I hope the high fidelity airline developers are paying attention to what MSFS users are saying about pricing.  A lot of users for MSFS are not willing to pay the high prices for high fidelity airliners that was charged in P3D and XPlane, even if these users originally came from P3D and XPlane. The best way I would describe this is that the demand curve for high fidelity planes in MSFS has shifted left among the "hard core flight simmer market.  However if you're a 3rd party developer working on a high fidelity plane, what you lose in a lower price, you easily make back though from the increased units you sell, because the MSFS market is that much bigger than before.  So even if you lower your price, you can make a higher total revenue because your Total Revenue = Price x Quantity Sold.  And the interesting thing about 3rd party planes sold for MSFS and other flight simulators, is that there isn't really a material cost for each additional unit sold because it's a digital good.  When a car is sold, there are costs spent on the materials and parts that went into manufacturing that car. But for a digital good like 3rd party planes for simulators, you can sell 1 copy, or 1 million copies, and there are zero material costs for each additional unit sold (there are development costs and fixed costs into making a 3rd party plane though, but those are sunk costs by the time the 3rd party plane is released for sale).  There is probably support costs though, meaning the more planes sold by a 3rd party developer, the more they have to spend on support personnel. But the support costs can probably be covered if the 3rd party developer is maximizing their Total Revenue.

Assuming the additional support costs can be covered if a 3rd plane party developer is maximizing their Total Revenue, 3rd party plane developers make the most total profit if they can maximize Price x Quantity Sold.  And I also hope that 3rd party developers understand that the demand curve for their 3rd party planes is probably a convex demand curve, rather than a linear demand curve.  A convex demand curve means if the price is lowered by say, 10%, the quantity sold can jump exponentially.  So just by lowering the price a little, the quantity sold can be that much more, leading to a much higher Total Revenue.

Regarding high prices for high fidelity airliners, you can read the user feedback in the Just Flight thread, after Just Flight said they would price their BAe 146 at $79.99 USD.  Remember, the typical user that comes to Avsim is probably your "hard core" flight simmer, the type of user that would buy a high fidelity airliner.  I don't think many casual flight simmers come to Avsim.  And you can see the number of users in that thread who refused to buy the Just Flight BAe 146 for $79.99 USD.   Here is another Reddit thread with so many users commenting that they wouldn't buy the Just Flight BAe 146 for $79.99 USD. Then Just Flight lowered the price of their BAe 146 to $64.99 USD - look at the number of users who said they would then be willing to buy the BAe 146 when they lowered the price. And the subsequent Reddit thread with the user response for the BAe 146 after the price was lowered to $64.99 USD.

I think PMDG also played a role last year in setting the expectations of price for MSFS users, when they set the price of their DC6 in MSFS to $54.99 USD.  Yes, the price of the DC6 in MSFS was lower than the P3D price of the PMDG DC6. But despite lowering the price of the DC6,  Randazzo said the sales of PMDG DC6 in MSFS outsold all the DC6 sales in FSX, P3D, and XP, within hours: https://youtu.be/qKadQrREujM?t=557.  PMDG played it smart here because I think they maximized their Total Revenue, that is, they maximized the Price x Quantity Sold.  Had PMDG kept the price of the MSFS DC6 the same as the P3D price, they probably wouldn't have sold that many copies of the DC6 in MSFS, and they may not have maximized their Total Revenue for the MSFS DC6.

Having said this, I think the TDFi MD11 being priced at $89.99 USD is too high. I don't know if TDFi is paying attention to the price of the PMDG DC6 or the Just Flight BAe 146 in MSFS, but I suspect the sales for the TDFi MD11 for MSFS will be very poor if they keep that price.  TDFi should probably read the reaction to users to the original pricing of the BAe 146 at $79.99 USD and how many users said they wouldn't buy it at that price.  Hopefully, as the TDFi MD11 comes closer to release, TDFi will come to their senses and price more accordingly.  Otherwise, if TDFi keeps that price, I don't think they are going to maximize their Total Revenue.

TLDR: 3rd party high fidelity airline developers for MSFS can make way more $$$ if they price smartly.  Price it like PMDG did for their MSFS DC6.  Price it like Just Flight is for their upcoming MSFS BAe 146. Don't price it like TDFi is planning to for their MD11.  

If you are against the higher prices of P3D and XP, please post here to let some of the 3rd party devs know your price expectations for MSFS!

 

Edited April 13, 20224 yr by abrams_tank

I stayed away from those expensive airliners for P3D & XP11. After paying a reasonable $40 for the DCD Concorde for MSFS, I'll only consider an airliner if it's fairly priced and as much fun. Some here will still pay for QW 787, the PMDG fleet, or the new Airbus being developed and that's OK too.

