1 minute ago, Mike S KPDX said:

Quick question for you guys.  I never owned the prior MS flightsim so I never purchased any PMDG items.  Does their stuff ever go for sale on some of the larger retail sites (SimMarket, etc)?  Just really don't want to have to open another account for stuff (I have about 4 right now, gets old)

Prior to MSFS PMDG products were only available at the PMDG website. Since MSFS 2020 PMDG is also marketing in the MSFS Marketplace (DC-6) but as far as I know they DO NOT market via other retailers. 
-B

I don't believe PMDG offers their aircraft on anything else but their store and eventually MSFS marketplace.

Edited August 26, 20223 yr by Kevin_28

1 hour ago, jcjimmy said:

I also experimented with the "Save" function and it worked flawlessly on a saved pre-departure scenario.

Have to agree. This sometimes overlooked feature is a real game-changer for me when time is limited. I've been learning the systems of the 737 and allowing the rapid replay of particularly scenarios is worth its weight in gold - let alone the £29 that I paid for the 600..!

On 8/25/2022 at 2:06 PM, psolk said:

Can I ask what you expected going into the developers private forum and "cordially" complaining about their pricing and the price point "you" would have been more than happy to spend the money? 

Do you go to the Apple support forums and tell them the price you "would have" bought the i-phone?  Did you go to Microsoft to tell them you are a long time windows user and what price Office365 would have been attractive to you?  Do you walk into the car dealership to tell them the price you "would have" bought a car?  Why is this discussion any different? 

Neither Avsim nor PMDG tolerate certain discussions and I don't blame them.  

it's not a private forum, that's why they deleted it. and for the record, since we're being serious, it's a model variant, it's basically the same plane apart from being a bit longer, it's not worth $70 and the people who say it is..... well, let's just ponder that.

2 hours ago, Mike S KPDX said:

Quick question for you guys.  I never owned the prior MS flightsim so I never purchased any PMDG items.  Does their stuff ever go for sale on some of the larger retail sites (SimMarket, etc)?  Just really don't want to have to open another account for stuff (I have about 4 right now, gets old)

They only sell on their website. I have not seen a sale in the last 5 years before that birthday sale they had a week or two ago. So... no.
As for the account, updates are automated through the operations center which you have to install, so no need to do something with your account except buying it.

First flight in the 800 and I have to say its stunning, loved it lots of improvment since I last flow the 700. Takeoff and landing speeds are a lot diffrent to a 700.

"THE NG"

7 hours ago, btacon said:

And that my friend is the beauty of the Free Market. You pay for what you want if the prices is agreeable to you. If not…NO SALE!

-B

No question about that but some marketing strategies are better than others, was the point.

1 hour ago, Noel said:

No question about that but some marketing strategies are better than others, was the point.

And sometimes business decisions AKA PMDG's are based on more than made up numbers and emotion.  

I just went through this with my own driving club.  For the past two years we have done a two day event with two day only pricing but you can choose to drive for one day, you just still have to pay for the whole event.  A bunch of people talked about how if we did a one day only price we could get so many more people.  I explained how that does not work but the old timers who were voting based on emotion rather than logic won out.   Last year we had 65 drivers and made the club $7,000 in profit.  This year we had 81 drivers and lost $1,020.  Why?  almost 50 of the drivers signed up for 1 day only.  All we did was slash our potential revenue almost in half.  And we needed to give away more spots for volunteers to accommodate the extra drivers. 

Emotions don't run businesses, logic and practical decisions do.  Only PMDG can say if their go to market strategy worked and was right for their business...  Not the Consumer but their business, the same way pretty much every other business for profit is run.  But sure Apple used planned obsolescence for their customers best interest right?  That's why it's been in practice for 100+ years?  

Also, in your example and understanding they can't do credits in marketplace how do they work out how to figure out who already bought and how to get them a 2nd for $20?  Is Microsoft handling that for them?  Again, practical issues rather than emotional knee jerk responses based on what people would like.  

I would "like" lots of things to be priced and marketed differently.  I'd like for BMW to not be selling heated seat subscriptions and so I "choose" not to buy a BMW... 

Great, now we have two pricing and PMDG go to market strategy threads going simultaneously 🙂   

Edited August 27, 20223 yr by psolk

18 hours ago, btacon said:

Prior to MSFS PMDG products were only available at the PMDG website. Since MSFS 2020 PMDG is also marketing in the MSFS Marketplace (DC-6) but as far as I know they DO NOT market via other retailers. 
-B

They also sell via the Aerosoft Webshop.

https://www.aerosoft.com/de/search?sSearch=PMDG

 

Edited August 27, 20223 yr by darshonaut

Well, since the other thread was locked while I was trying to reply to someone I'll post this here instead...

