt that we will continue to think that 70 USD is actually a fair price for a simulated aircraft. But the newcomers that will pour in now will not. And unfortunately, I think that in 6 months when the hype is over, we will be left with hopefully a customer base of MSFS that is twice as big as the community today. 

If I was responsible for the pricing strategy of one of the companies producing addon material for MSFS I would for sure consider the strategy that ORBX seems to go with. Reap the hype rider revenues now in the upcoming 6 months and rest confident that there will be a bigger customer base for a LONG time that will buy addons / DLC for 30-40 USD. But that's really the defacto high limit outside the niche enthusiast markets. And we hope to move away from that to some extent - don't we?

 

I have personally made this argument directly to developers so many times that my brain will explode if I even think about doing it again.  There are two reasons they will never do this, even if it's in their best interest short term and long term.

1. Ego, and that they worked hard on the product so they are going to charge what they think it's worth to them. PMDG is the absolute worst offender here, and I have a feeling Rob would actually agree.

2. They don't trust that enough people would buy their product at the lower price.  Ridiculous, and you'd think someone who risked the financial investment, time and energy would have more faith.

Aerosoft - they are wise enough to be believers in lower price begets more customers which in turn generates higher revenue.  Then again, the CEO comes from the financial world and that's not true for any other developer in flight sim.  It's also why I work for Aerosoft - they're both good and smart people.

 

[Chock 17,769]

17 minutes ago, ShawnG said:

as I've said a few times here on this subject, the real problem is that nobody wants to make a lower grade competitor of the planes they model, because the avsim sim police will throw poo at them until they go away.  That is what I hope will be solved with a wider market.

Nah, that's not true. Anyone who has read my posts and reviews over the years here on Avsim will know that I've always championed the budget efforts too and I don't care if anyone on Avsim doesn't like it. Just Flight/Aeroplane Heaven classic airliners, Virtualcol stuff, and even some Carenado stuff when it has (on occasion) measured up, in fact any developer who is prepared to tackle something interesting and unusual instead of going for the sure fire hit. Which is why I liked it as well when iFly took the wind out of PMDG's sails somewhat.

Without those guys who are prepared to do something different, we'd have had nothing from DeHavilland, Bristol, Fairchild, Hawker, BAC, Vickers, Fokker, Curtiss etc. This is exactly why I will always fly the flag for those makers just as much as I will for the big names with their flashy and expensive (and predictable) products.

Sod giving me another 737. Give me a Convair or a Caravelle or a Mercure.

 

Edited August 14, 2020 by Chock