I very much agree with this, but it is important to remember that PMDG and others need to make more money now than they did 10 years ago. I would say if they half the price they need to quadruple the sales to make up for inflation, salaries and just that it is more time consuming to produce airplanes today.

I still believe that quadrupling that sales is within reach for high end aircrafts.   

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

But for a digital good like 3rd party planes for simulators, you can sell 1 copy, or 1 million copies, and there are zero material costs for each additional unit sold

I guess I'll be the lone voice in the wilderness here but this is just not true.

There are hosting and content delivery costs especially if the developer hosts the downloads on their own servers. Every download incurs a cost and as the volume of downloads goes up, so does the cost.

While I don't disagree, in principle, that the MSFS market is larger, that doesn't necessarily translate into massively larger sales numbers for a specific, study level aircraft. 

I paid US$115 for Hot Start's CL650 for X-plane and it was worth every penny. If that same aircraft, with the same level of detail and immersion, were to be offered for MSFS, I'd pay that same amount again in a heartbeat.

So much silence from TDFi ref. the MD11 development that I have more or less forgotten all about the project. Your points are certainly valid and hopefully TDFi did pay attention to the likes of PMDG's 737 new rollout strategy or the bold move introduced by Wing42 -- shattering the good ol' mold with their Boeing 247D offered at a very competitive price tag.

If TDFi stays firm, I'll definitely wait for the Aero Dynamics KC-10 / MD-10 instead. Hopefully those freeware will move forward.

Cheers,

2Low2Slow

22 minutes ago, Malaromane said:

I guess I'll be the lone voice in the wilderness here but this is just not true.

There are hosting and content delivery costs especially if the developer hosts the downloads on their own servers. Every download incurs a cost and as the volume of downloads goes up, so does the cost.

This is incorrect in the MSFS marketplace.  There is no additional cost to the 3rd party developer because Microsoft hosts the servers to download in the MSFS marketplace.

Outside the MSFS marketplace, if the 3rd party dev is hosting their own server, the download costs are cheap for the extra bandwidth and server capacity.  The bandwidth and server costs are insignificant with respect to each 3rd party plane sold.

In addition, the 3rd party developer can use a service that scales like AWS or Azure.  The cost to scale the service is pennies, with respect to each 3rd party plane sold, if they use a service like AWS.  Put it this way - if the a 3rd party developer sold just 1 plane for $50 USD, and only that 1 plane is downloaded for the entire month, the $50 can easily cover that one month of AWS service (go look up AWS services and the bandwidth you get, it's dirt cheap with respect to the cost of the price of a high fidelity plane, which would probably cost $50 USD or more).

Edited April 13, 20224 yr by abrams_tank

54 minutes ago, TooLowTooSlow said:

So much silence from TDFi ref. the MD11 development that I have more or less forgotten all about the project.

Just FYI, they give pretty consistent (edit: and frequent) updates on the development of the MD-11 on their discord. They're going to show some in-sim previews shortly. Although I'm not 100% sure if it's going to be for p3d, msfs, or both.

Edited April 13, 20224 yr by Kevin_28

40 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

This is incorrect in the MSFS marketplace.  There is no additional cost to the 3rd party developer because Microsoft hosts the servers to download in the MSFS marketplace.

How do we know MS isn't getting a cut of the 3PD products being offered in the marketplace?

19 minutes ago, Bdub22 said:

How do we know MS isn't getting a cut of the 3PD products being offered in the marketplace?

Microsoft does get a cut.  But I don't think Microsoft's cut increases, the more units are sold of the 3rd party developer's product.  I believe it's a set percentage.

But Microsoft doesn't charge the developer to host their product in the MSFS marketplace.  They simply get a cut from each unit sold.

Edited April 13, 20224 yr by abrams_tank

12 minutes ago, Bdub22 said:

How do we know MS isn't getting a cut of the 3PD products being offered in the marketplace?

Please check

https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/130066-msfs-in-game-store#post133325

Apparently the MS cut is 30% through the store, and for Steam users, there's also a Valve cut.

Also, I think the cost of the server infrastructure is modest compared with that of after-sale support. If we run into problems we want them addressed in a timely way, even if it turns out that they were self-induced. Some vendors are excellent in that regard, others not so much. Unfortunately, support costs scale with the success of the product so if a vendor sells a zillion copies, they need to grow their support staff, or at least the users hope they will. Good support costs money, and that has to be included in the price.

