PMDG 737 update

[Bobsk8 12,570]

Just now, mpo910 said:

As not a single person here outside the PMDG staff knows the amount of work necessary to build this product, not a single word is seriously possible regarding the price....being high, low or spot on. 

It all depends on what is it worth to a user....does he or she like to spent the amount of money or not....

Some may find it to much and some are willing to pay....

Marcus

 

There are simmers willing to pay $500 for a set of rudder pedals, so these same people would probably not object to paying $200 for the 737. 

[jcjimmy 150]

I am looking forward to the release of the PMDG B737. However, I am in no rush. The MSFS default airline aircraft are not up to par. It is important that the PMDG B737 is released in a high standard of performance. We do not need anymore duds.

I hope the price is in a reasonable range for those interested in airliners.

[RobJC 2,069]

On 11/13/2021 at 12:21 PM, threegreen said:

As an example, look at the trim wheel in the second shot. In P3D the trim wheel looks like a black hole swallowing every ray of light. In MSFS you can actually see it and it even reflects light and other objects off of its outer surface. The same is true for a lot of other details such as the FPV, meters and information display buttons on the EFIS, which are basically just white on black while in MSFS the actual color and contours of the buttons are visible.

Also, the black of the screens looks a lot more like it's black color given out by the screen rather than an actual black object's surface like it does in P3D. The shadow of the yoke on the center DU illustrates this nicely as well, as the shadow of the yoke is clearly distinguishable from the black of the screen, wheres in P3D the difference almost isn't visible at all and the screen's black and the shadow basically morph into one.

On the third shot you can clearly see the flight deck detail to the right of the PBR box in MSFS, while in P3D there is almost no light in the corner, which is neither pretty nor realistic in the slightest.

The NGXu in P3D has PBR in the whole flight deck, but that doesn't really show so much. In MSFS, the PBR does its job a lot better and the surfaces actually look real and absorb and reflect light like the different materials realistically would. It doesn't just look better but you can get a good idea of what different components are actually made of (plastic, metal, etc.).

That said, I do feel like I need to cut P3D some slack here because I don't think HDR lighting is doing P3D much of a service in these screenshots. I guess Mr. Randazzo has tuned it to look good on his monitor. In any case, I believe the NGXu cockpit looks better than on these screenshots on my TV as well as in my VR headset after tuning HDR and turning that irritating auto exposure effect off. Still, the cockpit looks much more lifelike in MSFS.

Okay good description. On my 1440p monitor I can see these details quite a bit better than I was able to see on my iPad. It is definitely better. Thanks.

[MySound 401]

As the PMDG Addons bring hundreds of hours of fun - I personally don’t care how much it costs. 
The price 2 fun ratio will be great anyways. 
I payed 280$ for my wife and myself just to have snacks and a coffe in Burj Al Arab. And the fun was over after 2 hours. So bring it on PMDG. 

[RobJC 2,069]

I would be a day one purchaser at $75 or below. Anything significantly above that and I would not buy. First, I have no idea how well the 737 will run on my pc. Second, it would require a lot of time to get up to speed with, and I already have 3 hangars full of AC i need to dedicate more time to learning. And lastly, regional jets and GA probably fit my use case better, since I only have 1-2 hours to fly each session. So this is not a must buy for me. Of course, if they make the price reasonable I will add it, but I may not even get to flying it much for a while. I am sure there are many others who will buy on day one, and dive right in.

Put another way, I think PMDG have the following potential customers:

1. Die hard PMDG/737 purchasers:
In the big scheme of things this group represents a very small minority of the potential customer base. If these people represent 5% of the potential customer base I would be surprised.

2. Semi-serious flight simmer:
I think I am in this category. Never really gotten into the 737 but own one PMDG AC, so with enough good hype I might buy it to see what all the yelling is about. I know it requires a lot of commitment but if the price isn't stupid I will probably buy it. These people probably represent 20% of potential customers. 

3. Casual flight simmer:
This might represent the xbox users, and other users who really have no experience with study level type AC. These are casual flight simmers and represents the lion's share of the user base. 

Pricing strategies:

At around $75 they get all of group 1, a very large chunk of group 2, and a small chunk of group 3. 

At around $100 they get all of group 1, a decent chunk of group 2, and a very small chunk of group 3. 

At around $200 they get a large chunk of group 1, very little of group 2 and almost nothing of group 3.  

I think the first option is the best for them.  The small chunk of the huge group 3 is where all the profit comes in. These customers will load the AC 2-3 times, take a glance at the manuals and say never mind. No support requests. Just pure gravy. It also subsidizes the loyal group 1 and future loyal group 2 users, making everyone happy. And at $75 it doesn't cheapen the brand at all. It is still an excusive product from an elite developer. 

