Couldn't they just charge a penny?

Edited July 21, 20232 yr by Bdub22

2 hours ago, Wise87 said:

Too bad the livery packages aren't grouped by country. If you want to fly only in the US you would have to by several packages just to get Delta, United, American, Southwest and Alaska.

If you want to fly in both the US and Europe or even in a third region as well, and it was grouped by region, people would complain about having to buy several packages too and why aren't there liveries from different regions in one package. You can't win, and this way is the most appropriate one, to give people the chance to fly in different regions with one package.

Now obviously, they could put all the liveries in one package and charge a price of $4.99, which is the minimum price for a third-party marketplace item. I can't check right now, but I'm positive it's in the marketplace EULA. I'm also pretty sure from recollection that there is a reason why they can't include the liveries with the aircraft on Xbox, so they have to be separate.

Overall though, I'm gonna be honest, I think it's getting a bit ridiculous how people get their panties in a twist over everything at this point. Yes, would be cool if they put all the liveries in one pack (I'm doubtful there is a size limitation here to have to split them into several packages, personally), but then again it's not exactly a novelty that a company is taking a bit of an advantage by mapping out a pricing strategy to make some more money (if that's even what they did here). I sometimes wonder why people are pretty much oblivious of all the psychological manipulation in the consumer world to make you spend more money on stuff you don't need, but when something pretty harmless, relatively speaking, is done by a flight sim developer in this context it's a super serious issue.

word not allowed pmdg, their greed is the reason i stopped buying their word not allowed many years ago. Complaining about it also got me perma banned by mr. randword not allowed from avsim a few years back. (Had to beg to get back in after pmdg moved their support forum to their own site).

32 minutes ago, threegreen said:

If you want to fly in both the US and Europe or even in a third region as well, and it was grouped by region, people would complain about having to buy several packages too and why aren't there liveries from different regions in one package. You can't win, and this way is the most appropriate one, to give people the chance to fly in different regions with one package.

Now obviously, they could put all the liveries in one package and charge a price of $4.99, which is the minimum price for a third-party marketplace item. I can't check right now, but I'm positive it's in the marketplace EULA. I'm also pretty sure from recollection that there is a reason why they can't include the liveries with the aircraft on Xbox, so they have to be separate.

Overall though, I'm gonna be honest, I think it's getting a bit ridiculous how people get their panties in a twist over everything at this point. Yes, would be cool if they put all the liveries in one pack (I'm doubtful there is a size limitation here to have to split them into several packages, personally), but then again it's not exactly a novelty that a company is taking a bit of an advantage by mapping out a pricing strategy to make some more money (if that's even what they did here). I sometimes wonder why people are pretty much oblivious of all the psychological manipulation in the consumer world to make you spend more money on stuff you don't need, but when something pretty harmless, relatively speaking, is done by a flight sim developer in this context it's a super serious issue.

It was a simple question. Some folks just like to write novels I guess. You may want to check for a twist yourself. 😉

Edited July 21, 20232 yr by Wise87

Please address your facepalms properly. As mentioned in the PMDG forums:

[06JUL23] We are being intentionally vague regarding Xbox liveries for DC-6 and 737 - PMDG Simulations

As far as I'm aware (I can't search for another forum post right now), these same liveries are available for free in the Operations Center for any 737 MSFS PC version (either purchased at PMDG or Marketplace).

3 hours ago, BrammyH said:

I work in IS project management, and boy howdy have I gotten burned a lot with "really, THAT'S a limitation of the system?"

That's the best summary of my reaction after reading these Marketplace limitations 🤦‍♂️

Edited July 21, 20232 yr by Luis Hernandez

34 minutes ago, Wise87 said:

It was a simple question. Some folks just like to write novels I guess. You may want to check for a twist yourself. 😉

The first paragraph only was meant to reply to you specifically, the other parts were meant to be a general reply to the thread, sorry.

6 hours ago, scotgr said:

Maybe I’m wrong but my understanding is that in the market place there is an absolute minimum price that must be charged and I was sure I read that this was the price PMDG were going to use. 

But there are things on the marketplace which are totally free? (Other than from asobo)

On 7/21/2023 at 4:13 AM, Cognita said:

There are also airports on the Marketplace for 6 or 7 dollars, so I am not sure that minimum price is that high. Maybe the cost of the aircraft on the Marketplace should be reduced by the value of the liveries.

Nah - because there are plenty of guys like me who simply refuse to pay for liveries.

Heck, I won't even buy the -800 or -900 because there simply isn't enough differentiation to justify it.

So they have to get their money out of the main addon purchase because they wouldn't be able to depend on the incremental livery sales to make up for the loss.

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

So they have to get their money out of the main addon purchase because they wouldn't be able to depend on the incremental livery sales to make up for the loss.

Yes, I agree this is their approach and I suspect they will try to to obtain as much income as they can for all their efforts to get it on the Marketplace. But it if you buy the PC version you get liveries for free so it seemed more fair to me to reduce the price of the Marketplace version by the amount they are charging for liveries. I know they likely will say that price reflects the investment we had to make to overcome the incredible technical obstacles Asobo has created, but still.

PMDG goons came to our house with guns: forcing us to buy ! 😞

Sorry guys, maybe I'm a little late to the party, but the PMDG manager has a place where liveries are downloaded and automatically installed. It is certainly limited in the amount available, but surely PMDG should just be adding liveries to the managaer (?)

25 minutes ago, Rockliffe said:

Sorry guys, maybe I'm a little late to the party, but the PMDG manager has a place where liveries are downloaded and automatically installed. It is certainly limited in the amount available, but surely PMDG should just be adding liveries to the managaer (?)

This is about Xbox liveries.

Of course,  if you visit the PMDG forum you will find a perfectly reasonable explanation from Robert explaining what is going on and what they are doing but it seems for the OP and several others in this thread  it's another chance to denounce PMDG as enemies of the people.....yawn.

I have no issues with PMDG business practice, at the end of the day I can assure you, if we were in their shoes, we would be doing exactly the same thing. 

 

Edited July 24, 20232 yr by CarlosF

36 minutes ago, Rockliffe said:

Sorry guys, maybe I'm a little late to the party, but the PMDG manager has a place where liveries are downloaded and automatically installed. It is certainly limited in the amount available, but surely PMDG should just be adding liveries to the managaer (?)

I'm not sure if I understand this correctly, but it's possible for users to add 3rd party liveries (in the form of .ptp files available on flightsim.to and presumably others) to the PMDG Op Center from which they can be added to the sim. Easy, peasy. A quick look at flightsim.to reveals over 200 of them for the -800 alone.

 

3 minutes ago, jrw4 said:

I'm not sure if I understand this correctly, but it's possible for users to add 3rd party liveries

On PC, not on Xbox. They aren’t charging PC users, thankfully. From what I’ve read , they would “like” to give Xbox users the liveries for free, but cannot because of marketplace limitations. I tend to believe that since they have always provided free liveries, they could have charged PC users as well. But whatever, it’s not that big a deal.