High fidelity, wonderfully detailed products are expensive to create, market, and support. Wildly talented people are engaged for long periods of time in an intense effort to build these things. I'm totally OK with being charged something appropriate to ensure that those people are compensated and motivated to provide ongoing updates when new sim versions are released, as well as to create new aircraft for our enjoyment.

Cheers.

1 hour ago, Kevin_28 said:

Just FYI, they give pretty consistent (edit: and frequent) updates on the development of the MD-11 on their discord. They're going to show some in-sim previews shortly. Although I'm not 100% sure if it's going to be for p3d, msfs, or both.

The question is, is the TDFi MD11 going to be much more complex than the PMDG 737?  Somehow, I don't think so.  And I highly doubt that PMDG will charge over $80 USD for their MSFS 737.  Randazzo seems to be hinting that the price for one variant is going to be a very friendly price to people used to the old PMDG prices, because he said he wants to lower the price to capture much of the market that aren't willing to pay the TDFi prices .  I think the PMDG 737 for MSFS for a single variant will cost between $60 USD to $70 USD - the catch being, if you want all the variants, it can cost much more, without a price reduction for buying multiple variants.

If the PMDG 737 is between $60 to $70 USD, that is significantly cheaper than the TDFi MD11. So I don't know why TDFi is pricing their MD11 at $89.99.  If TDFI is claiming because their MD11 is very complex, can it really be more complex than the PMDG 737, which will probably sell for a lot less than $89.99?

Edit: For the TDFi MD11, I mean complex to develop, with respect to the PMDG 737.

Edited April 13, 20224 yr by abrams_tank

1 minute ago, abrams_tank said:

The question is, is the TDFi MD11 going to be much more complex than the PMDG 737?  Somehow, I don't think so.  And I highly doubt that PMDG will charge over $80 USD for their MSFS 737.  Randazzo seems to be hinting that the price for one variant is going to be a very friendly price to people used to the old PMDG prices, because he said he wants to lower the price to capture much of the market that aren't willing to pay the TDFi prices .  I think the PMDG 737 for MSFS for a single variant will cost between $60 USD to $70 USD - the catch being, if you want all the variants, it can cost much more, without a price reduction for buying multiple variants.

If the PMDG 737 is between $60 to $70 USD, that is significantly cheaper than the TDFi MD11. So I don't know why TDFi is pricing their MD11 at $89.99.  If TDFI is claiming because their MD11 is very complex, can it really be more complex than the PMDG 737, which will probably sell for a lot less than $89.99?

Not gonna speculate, but just merely pointing out that they give pretty frequent updates on development.

I expect PMDG to give the whole fleet to me for free because I’m an avid simmer and pretty poor. 
 

If not I’m gonna rate PMDG down on every occasion. 
 

There you go. 

4 minutes ago, jrw4 said:

Also, I think the cost of the server infrastructure is modest compared with that of after-sale support. If we run into problems we want them addressed in a timely way, even if it turns out that they were self-induced. Some vendors are excellent in that regard, others not so much. Unfortunately, support costs scale with the success of the product so if a vendor sells a zillion copies, they need to grow their support staff, or at least the users hope they will. Good support costs money, and that has to be included in the price.

Yes, this is key.  Server and bandwidth costs are insignificant to the price of the actual plane sold, if each plane is being sold for over $50 USD.  The server and bandwidth costs on Amazon AWS are dirty cheap.  And the server and bandwidth costs can be easily scaled in AWS, if the developer is getting that many downloads.

The main cost would probably be the support staff costs, if a product sold really well.  But in my opinion, if the 3rd party developer for those high fidelity aircraft is maximizing their Total Revenue and their sales does very well, they should be able to cover the cost for support staff easily.

7 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

The question is, is the TDFi MD11 going to be much more complex than the PMDG 737?  Somehow, I don't think so.  And I highly doubt that PMDG will charge over $80 USD for their MSFS 737.  Randazzo seems to be hinting that the price for one variant is going to be a very friendly price to people used to the old PMDG prices, because he said he wants to lower the price to capture much of the market that aren't willing to pay the TDFi prices .  I think the PMDG 737 for MSFS for a single variant will cost between $60 USD to $70 USD - the catch being, if you want all the variants, it can cost much more, without a price reduction for buying multiple variants.

If the PMDG 737 is between $60 to $70 USD, that is significantly cheaper than the TDFi MD11. So I don't know why TDFi is pricing their MD11 at $89.99.  If TDFI is claiming because their MD11 is very complex, can it really be more complex than the PMDG 737, which will probably sell for a lot less than $89.99?

The MD11 is a significantly more complex airplane than any 737.