[Bobsk8 12,570]

5 minutes ago, RobJC said:

I would be a day one purchaser at $75 or below. Anything significantly above that and I would not buy. First, I have no idea how well the 737 will run on my pc. Second, it would require a lot of time to get up to speed with, and I already have 3 hangars full of AC i need to dedicate more time to learning. And lastly, regional jets and GA probably fit my use case better, since I only have 1-2 hours to fly each session. So this is not a must buy for me. Of course, if they make the price reasonable I will add it, but I may not even get to flying it much for a while. I am sure there are many others who will buy on day one, and dive right in.

Put another way, I think PMDG have the following potential customers:

1. Die hard PMDG/737 purchasers:
In the big scheme of things this group represents a very small minority of the potential customer base. If these people represent 5% of the potential customer base I would be surprised.

2. Semi-serious flight simmer:
I think I am in this category. Never really gotten into the 737 but own one PMDG AC, so with enough good hype I might buy it to see what all the yelling is about. I know it requires a lot of commitment but if the price isn't stupid I will probably buy it. These people probably represent 20% of potential customers. 

3. Casual flight simmer:
This might represent the xbox users, and other users who really have no experience with study level type AC. These are casual flight simmers and represents the lion's share of the user base. 

Pricing strategies:

At around $75 they get all of group 1, a very large chunk of group 2, and a small chunk of group 3. 

At around $100 they get all of group 1, a decent chunk of group 2, and a very small chunk of group 3. 

At around $200 they get a large chunk of group 1, very little of group 2 and almost nothing of group 3.  

I think the first option is the best for them.  The small chunk of the huge group 3 is where all the profit comes in. These customers will load the AC 2-3 times, take a glance at the manuals and say never mind. No support requests. Just pure gravy. It also subsidizes the loyal group 1 and future loyal group 2 users, making everyone happy. And at $75 it doesn't cheapen the brand at all. It is still an excusive product from an elite developer. 

Good points. I can't imagine X boxers or casual simmers, sitting in front of their consoles on a 4 hour flight too many times. They will quickly get bored, and want to fly a warbird or something. 

[fogboundturtle 2,708]

1 minute ago, Bobsk8 said:

Good points. I can't imagine X boxers or casual simmers, sitting in front of their consoles on a 4 hour flight too many times. They will quickly get bored, and want to fly a warbird or something. 

Can we stop with treating console users like they are some kind of 2nd class citizen that only play GTA and COD. They are people are there you cannot afford a new PC or a GPU in this pandemic. Series S or X is a great way to play flight simulator without spending thousands of dollars. In the MSFS discord, the request for a 737 on the xbox section is rampant. There isn't a day where people are asking when they can fly a 737. Consoles players average age is much higher than you think. According to latest study, the average game is in the 30s.

[rocketlaunch 614]

Really looking forward to this! We finally get a modern airliner from PMDG in a stunning graphical simulator from Microsoft. This was the stuff of dreams only 3 short years ago 

[Doug47 574]

2 hours ago, fogboundturtle said:

Can we stop with treating console users like they are some kind of 2nd class citizen that only play GTA and COD. They are people are there you cannot afford a new PC or a GPU in this pandemic. Series S or X is a great way to play flight simulator without spending thousands of dollars. In the MSFS discord, the request for a 737 on the xbox section is rampant. There isn't a day where people are asking when they can fly a 737. Consoles players average age is much higher than you think. According to latest study, the average game is in the 30s.

Doesn’t mean they’ll spend big on an add-on that requires a little more then pressing a couple buttons to fly. It’s quite a gamble by PMDG on a platform that has failed to deliver as far as pure flight simulation is concerned. 

[Lord Farringdon 477]

1 hour ago, MySound said:

As the PMDG Addons bring hundreds of hours of fun - I personally don’t care how much it costs. 
The price 2 fun ratio will be great anyways. 
I payed 280$ for my wife and myself just to have snacks and a coffe in Burj Al Arab. And the fun was over after 2 hours. So bring it on PMDG. 

Agree @MySound

Please, don't fall off your seats but I bought the SU57 Felon for about the price of three cups of coffee in my currency. Now because of their background some will say never by products from that company. Others will say supporting developers who offer poor quality products to the Marketplace do not help other developers etc etc. But hey, I'm just the end consumer. I consider myself a serious simmer (tube flying) and I do want to build my own cockpit but I also just want have a blast from time to time and the Felon does that quite well along with a couple of bush trips thrown in for variety! Ok, so the old non updated Garmin on the panel is crass, most of the switches don't work, some do but do nothing, the gear goes up and down but sometimes you need to to do it twice to make it happen, the leading edge flaps don't work (although they are supposed to) everything is in Russian (although that's authentic I guess), the flight model has some odd peculiarities about it when trying take off with too higher speed and there is no website for support! What could possibly go wrong 🙂. But on the plus side, the SU57 looks the part (on the outside at least,..... the cockpit is word not allowed), the afterburners look good, it does impressive fly pasts, climbs like a homesick angel to 70,000 feet and does Mach 2 which I'm guessing makes it the fastest non-spacecraft in MSFS at this point.  What a hoot! 

