Appreciate your input!

Based on your experience, what are the Pros and Cons of buying addons on the Market Place vs the vendor's site?

Thank you.

Why are you asking?

I prefer buying directly from the developer if possible. In my experience, updates are available much quicker from the developer's site. I also prefer all the cost of the aircraft to go to the developer, especially "small" developers. My understanding is "stores" and the MarketPlace take approximately 25 to 30 percent of  the sale proceeds.

Al

Edit: To be fair, however, I should say that in return for their "cut" of the sales, the flight sim stores and the MarketPlace do provide the developer with great "exposure"  for their products, which is why most developers do make their products available through the MarketPlace and the major flight sim stores even if they also sell through their "own" store.

Edited June 8, 20224 yr by ark

Basically it is easier to use the market place. But updates take longer to get.

From vendors is more complex both ordering and keeping up with updates.

So in a way it is a toss up.

It is a pain to have to check a dozen sites to see if there is an update or keep track of emailings about updates.

Or if you don't mind waiting a bit to have latest update, the market place is super easy both buying and updating all in FS2020.

I do like ORBX as well, they have a nice easy system for updates.

1st, very few developers sell on their sites, if they even have a website. Most use FB to stay in touch. Discord is the new FB.

2nd, most devs sell through a third party site such as ORBX, Contrail, Simmarket, Justflight, etc.

3rd, most deves are not selling in the MP.

I will never again buy a product from the marketplace if it is available elsewhere. And I'll probably pass on marketplace exclusives, too.

My reason is the encryption of important files.
Planes cannot be modded or fixed, because files like the model XMLs are not available, airports cannot be parsed and displayed by third-party-software like Little Navmap, etc.

Simmarket is still where you can find nearly all developers' products all in one place.
I tend to find them the most expensive place to buy. Not by much, but enough to notice a difference when making several purchases.

Orbx Central, and to a lesser extent, Contrail is where I prefer to make my purchases due to the all-in-one place nature, plus the ease of install and updating.
Other resellers and developers have followed the trend and are necessitating the installation of their own apps. As such, I won't be buying from them as I'm done with trying to remember what I own and from which vendor.

Avoid the marketplace if at all possible:

Slow to update

Expensive - especially for products not originally priced in $$s

Files encrypted - cannot be modded or tweaked

Military aircraft cannot have military payloads

Integration with Steam very poor - lots of failed/delayed payments

it's easier and simpler to use the Marketplace, BUT two caveats: 1) updates from each developer take significantly longer to reach you, and 2) marketplace packages are encrypted so you can't modify them (like, say, a product has a small bug that just needs a simple line item edit in a file somewhere - if you have the Marketplace version, you don't have that ability.)

overall, it may be annoying have to keep track of multiple installers, keys, that sort of thing, but i'd say it's worth going through developers directly or the "front ends" like Orbx Central and Contrail.

I basically prefer to buy outside the Marketplace to reduce the time I'm on the simulator, to save graphics card and computer resources usage.

22 minutes ago, touchdown84 said:

I will never again buy a product from the marketplace if it is available elsewhere. And I'll probably pass on marketplace exclusives, too.

My reason is the encryption of important files.
Planes cannot be modded or fixed, because files like the model XMLs are not available, airports cannot be parsed and displayed by third-party-software like Little Navmap, etc.

Aircraft I don't mind too much, since well developed aircraft don't usually need tweaking. For airports, I do share your objection towards encrypted files. Why can't they just encrypt textures and objects but leave the files necessary for parsing airports or tweaking aircraft in an unencrypted form?

The best reason to buy directly from the dev is to support the dev directly. I know that there are stores charging as much as 30% commission. It's a crime. There are some devs that when you buy an add-on, they offer the customers discount points for future purchases. Justflight is a seller that does this too.

The most important reason to buy from the MP is because it might not be sold anywhere else such as the magnificent Sting S4 or the H-Jet. It also offers the best protection to the dev. If we ask the developers, they could find a way to allow simple modifications, but that's up to them and it doesn't affect me. I don't mess with files.

Another negative for the Marketplace are limitations placed on developers.  The items can not display any weapons and they must run everything "in the sim".  So some developers, like for the Maddog X, will likely never be seen in the marketplace since they are running a decent amount outside the sim.  And others like India Foxtrot Echo have to modify their models to either not show weapons for the marketplace version (done for the F-35) or not sell certain addons in the marketplace (add-on carriers from them).

With that said, and I know this is an unpopular opinion, I like to buy through the marketplace.  I have PTSD from FSX and P3D reinstalls with hundreds of add-ons.  The time spent searching for serial numbers, manually pasting files, etc, was horrible.  So I currently limit my purchases to stuff available through the Marketplace, Orbx, or Contrail barring a few critical exceptions (at the moment, just 3...PMDG 737, Maddog X, and Fenix A320).  This makes a pretty simple reinstall.  Setup 3 programs, then let them download it all.

Whilst I understand the reluctance for many to use the Marketplace - it is there that MS are going to make the $$ to keep them updating and improving the sim in the LONG term.

Even if their cut was 25% they would have made many, many times more from selling me addons than I have ever paid for Sims (add up FS2000, FSX, & 3 versions of P3D, plus MSFS).

 

G

2 hours ago, touchdown84 said:

 

My reason is the encryption of important files.
Planes cannot be modded or fixed, because files like the model XMLs are not available, airports cannot be parsed and displayed by third-party-software like Little Navmap, etc.

This is really big.  I do buy Carenado from the marketplace - up until the last few releases I couldn't even edit some of the xml files for GTN inner workings.  They also lock their models so a person couldn't 3d paint either. 

Additionally I have had the issue where you have a previous pending transaction and cannot purchase something else until that is resolved.  For me it "only" took a week but for some it has taken much longer.  If Microsoft wishes customers to have the ability to purchase from their store perhaps they should look at why transactions are failing.  There's also no receipts of the item you purchased afaik.  Additionally, imo the MP is still clunky - the way you look at product screenshots - there's usually 3 sections where you can scroll side to side and up/dn?  It's just odd to me.  Also they should allow people to comment on reviews.  Why did someone rate something 3 stars?  Why 1?  Why 5?  For instance I rated all my Carenado purchases 4/5.  I feel like my early purchases (Mooney/Seminole) were a bit far fetched on the pricing side thus I took a star away.  It sounds as though Carenado has lowered their prices somewhat since MSFS was RTM.  FWIW Their larger stuff should be around 25-30 USD and their smaller stuff 15-20 IMO.  I hope their PC12 doesn't exceed 30 but I presume it will be 40.  It's not going to be that fancy to warrant 40....  unless they pull something out of a hat!

Anyway long rant over hehe.  I'm with @ark - I prefer to give money direct to dev, and prefer direct support from dev.

Edited June 8, 20224 yr by ryanbatc