The only feedback PMDG will act upon is sales figures, not people complaining in forums. When the pricing was originally announced, there were people asking for bundle discounts in their forum and Chris Makris replied that they will be thinking about it. Even without the these questions though I'm sure PMDG has thought about all kinds of pricing models, including bundle discounts and apparently have come to the conclusion that it doesn't work as well for them. After all, they have actual numbers developing addons for 20 years and being in contact with other developers as well.

The only thing that has an impact is voting with your wallet, because as long as sales meet (and with MSFS likely exceed; see their comments on the DC-6) projections and profit is flowing they won't care about a minority voicing their discontent. PMDG are surely aware of that minority and if anything them not changing anything shows it's more profitable to stick with current prices whereas making a loss comparatively with a bundle discount as the increased number of units sold would - apparently - not be enough to make up for the drop in revenue from lower bundle prices. This is why going back and forth about pricing strategy in every thread is most likely not going to change anything.

LOL... Same thing happened to me... If my comments seem disjointed, read the other thread... 

I'll give PMDG credit for something. When you fly the 737 and look at the processes running on your computer, you do NOT see a PMDG task running the airplane. By finding a way to get their C++ code to compile into WASM, they managed to get the simulator to do all of that work. And the results are to be honest, staggering. Say what ever you want, but I will tell you that the PMDG 737s are the smoothest, silkiest. most solid feeling aircraft that I have ever used in a simulator. When you click on one side of a dial to change values, the response is instantaneous. There is zero lag. They even got the speed of the changes set up properly, so you can do that and not blow right past your intended setting, or having to wait forever for it to get there. Everything just works. When the 700 came out, I was disappointed that some of the older bugs remained from their original code and I expressed that in a different thread.

I get a solid impression that Emmanuel has made a positive impact on the development of these airplanes. For example, we all remember the painful task of setting minimums for landing at a high altitude airport. I dreaded landing in Denver because you literally had to sit there and spin the knob, or hold it with the mouse for like 5 minutes to get it to the 5450' or so that was in the chart. Users have begged for years for a fix to this through all of the various versions. Emmanuel was flying the 700 (I think) in a preview video, and when he was setting minimums for landing, he said something like, "This doesn't move quickly enough. The team will address it before release.". I laughed at him. Well, I'll be. It did get fixed. Knock me over with a feather. He has commented on other long standing issues that are now fixed. RTA works all the time now. In P3D, it was 50/50. I never did figure that out. Opened my one and only PMDG support ticket on that one. I had a few back and forths with one of the devs via email and he told me that I didn't know how to use it despite verifying that the screenshots that I sent him showed that it was working properly - in the shots that I sent him to prove that it did work properly 1/2 the time. So I only knew how to use it half the time? I guess he thought I drank too much the other half? I'm not a word not allowed of anything (except for one girl, and one specific brand of 5 year old rum), so I'm not here defending them because I love them or anything, but I just think some of this bashing is way over the top.

I have the 700 and 800. These are both excellent airplanes. After having 3 absolutely dreadful landings in the 800 because it was faster and had more energy than what I was used to in the 700, I can tell you for sure that they do indeed fly differently. Enough so in my mind that owning both are fully justified. Not to mention that my home airport is a SWA hub, and nearly all of the shorter routes that I have time to fly use one or the other. The one thing that I regret now is that I never took the time to fly the 700 in P3D. I was missing out and didn't know it. I'll bet I have a hard time landing the 700 once I figure out how to do it in the 800.  

Software is not cheap or easy to develop. You have to invest a ton of time and money to get to the point where you can start making money. Each developer has a fully loaded cost of approx. $150/hr. For every 100 hours (~2.5 work weeks), that is $15,000 spent. That does not include the other costs like operating a facility, and paying the people that have nothing at all to do with making the airplane but simply exist to make the business run. RSR said "thousands" of hours, and I find that to be an entirely believable number given the amount of time that the devs surely had to spend to simply figure out how MSFS, WASM, the SDK, and all of the other tools they need to get their 3D models exported into the proper formats, with the PBR texturing intact (the MSFS engine uses the standard PBR channels in an unusual way). There had to be hundreds of hours invested before they could even think about getting to work on actually putting the airplane into the simulator. Don't expect them to give it away for free. You think the price of the airplane is expensive? Look at PMDGs balance sheet showing everything going out for a couple of years while nobody was buying P3D addons. I am sure that it would make our eyes bleed. 

