6 minutes ago, Krakin said:

If you have to pay additional money to get your PMDG product working on 2024, your investment was not protected.

I'm having flashbacks, the 737 it will most likely work no problem but the NGXu will be 2024 only and will be a whole new "improved" version of the plane. Now save this thread for sometime in 2025.

Just now, FPStewy said:

I'm having flashbacks, the 737 it will most likely work no problem but the NGXu will be 2024 only and will be a whole new "improved" version of the plane. Now save this thread for sometime in 2025.

I don't understand. Isnt't the NGXu a 737? They've been working on a tablet for over a year now, not having even finished therefore their 737s for 2020 (!). I don't think they would be able to do an "improved" 737 within two years anyway. Also they want to get the 777 out ASAP since this will likely be their 2nd best seller on MSFS (be it 20 or 24 or whatever)

1 hour ago, Krakin said:

If you have to pay additional money to get your PMDG product working on 2024, your investment was not protected.

I thought Flightbeam made a clear and helpful statement and I have a lot of trust and respect in Mir and his team so I am fine purchasing their products if something is released that I am interested in. PMDG's statement however was clouded by caveats and, unfortunately, when it comes to pricing and updates I have low trust and confidence in them. So, for their products I will wait until 2024 is released and see how they actually handle the transition. Does it take them 6 months to get the 737 moved over (taking 14 months to update the textures and provide and EFB does not fill me with confidence in their ability to be agile); does the technical advancement of the simulator justify a complete repurchase or an upgrade fee? We will see.

Please do not take this as a complete slight against PMDG, they make excellent products (even if lacking in innovation) and they support them well. And they have done this for decades which is not an easy accomplishment. In their heyday they pushed flight simulation forward and I feel we owe them all a debt of gratitude and genuine appreciation. It is just that their previous pricing policies have left a very bad taste in my mouth and I am reticent to give them the benefit of the doubt in this one area of the business.  

Edited June 13, 20232 yr by Cognita

4 minutes ago, Cognita said:

I feel we owe them all a debt of gratitude and genuine appreciation.

Well said and I agree. I remember back in the early, early 2000's flying their 757 on FLY! or was it FLY2! ? PMDG essentially taught me how to fly those airliners and they definitely are a staple in the 3rd party development for flight simulation. Sure, they haven't innovated as much as they used to and have lost some of their shine, for lack of a better word. But, when compared to what's out there, PMDG still makes great planes. I admit, Roberts post about 2024 was a little vague and totally left out if we would have to repurchase products to move onto the new platform. I guess, we'll see. 

1 hour ago, Cognita said:

PMDG's statement however was clouded by caveats and, unfortunately, when it comes to pricing and updates I have low trust and confidence in them. So, for their products I will wait until 2024 is released and see how they actually handle the transition. Does it take them 6 months to get the 737 moved over (taking 14 months to update the textures and provide and EFB does not fill me with confidence in their ability to be agile); does the technical advancement of the simulator justify a complete repurchase or an upgrade fee? We will see.

Really? I thought it was extremely clear and concise. They're sharing, based on the knowledge they have (which appears to be little more than we), Good News for their customers. Literally said, "Business As Usual." What more could you ask for at this point?

In contrast to you, I have HIGH trust and confidence in them. You see, it started when they promised to give me a FREE NGXu in MSFS 2020 and all I had to do was pay for the one in P3D v4. And guess what happened when P3D v5 came out? That's right: NADA. The NGXu worked just fine AND PMDG didn't charge me.

Then, years later, the NGXu finally came to MSFS 2020 and, "shockingly", I easily downloaded my FREE copy of the 737-700 BBJ with no muss, no fuss, no extra work, and on the very same day it was released to everyone else. AND because it was so cheap, I still had money left over for the little rocketship 736. And I STILL have money left in the store account to put towards the 747.

And since I learned to fly the NGXu in P3D, I couldn't care less about the missing EFB crutch that so many wail and cry about...smh.

p.s.: additional to how "slow" they are, Their 737 released almost exactly the same time as Leonardo's Mad Dog, Fenixs A320 and Just Flights BAe 146. I can't exactly remember, because all of them were virtually simultaneous.

