LatinVFR now into planes for Xbox users...

[adino 263]

I'm between a few to find out today that LatinVFR departed from scenery design into making (non-high fidelity) aircrafts for Xbox users.

At least they were honest clarifying things with us, but a great scenery developer we have lost in my opinion. I enjoyed lot of their airport and scenery for P3D/FSX.

May they R.I.P.

you might read for yourself at FSELITE in the comments section:

https://fselite.net/content/latinvfr-provides-previews-of-airbus-a320ceo/

Ricardo Morillo (LVFR)

 

 

Hi thank you for your opinion on our upcoming product. Reality is that we stated this from the start, this is not a high fidelity product that uses the default 320neo systems, the price point reflects that. You as a customer have choices, and you don't need to buy our product if you want a high fidelity addon, such as FENIX or PMDG.

As for us depending on mods to sell our product that's not true. Our market is the marketplace and XBOX. Which for XBOX for example, no mod can get into. That some customers wanted to mod the airplane is something that we haven't encouraged nor told anyone to do.

What we wanted to show with our preview was that we are beginning to work our way up on the systems of the 320. We never promised those who bought our other 320 family planes we will do this, but we are doing it and we won't charge them more for it. It won't be FENIX, FBW or PMDG quality but its a start on the basic systems to have them better than the current 320neo systems that come in the sim. It has taken us a long time to get to that, and thankfully the right people are working with us for this. And we plan to keep working our way up on the systems and features, noting that we have basically almost no experience in this, other developers took years, or even decades to actually create a great airplane. We are merely starting and we also have different goals

Our focus is the XBOX and marketplace market which can't have variety of airplanes. Some PC users use it still, with our without mods, but they weren't our primary focus, and we never expect our customers to use mods, we are very transparent on our product and its limitations.

As for airports, the airport market is overly saturated and also ASOBO/Microsoft was very upfront when they said that they will do free airports, and thus we had to look to other range of products, such as AREX, Airport Jetway, Static aircraft etc. So we have slowly moved away from airports long before we even released our first plane.

Thank you

 

[ryanbatc 13,107]

They have to do what's right for them.  No one's making a killing off p3d and fsx addon airports.

I use their KSAN and it's still a great product in msfs!

[mspencer 450]

57 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

They have to do what's right for them.  No one's making a killing off p3d and fsx addon airports.

I use their KSAN and it's still a great product in msfs!

No doubt, a chunk of it is the declining price points for sceneries in MSFS. 

Why sell 1000 $30 Madrids, when you can sell 5000 $20 A319s?

Not to demean them, because they've been a stellar dev, but part of me wonders how many other developers are watching CaptainSim just rake it in with Marketplace sales, and think "oh hey I can do that." I'd venture a guess it's a lot less work than making an airport...

[blueshark747 1,871]

It seems some veteran scenery developers have lost their competitive edge and new developers are smoking them to the finish line with iconic past sim platform favorites.

Props to ORBX, Drzewiecki Design, FlyTampa and Aerosoft for remaining competitive in this new sim age and sticking to the script.

 

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by blueshark747

[Keirtt 596]

9 minutes ago, blueshark747 said:

It seems some veteran scenery developers have lost their competitive edge and new developers are smoking them to the finish line with iconic past sim platform favorites.

Props to ORBX, Drzewiecki Design, FlyTampa and Aerosoft for remaining competitive in this new sim age and sticking to the script.

 

 

I agree with this completely. LatinVFR did “ok” in the market but they couldn’t compete with the larger devs so now they’re going to fall back and punt… which means selling junk planes on the marketplace. 
 

I just hope they support their current products and plan to produce updates. Their KFLL is terrible right now with the bumps… if they can’t fix some of their products, I will never give them another cent.

[Flic1 1,012]

6 minutes ago, blueshark747 said:

Props to ORBX, Drzewiecki Design, FlyTampa and Aerosoft for remaining competitive in this new sim age and sticking to the script.

Not to mention iniBuilds who are somehow able to crank out incredibly detailed airports in a matter of months. I don't think spending 2+ years developing an airport will work any longer and some of the well known airport developers seem to take that long just to update an airport that was already in P3D...