One last point. A little over 2 1/2 years ago, PMDG made a promise. If you really read it in the context of what was going on at the time, the message was loud and clear. With the imminent release of MSFS, our entire product line is about to become obsolete right as we were on the verge of releasing our newest version. Buy it from us now, so we can bank some cash until we can catch up on the new platform and we'll pay you back later. I understood what they meant, and I took them up on it. When they put out the 700 1st, I understood that the reason was to make getting it as well as the 800 involve some additional cost. I know that bothers some on here, but when we took them up on that promise in 2019 we were promised a "discount", not a free airplane. We all know that if the 800 was released first, that many users would snag it for free and be done. Free airplanes. That's what people wanted. PMDG's only other choice would be to bundle them, and make the purchase price equal to the credit plus some profit. However, the catch 22 is that MSFS doesn't support the old pricing model. Well, it worked out that people can now get the full PMDG experience for about $40. That seems like a good thing for the folks that can't or won't pay $80. And I got the 700/800 into MSFS for $40. To PMDG, I say thank you for living up to your end of the deal. I hope the cash helped. 

 

I don't like the new pricing model either. It is great for people that just want to fly "a" 737 and don't mind to fly the 736 in Ryanair or Delta colors. But for the more traditional PMDG customer base, that is used to have access to all variants, this is a bit tougher. We either have to limit ourselves to a few variants or accept to pay an even higher price than what PMDG asked for their "professional non-entertainment" P3D version of the 737 lineup.

On the other hand, PMDG has an annual sales event now and there is the possibility for "collection discounting" in late 2023. So there is still a good chance to get the 800 at a lower price at some point in the future. 

Hehe....Less than a week into the -800 release and there are already over 240 liveries available!  In less than a WEEK!!!  The painting community has really stepped it up for you guys.  Trust me, I can say with some authority that there is a LOT of work involved getting a paint to you guys (I've done a few in the past) 🤪

Here is my latest (I actually converted another painter's excellent P3D textures for MSFS, with permission and full credit of course...this makes 40 paints by for the MSFS 737 line.   Yes...I'm in therapy for my painting addiction, hehe.  I just like serving the community.

IMPORTANT NOTE TO THOSE WHO WILL REPLY TO THIS POST: PLEASE REMOVE THE SCREENSHOT FROM YOUR REPLY!   I'm just trying to keep the thread tidy from duplicate instances of my pics.  Why post pics?  Well I think after several pages of text walls, its nice to see just what we're all chatting about. (and shameless plug?  Maybe...after all...you guys know how much I charge for each paint...I'm getting rich!) 🙂 

 

2 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

Hehe....Less than a week into the -800 release and there are already over 240 liveries available!  In less than a WEEK!!!  The painting community has really stepped it up for you guys.  Trust me, I can say with some authority that there is a LOT of work involved getting a paint to you guys (I've done a few in the past) 🤪

Maybe we can yet make this thread "HOT!!" for @Paul_Yorks

😈

I would say, indirectly, the number of liveries and so forth are a fair indicator of a model's success.  Sure, you cannot directly correlate this stuff, but in general, it has to mean something.

7 minutes ago, MDFlier said:

LOL... Same thing happened to me... If my comments seem disjointed, read the other thread... 

[...] Everything just works. When the 700 came out, I was disappointed that some of the older bugs remained from their original code and I expressed that in a different thread.

I get a solid impression that Emmanuel has made a positive impact on the development of these airplanes. For example, we all remember the painful task of setting minimums for landing at a high altitude airport. I dreaded landing in Denver because you literally had to sit there and spin the knob, or hold it with the mouse for like 5 minutes to get it to the 5450' or so that was in the chart. Users have begged for years for a fix to this through all of the various versions. Emmanuel was flying the 700 (I think) in a preview video, and when he was setting minimums for landing, he said something like, "This doesn't move quickly enough. The team will address it before release.". I laughed at him. Well, I'll be. It did get fixed. Knock me over with a feather. [...]

I have the 700 and 800. These are both excellent airplanes. After having 3 absolutely dreadful landings in the 800 because it was faster and had more energy than what I was used to in the 700, I can tell you for sure that they do indeed fly differently. Enough so in my mind that owning both are fully justified. [...]

Software is not cheap or easy to develop. [...] Look at PMDGs balance sheet showing everything going out for a couple of years while nobody was buying P3D addons. I am sure that it would make our eyes bleed.

 

Long post, but an interesting perspective. Glad to see some foibles from previous editions finally get fixed.

I think it's obvious that the -700 and -800 will fly a little differently. PMDG wouldn't be able to justify the price of both variants if they didn't. Some people will care enough to buy both models, some won't.

 

The development process for any software is the same: High costs, no revenue for ages. PMDG's market has shifted from FS9 to FSX to P3D before, so this move to a new flight sim platform isn't a novel experience for them. I think some of the PMDG defenders on here give them a bit too much leeway for their pricing model. Yet, without any genuine 737 competitors, they have free reign to charge how they see fit.

I hope iFly do a fantastic job with their expected MAX version, because at the very least, PMDG would have to respond. You never know, that might help PMDG return to being a developer that merits the cult following they created with their outstanding early products.