Global credit crunch

[jkeye 150]

Guys-Just to say I am feeling the pinch now cos my house is coming up for remortgage.Looking at recent payware releases which are priced at half the cost of FSX I feel that unless these prices go down I wont be able to afford new addons for a while.Does anyone else feel the same or am I a poor,complaining simmer?Jay

[WarpD 824]

Everything else is going up in cost, yet you want the developers to reduce prices.They won't be able to do that, and neither could you. It's like you saying you need to reduce your income level because prices are going up. Does that really make sense?

[n4gix 4,947]

>Guys->Just to say I am feeling the pinch now cos my house is coming>up for remortgage.>Looking at recent payware releases which are priced at half>the cost of FSX I feel that unless these prices go down I wont>be able to afford new addons for a while.You can't be serious... Do you somehow think that we are somehow exempt from rising prices? My house is edging ever so much closer to foreclosure, and you seriously suggest I should reduce my income? :-vuur

[ahuimanu 50]

Neither Ed nor Bill should reduce anything if that is not their wish, they each have a right to set the price for their services as they see fit.Jay, as Bill attests, is describing a very real phenomenon and represents a segment of the market which will stop buying MSFS add-ons. This is what happens in contractions of the economy: people stop buying toys. Those that subsist on making the toys will either a) increase their prices to make up for lost sales, :( decrease prices in hopes of driving up sales or c) get out of Dodge.Financial experts invariably suggest curtailing and cutting expenditures on frivolity which would include our hobby.Clearly, [a href=http://bly.com/blog/?p=208] price-setting is not a trivial matter[/a]. Good luck to the hobbyist and good luck to the artisans who feed our hobby.

[btacon 1,772]

The Free Market is truly free. Let demand drive pricing!Said by someone who owns thousands of dollars of MSFS-1,2,3,4,5, etc addon's.Did you know that you could buy add-ons for MSFS for the Atari ST? I'm sure it was true with the Amiga version too.My buying habits were free, but like you said you cut back on the toys first.Cheers,bt

[McCrash 3]

There have only been a few FSX add-ons that I feel are over priced. Most seem reasonable to me.

[Bob Scott 7,714]

It's not a global credit crunch. It's the end stage of a global debt orgy.If enough of the customer base gets squeezed, then the drop in demand drives producers to either drop prices or give up. That's the nature of a deflationary credit unwind...I think we're in the early stages of something very ugly here.I don't owe a dime to anyone. Even still, I haven't bought an add-on other than a few FS9 FlyTampa and ImagineSim sceneries to round out my collection and some AES credits since the first of the year. FSX was dead on arrival here. I feel sorry for the developers who spent their time on add-ons for FSX. I doubt it's going to end up worth their time.Bob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VSantiago de Chile

[Mike T 208]

Bob:I think that for the first time I've seen the "credit crunch" situation discribed accurately and poiniently as a "global debt orgy".Case in point: across the street from my subdivision, there is a new subdivsion going up with a new 15,000 square foot $1.9 million dollar house under construction. And in my area, it would seem that every other person is driving a 2008 Bentley Continental.The problem is, construction has stopped on the 15,000 sq ft home since last fall and the Bentleys are slowly disappearing. Common sense tells me that if one needs a mortgage on a $1.9 million dollar home and one is leasing or financing one's Bentley then one can't afford either of those extravagances. A friend of mine bought a $1.2 million dollar house 3 years ago, zero down and interest only payments, and fully expected to refinance and make a tidy profit this year. Unfortunately, his house is now worth $800,000 and he can't afford the new payments on his $1.2 Million mortgage at 6.5%. Whoops, I guess no more wine parties at his house :-(So this is to say, after the smoke clears we start from where we were before. No more McMansions brand new Mercedes-Benz S55 and back to normal $300,000 houses and Honda Accords, and the economy gets back to normal. Buy what you can afford...what a novel idea.

[Bob Scott 7,714]

Mike; Wow, $1.2M at 6.5%...that friend of yours has a $6500/mo payment interest-only, plus probably another $1000+ a month in taxes and insurance. And the house has dropped 33% already...are you in California? Unfortunately, most of the people in that situation will end up in foreclosure, with the bank then hat-in-hand looking for help from the taxpayer indirectly through the Fed, because how could they have possibly guessed that $1.2 million interest-only loans at 100% loan-to-value might be...risky...??...!! When the smoke clears, and I think it's going to be 2012-2013 before it does, we're going to start from where we were maybe in the late 90s in real inflation adjusted prices. I think "normal," in the market I'm moving to in Colorado, is going to be considerably south of $300K.The breadth and depth of this mania is hard for me to comprehend. I can't feel sympathy for those involved, because I just don't understand the stupidity that drives people to offer or sign a contract that obligates 50 to 90% of the borrower's take-home pay to a house payment, or the stupidity of those who took out home equity lines to buy luxury cars or take vacations. Hope they think it was worth it when they're still trudging to work in their 80s.Bob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VSantiago de Chile

[Geofa 108]

I agree with the stupidity. Then again-I live 3x as well as my parents (my father was a Medical doctor in the 60's -70's)-even with this economic downturn....I still remember my parents big decision to go from black and white tv to color...let alone dining out once or twice a year as a special occasion..and eating steak once a month in grade school (60's)-which I remember bragging to my grade school chums about. 1 Trip in my first 16 years...and not on an commercial airplane(that was for the rich)...I remember sweating my first amiga purchase..All relative imho...Now taxiing around the airport in my own airplane costs more than 1 add in for fs.ms95-ms for windows-ms98-ms2000 were all dead on arrival for me. Fsx is not. A difference of opinion.http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/1b5baf...b9f427f694g.jpgMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

[byork 2,258]

As a developer, I actually expect FS addon prices to trend upwards.Given the extremley specialized nature of FS addons (and their tiny, tiny, tiny markets) I'm actually of the position that most FS addons are under-valued all things considered.As for the housing bubble, well, all booms usually end badly. I feel for people who got caught up in the mania. I guess it's just a reminder why we should all live within our means, which is why I drive a Hyundai Avante, not a Bentley.-Bryan