When a scenery developer say they are leaving the P3D market the one reason they often give is that they don't make money and the scenery doesn't sell well compared to MSFS. Well, I was just over at Simmarket and the newly released Oslo scenery by JustSim is at #4 on the bestsellers list. Wouldn't this show the opposite of what the developers say and that P3D scenery still sells well? (I can't say if they still make money or not)

Maybe even the other market gets saturated. They have so many addons coming out the last two years, it may be impossible to buy them all. On the other hand the P3D market didn't get a lot important addons in recent times, so people are glad they get something to buy after a long period of shopping-detox. Also we P3D simmers keep simming for years. Who knows, how others behave with this hobby. So after a big wave, it may be already over on this market. There's also the next new sim announced and nobody knows how it looks with compatibility of existing addons. All this may have influenced this ranking. Really interesting was to know the sales numbers but I fear, Simmarket will never tell us.

To me, it seems like an overreaction on the part of developers. If many developers leave, then at least a niche market exists with much less competition.

I get that developers are off chasing gamers, but ultimately that may leave a vacuum in content for serious simmers that could be profitably filled by those who remain.

I do wonder how well msfs scenery addons sell.  With the default airports/freeware that’s available, it just doesn’t seem as necessary as they do in P3d.  
 

good for justsim and happy to see the P3d crowd representing. 

Over several years I’ve now bought 150 airports for P3D. Some are quite old as they’re compatible with FSX and all versions of P3D. They’re still better than the default.

Other more recent ones are sim specific with lots of bells and whistles like PBR. Some developers have understandably left as once MSFS arrived purchases of P3D airports slowed considerably and these chaps need an income. I don’t blame them for that. It’s not as though they have withdrawn their P3D products from the market and with frequent sales bargains are easily found.

The reason there aren’t that many releases for P3D these days is because there’s a large back catalogue. There are still plenty I haven’t bought and will always consider new releases.

2 hours ago, Joseph29 said:

(I can't say if they still make money or not)

Exactly. You can't say that by looking at numbers of a charts on a single site, because not only they are not actual numbers.

Our KIAH for MSFS went straight to N.1 on Simmarket, and it stayed there for several days and we sell it directly as well ( most of our sales right now has been direct ), Olso has already slipped to #5 in 2 hours after you posted, and as far as I know, Justsim only sells through Simmarket. All things being equal, there's no such thing as the MS Marketplace in P3D, and it doesn't run on Xbox, and that's already a big difference.

But that's not really the point. The point is, as you suspected, whether being #4 on Simmarket for less than 2 hours would ever be profitable.

It depends on so many other factors, you cannot possibly make a case that is valid for everybody, since it depends if the scenery was a conversion from another version, how many people worked at it, for how much time, and where they are based, because there's an huge difference when comparing profitability depending on which country the developers is based on so, being #4 on Simmarket for less than 2 hours might be enough for some developers, but not even enough to pay a single month of legal minimum wage for others.

Edited June 18, 20232 yr by virtuali

36 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

The reason there aren’t that many releases for P3D these days is because there’s a large back catalogue.

Maybe you could call that one reason, but the main one still remains the fact that the demand for P3D scenery has plummeted. 

38 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

There are still plenty I haven’t bought and will always consider new releases.

Sure, but as time goes on, these airports will become outdated with runway changes, incompatibility issues with future P3D releases, etc. And many of them have not aged well and are a poor value even when on sale. 

6 minutes ago, chapstick said:

Maybe you could call that one reason, but the main one still remains the fact that the demand for P3D scenery has plummeted. 

I don’t have access to the numbers so couldn’t possibly comment.

8 minutes ago, chapstick said:

Sure, but as time goes on, these airports will become outdated with runway changes, incompatibility issues with future P3D releases, etc. And many of them have not aged well and are a poor value even when on sale. 

Manchester is already outdated but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Until the work is completed the MSFS version is also outdated.

Those I’ll never visit in real life won’t bother me either. Runway designations can be changed in the AFCAD. If the developer won’t update the textures and signs I’ll make a request and keep reminding them it needs doing just as I’m doing now for LatinVFR LEBL.

Can you find anything positive to say in this topic assuming you’re a P3D user?

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Over several years I’ve now bought 150 airports for P3D. Some are quite old as they’re compatible with FSX and all versions of P3D

OK, you got me wondering…how many airports & etc have I purchased over the years?  As of P3D v2, I started a purchase log spreadsheet.  I’m going to try & tally it up.  Probably shocking.  

18 minutes ago, joby33y said:

OK, you got me wondering…how many airports & etc have I purchased over the years?  As of P3D v2, I started a purchase log spreadsheet.  I’m going to try & tally it up.  Probably shocking.  

Regarding mine if you assume an average price of 18 GBP that’s 2,700GBP. And then consider there are people who probably had more than that and switched to the other sim without batting an eyelid. Crikey!

That’s another reason I have no intention of moving away from P3D.

I guess that stuff like this matters more to people who fly online on Vatsim (or who need everything to be 100% up to date to fly a current real world route), but that has never been an issue for me. Would I like everything to be perfectly up to date? Of course I would, but we can't always have everything that we want

Edited June 18, 20232 yr by Christopher Low

I've used Microsoft Money since 1997. Before that I had a PC and had Microsoft Flight sims. But no expenditure recorded.

Since 1997 it's worse than I thought. Including ongoing subs and purchase of all flight-sim related software it comes to just under 6,900GBP. 😲

The hardware comes to just over 26,000GBP. Ouch! More PCs than I can remember but includes 109GBP for a 4Mb (not Gb) Matrox Mystique graphics card for 109GBP in August 1997. Some of you weren't even born! 🤣

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

I guess that stuff like this matters more to people who fly online on Vatsim (or who need everything to be 100% up to date to fly a current real world route), but that has never been an issue for me. Would I like everything to be perfectly up to date? Of course I would, but we can't always have everything that we want

The Rolling Stones told us about this years ago.😄

Bill W

Don't forget that this P3D Oslo scenery is very cheap. IMHO, quality is not that good but a low price might have helped to record high sales.

4 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Manchester is already outdated but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Until the work is completed the MSFS version is also outdated.

As I have never been to Manchester, I would have no idea if it was up to date, or not. That goes for just about 99.9% of the world also.

Does it matter?  not in the least.