Some of those low quality companies go back to at least FSX.  It isn't like they just popped up with MSFS 2020.  This isn't a new problem.  With more add-ons overall, there's more of these as well.  Heck, "shovelware" has been a problem in video games and PCs going back to the last century.  It is nothing new, and something that will probably never go away. 

6 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

Agreed that the marketplace alone does not give the complete picture of sales and uptake of add-on products. And the PMDG well maybe #1 and at the least a very close #2.

On the Navigraph 2023 survey the Fenix and PMDG were the top two MSFS add-on aircraft by far with both at ~40%. Also interesting to note in terms of the "best simulation product of 2023" question the PMDG was #1 at 11.2%, Fenix #2 at 9.7%, and A2A #3 at 8.8% .. all interestingly besting a certain sim major version release at 4.9% 🙂

https://fselite.net/content/flight-sim-community-survey-results-released-by-navigraph/

Yup, I was also thinking of the Navigraph survey too when I thought of what could be the most top selling add-ons for MSFS, granted the Navigraph survey probably targets the more serious flight simmer market though.

9 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

Also related to this topic, I noticed some DCS World developers like Heatblur jumping into MSFS. And didn't WinWing mostly make hardware for military flight sims (ie. DCS World?). I just noticed that WinWing came out with their first hardware for MSFS.

HeatBlur's F-14 was produced in collaboration with India Foxt Echo, a long time developer of military addons for FSX freeware / some payware. Obviously, IFT have moved to MSFS, and they were the first to bring a good quality .mil addon to MSFS.

Interestingly, before the collab with HeatBlur, IFT released their MB-339 over on DCS World (a very good addon considerably better than their MSFS version), and are working on the Fiat G.91 for DCS now (and something else which I don't think they've announced as yet). So they are "busy beavers" in multiple sims now.

In re HeatBlur, they are completely overwhelmed with producing DCS World modules, as the many delays of their immediately pending F-4 Phantom amply demonstrate. Not to mention the A-6 Intruder & Eurofighter Typhoon which are both in DCS development.

They have stated that the MSFS F-14 collaboration "won't be the last" for MSFS, but I would think the work will continue to be collaborations rather than in-house development. This is nothing new for them, either, as several years ago they got involved with another mil sim platform called Metrea - one of those "next generation" mil sims that seem to be government-only projects.

So it's not so much that they're jumping in to MSFS, but rather that they're highly experimental in nature and aren't afraid to keep their options open.

7 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

all interestingly besting a certain sim major version release at 4.9% 🙂

Statistically irrelevant. There are more MSFS players than X-Plane players, by far. And so of course the MSFS players are going to choose MSFS addons as their favorites rather than another simulation platform. Not to mention that at the time of the Navigraph survey, X-Plane v12.0.0 was in about as rough shape as MSFS was in Aug 2020.