[Flic1 1,012]

2 minutes ago, Keirtt said:

I agree with this completely. LatinVFR did “ok” in the market but they couldn’t compete with the larger devs so now they’re going to fall back and punt… which means selling junk planes on the marketplace. 
 

I just hope they support their current products and plan to produce updates. Their KFLL is terrible right now with the bumps… if they can’t fix some of their products, I will never give them another cent.

Agreed.  I also hope they can improve KBWI in addition to KFLL. The MSFS version was a bit of a disappointment and still has a lot of issues with the terrain bumps, flickering, etc  I am now understanding why they have ignored a lot of the issues with the airports as it appears they have moved on to other things....

[LVFRicardo 195]

58 minutes ago, Keirtt said:

I agree with this completely. LatinVFR did “ok” in the market but they couldn’t compete with the larger devs so now they’re going to fall back and punt… which means selling junk planes on the marketplace. 
 

I just hope they support their current products and plan to produce updates. Their KFLL is terrible right now with the bumps… if they can’t fix some of their products, I will never give them another cent.

We competed well and have been selling our airports at a higher rate than we ever did in the FSX and P3D era. Our KMIA sold 3X more than it sold anytime during that same era.

MSFS opened up new markets, and what we did is to not overly depend on one line of products. The same way Orbx, Aerosoft, FSDT and many have done. ORBX started doing GA airports in Australia and look at them now for example.

The MSFS market is so big it can have so many different kind of products geared to many different kind of users.

When MSFS was launched, months before we sat down with Jorg and the people in Asobo and Microsoft and they were very honest when they said they would do airports too. We just saw the writing on the wall and did not want to have free airports as our competition. Thus we began doing things other than airports, AREX, Static aircrat etc.

Last year we did our first plane. And now, the 320ceo which is our next, its a major improvement to the default 320neo systems. Which we know that others such as Fenix and FBW already do, but the difference is we are gearing towards the XBOX and marketplace market, and also to those simmers that don't have enough time to actually study manuals, and spend 30 or 40 minutes preparing for a flight, and also don't want to simulate failures.

We understand people don't like it, but for now new airports are on hold, and we are focusing on planes and maintaining our current airport lineup which is huge.

That we may one day do an airport again, yes it may happen. But for that to happen many things will have to change, and right now we don't see that.

Edited February 27, 2023 by DanMorera

[F737MAX 5,797]

2 hours ago, mspencer said:

No doubt, a chunk of it is the declining price points for sceneries in MSFS.

What declining price points?

• Taxi2Gate TFFR €24.00
• Aerosoft / Tailstrike LKPR €25.16
• Skyline Sim KCVG €26.28
• Drzewiecki Design KEWR €27.00 (though currently reduced to €18.90 on Simmarket)

Those prices aren't far off what we were paying for the very best sceneries in P3D before MSFS was announced and are more expensive than the best scenery developers' products in MSFS.
 

1 hour ago, blueshark747 said:

It seems some veteran scenery developers have lost their competitive edge and new developers are smoking them to the finish line with iconic past sim platform favorites.

Pyreegue and NZA Simulations are very welcome 'new arrivals' to the airport development scene. iniBuilds gets an honourable mention for not taking 1 year+ to deliver one detailed (albeit sometimes performance hungry) mega hub airport.

Flightbeam, FlyTampa, Jo Sund are the very best scenery developers, where their talent at delivering highly detailed and (usually) well-performing airport sceneries means people are willing to wait (and wait, and wait...) 😁 for their products to be delivered.

Middle of the market is a tough place to be. Everyone else (LatinVFR included) is in a fight to get their scenery out before some shovelware seller beats them to the punch.
They need to spend enough time to for their work to be good enough to raise interest in potential buyers, price the product competitively so as not to be scare them away, yet still try and get the product out to market before someone else (halfway decent or better) gets there first.

Selling affordable airliners to the captive Xbox crowd (blue ocean strategy), makes far more sense than selling an airport scenery on both PC and Xbox (red ocean strategy) for LatinVFR.
When I started flight simming, an entry-level airliner like LVFR's is exactly what I would have wanted.

[Snuffleupagus 328]

Bummer. LVFR was one of the devs who seemed to hit the airports I was interested in and was great quality. I always check in often to see if any new sceneries by then get announced. Will miss their stuff! I’ll be taking a pass on XBOX and marketplace stuff, I try my best to buy direct from the developer. And I have more interest in sceneries than anything else right now (minus the MD-11!)

