Add-on pricing for P3D

Nice and informative discussion. Hopefully it stays civil. I think LM priced P3D based on product type and its main customers. Add-on developers just followed suit. 

P3D was produced by Lockheed Martin (defense contractor) as a trainer product for defense/military customers to rehearse military missions. P3D is based on Microsoft's ESP (the commercial use version of MS Flight Simulator X SP2, which LM purcha$ed its intellectual property and source code from Microsoft). Though using P3D to rehearse a military mission is less expensive to a military customer than rehearsing using other methods/products, it's likely LM priced P3D based on its intended primary customer and what LM had invested to bring P3D to market (original retail license was $499). My guess is that non-defense contractor add-on developers priced their products in the same fashion. I'm almost sure we will never see a P3D version for the Xbox Series. 

MSFS is a remarkable entertainment product that simulates "... various aspects of flight or the flight environment for purposes other than flight training or aircraft development." I participated in its alpha/beta test and just purchased it. I'm still certain that most P3D users will eventually migrate to MSFS. As an entertainment product, like MS FSX and its predecessors (I started with subLOGIC's Flight Simulator for the C64 and still have the boxes and software for MSFS 1 through X) its customers use it for different purposes (flying airlines for me). 

One way to see product pricing similar to P3D vs MSFS is by comparing pricing for the military and civilian versions of the HMMWVs. A civilian version with all kinds of creature conform went for around $65,000 where the spartan military version price hovers around $220,000.