1 hour ago, MySound said:

What I do with new products is to calculate how many hours of fun it will give me and see the price then. So it will be hundreds of hours for 50 bucks. Also a lot of devs work on this project and as a software dev I know what it means to develop things like that. 
But crying Is sexier. I know. 

Exactly. I don't know if many people here play other types of games, but I've spent 40 or 50 euros on scripted games that have given me like 18-20 hours of gameplay. If the game is really good, I don't regret it. By comparison, spending 60 or 80 euros on a payware airliner that I will fly for hundreds of hours with the possibility of different routes everytime, does not seem that much. That's what you will spend on an evening dining out, anyway.

Nearly every MSFS addon I buy ends up being a better value per hour of use than a round of golf (which I also buy a lot of ).

Usually less swearing with the MSFS addons too 😁

For a large company with real estate and infrastructure costs distributed across all functional units, the fully loaded cost of a single developer is over $300/hr. For a smaller company, that goes way up. It costs a lot more than people think to bring a single airplane to market. And then throw in the costs of the non production personnel.

 

Yes, but bringing multiple versions of the same plane, probably no so much. If somebody showed you vid cap of each of these planes from the cockpit, chances are you wouldn't be able to spot the difference. it's you money of course but PMDG is counting on you falling for their dramatic proclamations about flight modelling and "feel" ...

Edited February 9, 20233 yr by CombatCustard

I think that you are underestimating the amount of effort that it takes.

Edited February 9, 20233 yr by MDFlier

I got the 600 when it first came out, for the price and the fidelity of the aircraft it was a no brainer. I can fly her in and out of smaller regional airports and sitting in the flight deck it's a 737. I spend equal amount's of time flying this & the Fenix and really enjoy them both.

I am tempted to pick up the 900 though, it is not a bad price at all. 

1 hour ago, MDFlier said:

For a large company with real estate and infrastructure costs distributed across all functional units, the fully loaded cost of a single developer is over $300/hr. For a smaller company, that goes way up. It costs a lot more than people think to bring a single airplane to market. And then throw in the costs of the non production personnel.

 

Huh? $600k base annual is.. unheard of, for a run of the mill developer.

At most a principal or engineering director is pulling in those kind of salaries (which would include some kind of equity) or some kind of quant developer, not your usual senior/mid level dev.

8 minutes ago, Lucky38i said:

Huh? $600k base annual is.. unheard of, for a run of the mill developer.

At most a principal or engineering director is pulling in those kind of salaries (which would include some kind of equity) or some kind of quant developer, not your usual senior/mid level dev.

Read again. "Fully loaded". That includes the building(s), utilities, IT, maintenance, HR, legal dept., accounting, administration, and other services required to put a developer into a chair and working, as well as the developer's salary.  

Edit: Note that this applies to every position that a company fills. A $20/hr office worker costs far more than $20/hr for the company.

Edited February 9, 20233 yr by MDFlier

2 minutes ago, MDFlier said:

Read again. "Fully loaded". That includes the building(s), utilities, IT, maintenance, HR, legal dept., accounting, administration, and other services required to put a developer into a chair and working, as well as the developer's salary.  

You can't assign the foundational work to just one single developer, there's economies of scale at place here. One accountant can do the accounting work for a number of employees. one IT administrator can manage a plethora of machines, on and on for all the other areas here. Kind of a ridiculous statement to say bringing in a single developer surmounts to a cost of $300/hr

1 minute ago, Lucky38i said:

You can't assign the foundational work to just one single developer, there's economies of scale at place here. One accountant can do the accounting work for a number of employees. one IT administrator can manage a plethora of machines, on and on for all the other areas here. Kind of a ridiculous statement to say bringing in a single developer surmounts to a cost of $300/hr

I work for a worldwide company with lots of developers. That's what it costs. I review the numbers at least 4 times per year. Business software or game software, the business end of the business looks the same. Of course scale matters, but in today's economy a $300/hr cost to facilitate an employee is not out of line.

And I left out the taxes and insurance(s) costs associated with having the employee on board in my prior list.

4 minutes ago, MDFlier said:

I work for a worldwide company with lots of developers. That's what it costs. I review the numbers at least 4 times per year. Business software or game software, the business end of the business looks the same. Of course scale matters, but in today's economy a $300/hr cost to facilitate an employee is not out of line.

And I left out the taxes and insurance(s) costs associated with having the employee on board in my prior list.

What numbers? How do you monetise the effort of one acountant in an accountanting department, to one person in one department to an hourly basis. Then apply that same thinking to all the other various departments for this one single individual and then somehow compute that this person is costing the company $600k a year. If PMDG has a team of 4 devs, they're spending $2.4 million alone just to faciliate their devs? excluding any other costs to actually run the business?

 

13 minutes ago, Lucky38i said:

excluding any other costs to actually run the business?

I am trying to explain to you that it DOES include those costs. If you hire a developer, you need a building to put him in. He needs a computer, and a phone, and heating, and air conditioning, and health insurance, payroll taxes, administration costs to manage all that, carpeting, lighting.

$2.4M to run a business with a handful of developers is probably a reasonable number.

Every employee that we hire has a "fully loaded" cost that we have to take into account when we hire. Why do you think companies lay off people when times get bad? Every employee that gets fired saves the company at least 3 times their salary. 

Edited February 9, 20233 yr by MDFlier

4 hours ago, Rockliffe said:

I suspect not all, but some of those whining will be the ones who would be quite happy to spend that $50 on a packet of cigarettes and a round of drinks!  

$50 dollars for a extended version of the 800 and some other little bits. I could easily go and jump on a couple of flights round Europe and get my money worth for doing so.

15 minutes ago, MDFlier said:

I am trying to explain to you that it DOES include those costs. If you hire a developer, you need a building to put him in.

Yes, the entire cost of the building isn't used as a basis of the cost of the developer, because he doesn't use the entire building but maybe 5 sqft.

15 minutes ago, MDFlier said:

He needs a computer, and a phone, and heating, and air conditioning, and health insurance, payroll taxes, administration costs to manage all that, carpeting, lighting.

All of these things, cannot be wholly attributed to a single developer. You have economies of scale here and none of this is going to equate to costing $300hr just for a single individual. Maybe $300hr for a team or maybe a single floor.

15 minutes ago, MDFlier said:

$2.4M to run a business with a handful of developers is probably a reasonable number.

Every employee that we hire has a "fully loaded" cost that we have to take into account when we hire. Why do you think companies lay off people when times get bad? Every employee that gets fired saves the company at least 3 times their salary. 

If you have a floor providing lighting, AC etc etc. Removing a single employee isn't going to change how much you're spending on these things. The floor still needs to be lit, air conditioned etc. Health insurance companies are going to charge you less for the more people you have registered, again economies of scale. Companies and specifically tech companies mostly do massive layoffs because they're almost always bloated or services have reach maintenance state rather than active development.

You still haven't answered how these numbers are computed on a single person basis. Take for example, Air conditioning, how is it computed the amount of Kw/h that single developer requires to be cooled, to compute along with the multitude of other costs that they cost $300/hr.

It is beyond my ability to educate you. I'll leave it at that.