Quite a different "perspective", no?

Edited June 13, 20232 yr by UrgentSiesta

Quote

PMDG's Randazzo: None of the information we have been able to derive from publicly available sources lends us to believe that any change in our development agenda, product plans, pricing strategy or product release schedule is necessary.

I want to put a very, sharp asterisk on the following point however: We are not a Microsoft partner. We do not get advanced information from Microsoft. We are currently evaluating this weekend news drop by looking at the same information that is currently being provided to the public. That information is high-level and lacks the sort of technical and specific detail that we need to make authoritative, specific promises to you, our customers, so our guidance at this time is based upon the overall message Microsoft appears to be communicating- and that message looks like "business as usual" to PMDG.

What else can you say without speculating? The only information from Microsoft/Asobo is that everything will be fine with existing aircraft. Time will tell if that turns out to be the reality.

56 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Quite a different "perspective", no?

Yes, it is; and also quite valid how you walked through it. The NGXu, which I also bought, was accompanied by a very specific statement that the credit would be given when getting the MSFS version; so if that kind of specific statement is made I would be more open to purchasing prior to 2024, but so far what PMDG has said does not give me the same confidence.

 

48 minutes ago, rjquick said:

What else can you say without speculating?

This is also quite true, very little is actually known on which to base future decisions. 

8 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

I agree with that on the principle. Now the devil is in the details. 

Lets take the firefighting jobs. I have CL-415 flying often over my house because I am in a high risk region for forest fires and have a lake at few km. How will be simulated the danger of scooping the water,
the turbulence of extremely hot air over the ridge fires etc. Are we going to have arcade or simulation ? 

How does the game simulate those things when flying an airliner?

2 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

In contrast to you, I have HIGH trust and confidence in them. You see, it started when they promised to give me a FREE NGXu in MSFS 2020 and all I had to do was pay for the one in P3D v4. And guess what happened when P3D v5 came out? That's right: NADA. The NGXu worked just fine AND PMDG didn't charge me.

Then, years later, the NGXu finally came to MSFS 2020 and, "shockingly", I easily downloaded my FREE copy of the 737-700 BBJ with no muss, no fuss, no extra work, and on the very same day it was released to everyone else. AND because it was so cheap, I still had money left over for the little rocketship 736. And I STILL have money left in the store account to put towards the 747.

You leave out the fact that was a time limited promo that ran for a few weeks.  Not everybody who purchased the 737NGXu got that deal, and they only did it because the new sim had just been announced and the market for p3d addons had just tanked.  I’ve been through 4 sim changes with these guys,  they only did that because there was zero choice.  Even then, they made sure the new version cost more than the old, you didn’t have enough credit to buy all the versions included in NGXu for msfs did you?  
 

you like pmdg,  I like pmdg products. That’s fine, these guys are not your friend tho.  If anybody is going to find some way of charging more for this it’ll be pmdg.

At least Flightbeam and PMDG communicate to you about their upcoming 2024 Flight Simulator products. Many development companies say nothing about their MSFS2020 products, say FlyTampa which provides nothing about upcoming products and provides little or no customer support.

Darryl

15 minutes ago, SP2472 said:

say FlyTampa which provides nothing about upcoming products

That's nothing new with FlyTampa. You might even say that they're being consistent! 😆

2 hours ago, ShawnG said:

You leave out the fact that was a time limited promo that ran for a few weeks.  Not everybody who purchased the 737NGXu got that deal, and they only did it because the new sim had just been announced and the market for p3d addons had just tanked.  I’ve been through 4 sim changes with these guys,  they only did that because there was zero choice.  Even then, they made sure the new version cost more than the old, you didn’t have enough credit to buy all the versions included in NGXu for msfs did you?  
 

you like pmdg,  I like pmdg products. That’s fine, these guys are not your friend tho.  If anybody is going to find some way of charging more for this it’ll be pmdg.

No, I didn't leave anything out.