[blueshark747 1,871]

47 minutes ago, F737MAX said:

What declining price points?

• Taxi2Gate TFFR €24.00
• Aerosoft / Tailstrike LKPR €25.16
• Skyline Sim KCVG €26.28
• Drzewiecki Design KEWR €27.00 (though currently reduced to €18.90 on Simmarket)

Those prices aren't far off what we were paying for the very best sceneries in P3D before MSFS was announced and are more expensive than the best scenery developers' products in MSFS.
 

Pyreegue and NZA Simulations are very welcome 'new arrivals' to the airport development scene. iniBuilds gets an honourable mention for not taking 1 year+ to deliver one detailed (albeit sometimes performance hungry) mega hub airport.

Flightbeam, FlyTampa, Jo Sund are the very best scenery developers, where their talent at delivering highly detailed and (usually) well-performing airport sceneries means people are willing to wait (and wait, and wait...) 😁 for their products to be delivered.

Middle of the market is a tough place to be. Everyone else (LatinVFR included) is in a fight to get their scenery out before some shovelware seller beats them to the punch.
They need to spend enough time to for their work to be good enough to raise interest in potential buyers, price the product competitively so as not to be scare them away, yet still try and get the product out to market before someone else (halfway decent or better) gets there first.

Selling affordable airliners to the captive Xbox crowd (blue ocean strategy), makes far more sense than selling an airport scenery on both PC and Xbox (red ocean strategy) for LatinVFR.
When I started flight simming, an entry-level airliner like LVFR's is exactly what I would have wanted.

Spot on!

Redwing, Flightbeam and Inibuilds indeed deserve an honorable mention!🍻

I'm also becoming a big SLH Design fan, the dev's work seems to get better with time and they cover some pretty cool sought after Caribbean/Tropical region airports.

Glad to see TaxiGate return also, what I desire right now is for a scenery developer to cover the French Polynesian Societal Islands in depth, like Flightscene has with FSX/P3D.

 

[FrankSalo 272]

1 hour ago, blueshark747 said:

I'm also becoming a big SLH Design fan, the dev's work seems to get better with time and they cover some pretty cool sought after Caribbean/Tropical region airports.

 

Oh yes! SLH came out swinging and I went a-buying! There's one Caribbean airport I'm hoping they make and it may well happen. We'll see.  

[Keirtt 596]

4 hours ago, LVFRicardo said:

We competed well and have been selling our airports at a higher rate than we ever did in the FSX and P3D era. Our KMIA sold 3X more than it sold anytime during that same era.

MSFS opened up new markets, and what we did is to not overly depend on one line of products. The same way Orbx, Aerosoft, FSDT and many have done. ORBX started doing GA airports in Australia and look at them now for example.

The MSFS market is so big it can have so many different kind of products geared to many different kind of users.

When MSFS was launched, months before we sat down with Jorg and the people in Asobo and Microsoft and they were very honest when they said they would do airports too. We just saw the writing on the wall and did not want to have free airports as our competition. Thus we began doing things other than airports, AREX, Static aircrat etc.

Last year we did our first plane. And now, the 320ceo which is our next, its a major improvement to the default 320neo systems. Which we know that others such as Fenix and FBW already do, but the difference is we are gearing towards the XBOX and marketplace market, and also to those simmers that don't have enough time to actually study manuals, and spend 30 or 40 minutes preparing for a flight, and also don't want to simulate failures.

We understand people don't like it, but for now new airports are on hold, and we are focusing on planes and maintaining our current airport lineup which is huge.

That we may one day do an airport again, yes it may happen. But for that to happen many things will have to change, and right now we don't see that.

Ricardo,
     I think it's great that you guys have found a new adventure. I don't personally agree with it and think you should stick with what you're good at, but that's my opinion. With that said, I would really like to see you answer my one question.....

Will LatinVFR continue to support the current line of products with MSFS and provide UPDATES or are we stuck with the bumps and terrain issues that have popped up with recent world updates? Right now, some of these airports are a huge struggle and I think folks would like to know if we will see corrections.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Keirtt