Add-on pricing for P3D

[Ray Proudfoot 8,942]

8 minutes ago, psolk said:

ust a big thank you to everyone for the genuine banter and discussion.  I appreciate this conversation could go south quickly and appreciate the genuine discussion on this topic as it does intrigue me.

It's a perfectly legitimate line of discussion Paul.

[Sabre57 46]

Rex isn't communicating about either texture direct nor Airports HD for p3d.  I asked about it on their facebook page and the post was deleted with no response.  

[threexgreen 3,139]

2 minutes ago, psolk said:

Sloped airport terrain with 3d drainage between taxiways

PBR Textures and Dynamic Lighting (X-Plane and MSFS only)

Animated apron Vehicles, Trains and highway Traffic
3d animated characters inside and ouside terminals (MSFS only)
2021-22 version of Athens Airport (MSFS only)

Wait - the P3D version doesn't have dynamic lighting and not even animated apron vehicles? When did you last see a P3D scenery from a top developer that does not have that? Also, the P3D version is outdated by now. That surely doesn't warrant a 30% higher price.

[Juliett Alfa Romeo 530]

I believe the price difference is related to a fee Lockheed charges developers.

@simbol ?

Edited November 2, 2021 by Juliett Alfa

[Patco Lch 1,465]

If it’s trip you really want to simulate just use the default airport. Not as eye pleasing but how much time do you spend on the airport anyway. Just a suggestion. I have several payware I have hardly used over the years.

[threexgreen 3,139]

4 minutes ago, Sabre57 said:

Rex isn't communicating about either texture direct nor Airports HD for p3d.  I asked about it on their facebook page and the post was deleted with no response.  

Many devs in the simming universe are a one-person-company, only a handful of people working part time or even as a hobby on their projects, or programmers that just don't know a lot about marketing and customer relations, so I can understand if this aspect isn't always up to what you're used to from bigger entities. But it's things like not even dropping a short heads-up for years after exciting people with an announcement of a new product, never giving any updates at all and just deleting posts with no comment which get me. Some devs really need to up their game in this regard.

[reecemj 146]

3 minutes ago, Patco Lch said:

If it’s trip you really want to simulate just use the default airport. Not as eye pleasing but how much time do you spend on the airport anyway. Just a suggestion. I have several payware I have hardly used over the years.

It’s the immersion for me. Seeing the airport as a real pilot would see it. Some what. LoL 

[kingm56 1,031]

13 minutes ago, Juliett Alfa said:

I believe the price difference is related to a fee Lockheed charges developers.

@simbol ?

LM does not charge a licensing fee.  The price disparity is based on an economic concept referred to as "price discrimination."  In short, one market (i.e. P3D) is willing to pay more for the same product than another market. This is quite common in business and something you probably do all the time without knowing.. 

[honanhal 1,420]

Keep in mind that they're not setting the prices based on what the product offers, they're setting the prices based on what the market will bear. Long story short, the P3D market is willing to pay much higher prices for addons than the MSFS market, so the price is higher. (The only trouble with the P3D price is that it's never come down, even years later. But I'm not going to rehash my points from the other thread...)

Why does FT (correctly, in my view) think that they need a lower price for the MSFS market? Well, for one thing, there's an excellent freeware LGAV already (https://flightsim.to/file/4710/athens-intl-airport-eleftherios-venizelos-lgav-scenery), of the kind (high-quality large international airports) that generally doesn't exist for P3D, and certainly not for any of the airports FT sells. Also, the huge amount of competition across the board, freeware and payware, in the MSFS scenery market (again, that just doesn't exist anymore in the P3D market) also has the effect of driving prices down.

P3D simmers, on the other hand, have shown developers over many years that they're willing (even sometimes happy!) to pay very high prices. I'm sure pretty much everyone posting in this thread (myself included!) has done their part in that regard. 🙂

Bottom line: I think the FT pricing would actually make 100% sense if both products came out today. Of course, since the P3D one is getting long in the tooth, I still think they'd be better served by knocking the price down with time.

[mazelda 124]

I know this might be a bit off topic,but its also related and i think also has a lot to do with the pricing.

