Marketplace analysis

[peroni 541]

Too much time on my hands today so I run a quick excercise to see what products were more popular in the official marketplace based on number of ratings.
Note, to leave a rating one must have purchased the product via the marketplace, external purchases do not count.
Also not everybody that bought the product is forced to leave a rating so actual sold copies are likely a lot higher, however this could give an indication of some sort
Here's the top 14, the first one being the free EDLP
 

Developer	Product	Number of ratings
Aerosoft	EDLP	4174
Orbx	Landmarks London	1592
Carenado	Mooney	1419
Carenado	CT182T	1098
BT Studio	Kitfox	829
Fly Tampa	EKCH	521
ORBX	LOWI	521
Orbx	EGLC	386
Gaya	LOWZ	332
Carenado	PA 44	320
Flightbeam	KDEN	317
Gaya	LOWW	244
Orbx	KORS	215
LatinVFR	KMIA	201

 

Comments?

Edited December 22, 2020 by peroni

[vbazillio 2,234]

1 minute ago, peroni said:

Comments?

My vote doesn't count... I only purchase thru the vendor shop 😉

[desbean 357]

Might have something to do with how long a product has been out also.

The list seems to indicate that either there are a lot more MSFS users in Europe than in the US, or they just buy more addons?

They probably have a lot more cash than us poor Americans 🙂.

[cepact 517]

More ratings could also imply the product is bad. People rate products usually when they're unhappy with it, they rarely rate it when they have no problems with it. For example Orbx london was a mess when it released initially, this may explain why it has so many ratings.

Edited December 22, 2020 by cepact

[Car147 2,276]

90% of my purchases are direct from the Dev. Market place is far too slow in new items published, and even slower getting any updates.

[arsenal82 120]

i do not even bother to check marketplace

straight from devs ms is already rich

[Denwagg 191]

I don't like to purchase thru marketplace because it puts all of the addons in the main folder. I cannot control which of those addons are adding overhead to a flight or causing conflicts with others in the community folder. 

I ended up taking all of my purchased addons thru marketplace out of the Main Folder and putting them in my fsaddon linker folder and I control them thru Addon Linker like all of the other purchases and free downloads installing them into the community folder

Only downside to this it Marketplace says owned but not installed, and Content manager shows download available.

But the upside is If I want to ffy into say Kpdk and I do not want the overhead of the my Marketplaced purchased Imaginesim KATL I just disable it in Fsaddon Linker like any other purchased scenery.

Before I allow MSFS to install a update I put them back in the Main folder so MSFS sees them correctly

and updates if need be.

So I have a few Orbx and other scenery addons that I have to control that way. 

Regards

Edited December 22, 2020 by Denwagg

[Scottoest 1,561]

I'd guess a very small fraction of marketplace buyers actually bother to leave reviews, and without knowing that percentage there's not much to extrapolate.

This is further confounded by the fact that you can buy almost (all?) of these products directly from the vendor.

And as someone else pointed out, people might be more likely to leave reviews for a bad product, or a product they specifically had a bad experience with, than one that just works.  Sorta like how you'll always get more forum threads from people having problems, than you will people making threads to talk about their absence of problems.

Edited December 22, 2020 by Scottoest

[Pegaso 53]

Aerosoft's EDLP is not #1 because it is the best one ever, but it's free.... 🤔

[Cognita 1,076]

So 15,000 purchases through the online store that generated a review. I think it is hard to tell too much from this. 15,000 is no too much -- $150,000 assuming each add on is about $10.00. But as people have pointed out, many do not leave reviews -- I have not reviewed any of the 6 purchase I made from the Microsoft store.  And also, many do buy direct from the vendor, although that may be a much smaller number as many new people may not even know that is a possibility or, like me, just want to keep purchases centralized with one vendor.

[peroni 541]

Keep in mind these are ratings, not reviews. Leaving a rating for a product takes less than a second as opposed to a review where you have to type in something.

With that in mind, some quick thoughts
Carenado only sells via marketplace and have a total of 2837 ratings for their three products. At 30$ a pop that makes for about 85K US$ gross.
If only 50% of the purchasers left a rating that's quite a substantial sum. Good for them!

Bigtire Kitfox only sells via marketplace, at 9 US$ it brought in at least over 7.4K and it was a quick port from XP with less than stellar reviews

 

 

[Denwagg 191]

Someone stated that Microsoft Plans on Marketplace to be a additional profit avenue to support future continued development and improvements to MSFS.

I want to support Marketplace for that reason alone but right now its too clunky. Besides the problems with addon conflicts and overhead, the interface is to hard to negotiate, Many addons are not yet available on it (where is Klas), updates are not immediately current, no freeware support, no way to resolve problems with specific addons, you still have to go back to the developers website and last but not lease these purchases are placed in the main folder.

regards

 

[peroni 541]

19 minutes ago, Pegaso said:

Aerosoft's EDLP is not #1 because it is the best one ever, but it's free.... 🤔

Yes and it was stated in the opening message

[peroni 541]

For what is worth, here's the updated table at the end of the discount period

Developer	Product	Ratings  22/12	Ratings 04/01	Variation%
Carenado	PA 44	320	467	45.9
LatinVFR	KMIA	201	231	14.9
Carenado	Mooney	1419	1553	9.4
ORBX	LOWI	521	570	9.4
Gaya	LOWW	244	266	9.0
Carenado	CT182T	1098	1178	7.3
Orbx	EGLC	386	411	6.5
Aerosoft	EDLP (FREE)	4174	4413	5.7
Fly Tampa	EKCH	521	549	5.4
Orbx	KORS	215	226	5.1
Gaya	LOWZ	332	346	4.2
BT Studio	Kitfox	829	863	4.1
Flightbeam	KDEN	317	328	3.5
Orbx	Landmarks London	1592	1631	2.4

Edited January 5, 2021 by peroni

[bendead 1,085]

I was a big fan of the marketplace concept before launch, the idea of one click to reinstall and update everything was great. Also it's tied to you MSFS account, so no more losing serial or over activated addons. But :

- We got less than 50% of released addons

- Updates are way slower

- Having to wait MSFS weekly post , to see new stuff

- No way to get a refund for broken products

- For airports/sceneries the list is not detailed enough, classification by country would be nice, a map interface would be even better

- For planes, no 3D outside/cockpit visual to preview them

- No review comments