And for them "giving" me a "free" copy of the NGXu to get me to spend $ on P3D was quite shrewd:

a. Because I had such a good time with the base model, I ended up buying the BBJ expansion.

b. Because I had such a good time with the P3D 737, I ponied up the $250 for the 747-8i. Love it, too.

c. Because I had such a good time with PMDG in P3D, I unhesitatingly bought their MSFS DC-6. LOVE it.

d. I couldn't care less about not getting "all the versions" as in P3D because I was able to get exactly the variant I wanted for LESS than it cost in P3D: the BBJ.

PMDG may have "over charged" in the past (and that is highly debatable), but in the last 5 years or so, they've been doing the right things.

All I have to do is look at how high the prices/value of X-Plane airliners are vs the price/value of PMDG airliners and it suddenly becomes crystal clear who is "charging more".

Finally, we have a value-based relationship. Only idiots think vendors should be friends.

 

Well, all this is still very puzzling to me. Based on the somewhat incomplete official info available it's now very hard to make decisions for the future, money-wise.
After all i sure hope we don't end up having to choose between two different versions (if you can't afford buying them both....which for me would include buying new ssd's too).

Sure hope i'm mistaken in my assumptions.

I think it is inevitable over the medium term that we will all have to pay again for much of the stuff we have now over and above what otherwise could have been the case.  While developers can maintain now that their products can be ported over for free (to avoid a tank in sales) and will run just fine there will also inevitably be be new "features" in MSFS2024 that will require paid updates in order to be supported. At least until we have a lot more detail about the new sim caveat emptor applies for the purchase of addons going forward.

Bruce

5 hours ago, brucewtb said:

I think it is inevitable over the medium term that we will all have to pay again for much of the stuff we have now over and above what otherwise could have been the case.  While developers can maintain now that their products can be ported over for free (to avoid a tank in sales) and will run just fine there will also inevitably be be new "features" in MSFS2024 that will require paid updates in order to be supported. At least until we have a lot more detail about the new sim caveat emptor applies for the purchase of addons going forward.

"pay again for much of the stuff we have now" and new "features in MSFS2024 that will require paid updates in order to be supported" are contradicting sentences. 

If you are given new features, you are not really asked to "pay again for what you have now", if there are new features, it's up to the developer to decide if these are worth asking an upgrade fee, and he will assume the business risk of his own decision.

Compatibility with "what you have now", is a completely different matter, it means being able to use/install "what you have now", with the feature set which was fine for you when you bought the product,  and in this case, the Microsoft clarification should be enough to ensure there's a very high level of backward compatibility in the sim because, it seems most people fail to realize the statement from Microsoft is really TWO separate sentences that must be read separately to fully understand it:

 

This is the first part, which is the technical part, which indicates a fairly high level of compatibility with existing add-ons, and this is completely unrelated to the Marketplace.

Quote

With very few exceptions, virtually all add-ons that work in Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) today will function in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.

Of course, Microsoft can't give you a 100% figure here, because there might be some add-ons that do specific things that might be to related to the specific MSFS version that might require some changes, because HERE, in the 1st part of the sentence, they are referring to ALL add-ons at large, not just the Marketplace ones.

 

Now the 2nd part. There's no uncertainty here: add-ons bought on the Marketplace won't have to be repurchased, period.

Quote

Add-ons that were purchased from the in-simulator Marketplace will not need to be re-purchased in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.

 

This is interesting, and it gives technical insights about the backward compatibility as well because, they are basically sure that, an add-on that passed submission in the *current* Marketplace, will run unmodified in the new sim.

This because Microsoft surely cannot "force" all developers to put extra work to ensure the add-on can be used in the new sim, and at the same time saying with absolute certainty you will never have to purchase it again. This means they know all add-ons will run unmodified or, if changes are required, they are likely trivial, so no Marketplace developer in his right mind would be so foolish to prefere retiring his add-on, just to save what is likely very minor work to adapt if, if that's even required.

About add-ons bought outside the Marketplace, it's clear Microsoft can't offer any assurance about these, since they cannot possibly have any control or saying over a developer that might want to charge you for a minor modifications and/or an updated installer.

In these cases, you really need to look at each individual developer past history, and if they used to ask for a repurchase/update fee, just to let you use a basically unmodified add-on (like just a new installer) in a new version of the sim, and judge on a case by case basis.