A few years ago when p3d became very popular if i remember correctly prices for the fsx versions were more or less the same. Enter pmdg and them starting to develop for p3d they at that time said that costs would be higher because  of the licencing terms and conditions which gave the likes of pmdg fslabs and some of the scenery makers a licence to name their own prices and use the licencing as an excuse to charge what they wanted.

Hence the price disparity. It will be harder to do now as they cannot use the same excuse now although it would not surprise me if pmdg try it.

Incidently when p3d went to 64 bit and pmdg asked us to pay again for the same aircraft they also said that any updates would not be charged again.We saw how that turned out  

They make a minimal new model and charge for it which you have to buy if you want the efb

Bottom line is any software company creating for p3d used this reasoning for the higher prices which they cannot use with msfs

Just my two bobs worth

Edited November 2, 2021 by mazelda

[SimeonWilbury 220]

I would certainly agree that lower prices are necessary for Scenery devs in the MSFS market simply because there's more competition and less of an outright need for it. To be honest I was surprised by the size of the addon scenery market for MSFS given that what I've seen of the default airports in that sim have struck me as perfectly adequate in most cases - the most that I'd imagine would be required in many cases would be an addon like the one Just Flight brought out for North America that fixed taxiway markings etc.

For P3D there is simply less competition, and once you get hooked on third party airports it simply isn't adequate much of the time to use the default ones. I made a flight to UNNT the other week and due to my having recently switched to v5.2 my (albeit high quality freeware) scenery for UNNT wasn't functioning and I had to fly into the default airport. I forgot how terrible the default scenery in P3D/FSX looked. The lack of much of a high quality freeware market for P3D means it's often a choice between default scenery (maybe freeware scenery combining default textures with correct layouts/ configurations) and high-quality but often pricy payware scenery. Most people with the money will go for the payware.

So I think it's different dynamics; though I do agree that pricing older and outdated airports at the same level as the newer high quality airports isn't particularly consumer friendly. I enjoy FlyTama's a scenery a great deal but when I fly into EKCHv2 and then fly into EHAM there is a noticable difference. Though the the reworks when they do happen (I believe one for EHAM is still in the works) are at least steeply discounted.

At the end of the day it's one of the trade-offs of P3D I think. I don't have the deepest pockets so I've built up my route network gradually over the years and taken advantage of sales where I can. But in the eyes of a new simmer MSFS and XPlane have much lower barriers to entry. That doesn't diminish P3D as a very good IFR Sim, hence why I'm still committed to it. But it's a reason why P3D is unlikely to grow in popularity as a platform in the future.

My main hope is that developers make the effort to update existing products to take advantage of more of the opportunities presented by the latest versions of P3D; even if all-new development ceases.

[Patco Lch 1,465]

36 minutes ago, reecemj said:

It’s the immersion for me. Seeing the airport as a real pilot would see it. Some what. LoL 

 

I get that. I own several myself but I also like to fly some military charters and there’s no payware Airforce bases so that means default. I guess that’s where imagination comes in. One good thing is a performance bonus for the eye candy trade off. Besides is it ever what a pilot really sees like animated people walking circles in front of your plane. A degree of imagination is always applied in this hobby.

[BlueStar 323]

When it comes to scenery, ADEX is your friend.  🙂

[Luke 782]

3 hours ago, honanhal said:

Keep in mind that they're not setting the prices based on what the product offers, they're setting the prices based on what the market will bear. Long story short, the P3D market is willing to pay much higher prices for addons than the MSFS market, so the price is higher.

Isn't this the same market where demand has allegedly gone off a cliff since MSFS was released?

Cheers!

[honanhal 1,420]

20 minutes ago, Luke said:

Isn't this the same market where demand has allegedly gone off a cliff since MSFS was released?

Hey, I take your point!

That said, if I was pricing for P3D, the question I’d ask is whether customers still in the market for addons at all (as you point out, a small number of people, getting smaller) are in fact price sensitive. I’d maintain that, compared to MSFS users, they’re basically not. Almost by definition, the people still using P3D are the most rabidly devoted and the most likely to see money as (almost) no object when it comes to buying addons.