I'm using the model in Flight Control Recorder to create a simulated airshow display.   I must have flown this thing for 20 hours already. As @MySound says, it's about the 'fun to price' ratio. So if your fun comes from a crappy little inexpensive model or from a study level, hi-fidelity one, then I suspect the money spent on purchasing the PMDG B737 model will be nothing in comparison to all the addons you will purchase to fly it, such as yokes and rudders, throttle quadrants, flight director boxes etc etc, and the hours or maybe years of enjoyment you will get out of it going forward.  Whether it comes out at $100 or $200 (closer to $300 in my currency), if you are serious tubeliner simmer then the PMDG B737 is a must have product. It's cost is almost immaterial in this hobby since without it, (or the promise of it), the sim is still good but it is not for the purpose you bought the sim in the first place.

This simulator is about horses for courses so you can never say something is too expensive or that something else despite it's low price should never be bought since everyone has different tastes and requirements in this hobby and that decision is based on your own personal circumstances or your own set of buying rules. Everybody makes their own choices! But when setting a price for a product in the free market, the developers choice is not so much. They have sell at a price that achieves their best return on investment.   

The PMDG B737 will be a product derived from many thousands of hours of painstaking and detailed programming and will be of such calibre that real life airline pilots will use it as one tool in their arsenal of personal training aides to brush up on a few procedures before a sim ride. And we expect to pay no more than $80 for this? The developer is of course shackled by the market where some will almost pay anything to get their hands on it and others wouldn't go anywhere near if it was over $70. 

 

In the end I think it will seem a bit expensive in  comparison to other products on offer at the moment but it will be competitive especially since it will offer so much more than than any of those products. PMDG have a diverse market to sell into and they will want to saturate that at the right price to get their required returns. For people who feel they want or need to be exposed to that level of fidelity it will still be an absolute bargain price and they would have paid more for it. For those who don't need this capability, it will seem way too expensive... (but some will buy it anyway ..shhh!). 

In the end, I reckon your personal 'fun to price' ratio will determine if you buy it or not, rather than the  actual price.   

Cheers

 

Terry 

 

            

[Keirtt 574]

I’m very curious on the relationship with PMDG and Asobo right now. Reading between the lines of some comments that Rabdazzo is making on their official forums makes me believe things are sweet and sour. Some posts there seems to be a lot of upbeat positivity about how great and advanced the platform is and other posts that talk about debugging like it’s the 90s and culture that Asobo has developed of being silent to partners like PMDG. I’m really hoping we don’t see things go south between the two. 

Edited November 15, 2021 by Keirtt

[pmplayer 9,392]

If that thing goeing up to 200 bugs i never buy it, around max 130 bugs it could be possible..

cheers 😉

[YouDontKnow 93]

Reading the official PMDG forum I noticed some replies mentioning the fact that the release date could be postponed. I don't know how the forum works, so I don't know if the people authorized to reply are PMDG members or not.

What do you think, guys?

[KL Oo 695]

6 hours ago, Keirtt said:

I’m very curious on the relationship with PMDG and Asobo right now. Reading between the lines of some comments that Rabdazzo is making on their official forums makes me believe things are sweet and sour. Some posts there seems to be a lot of upbeat positivity about how great and advanced the platform is and other posts that talk about debugging like it’s the 90s and culture that Asobo has developed of being silent to partners like PMDG. I’m really hoping we don’t see things go south between the two. 

I noted the same. This most recent update was a little more 'measured' than the previous upbeat "Asobo are amazing partners" stuff RSR has spoken before....

[bobcat999 8,444]

11 hours ago, MySound said:

As the PMDG Addons bring hundreds of hours of fun - I personally don’t care how much it costs. 
The price 2 fun ratio will be great anyways. 
I payed 280$ for my wife and myself just to have snacks and a coffe in Burj Al Arab. And the fun was over after 2 hours. So bring it on PMDG. 

While I appreciate you may be affluent enough to make statements like that, if PMDG see comments like that and decide they can hike the price based on what you (and some others) are saying, then this unhelpful for people like me, who couldn't afford the kind of prices you can at the Burj, or an overly inflated price for the PMDG. 

Although I would like to think these comments are just down to excitement and enthusiasm for the product rather than any attempt at boastfulness at what people can personally afford.

At the end of the day, I hope PMDG make the pricing accessible, and that they make plenty of money from the generally increased sales figures all round rather than just a lucky few.
This would make many thousands of flight simmers happy, many of them loyal PMDG fans.  We all want the hobby to grow, so you have to look at the bigger picture sometimes.

Edited November 15, 2021 by bobcat999