So who is going to be the first to pay $70 US for Tower Simulator?

[Guest bjablonka]

Mike,I don't seem to get your point when you say there is no unfair pricing. Take, for example, games such as Call of Duty 4 or Crysis or even add-ons from Ariane and PMDG which are anywhere between $50-70 and when you compare those to Tower Simulator, you clearly have a case of unfair pricing - from a customer point of view (it is like spending $100,000 on a VW Bug). Now if Feelthere has to charge $70 because of their investment in the game, then they need to get new programmers because the quality to justify that investment/price is just not there in this case. On top of that you have a customer service on Wilco's side which is just laughable. Just my $.02.Bernd

[Guest zzmikezz]

Bernd,I'm too tired to post in detail for the two-dozenth time on this subject but let me summarize ...You have no right to somebody else's product, only the right to pay whatever they charge. In a capitalist economy there have to be willing sellers as well as willing buyers. If the developer is unwilling to sell at the price you'd like to pay then there will be no sale, but there's nothing unfair about that.That said, from a strategic marketing viewpoint it doesn't matter what the developer has invested in the product, whether that be one thousand dollars or one million dollars. There is a price that will maximize profitability -- running dollar volume minus running support costs -- and neither the per unit-price nor the per-unit support costs have any memory of what happened before the current time.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxSo, developers ...Price has to do with the future, not the past, and if you're going to price your product very high because your development costs were very high, please feel free. Your thinking is misguided -- it ignores elementary economics and elementary marketing, but feel free.However, don't be surprised when you find that I'm not buying from you.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxIt is possible that, given the current climate, I have purchased my last addon aircraft from anybody but Microsoft, who are the only ones smart enough to realize that an investment of millions in Acceleration means it is necessary to charge $10 per aircraft -- in order to get the sales volume up -- in order to both recover the development costs and then make a profit.If Microsoft priced their addon aircraft the way most developers do, they'd be charging $200 per aircraft -- and zero people would buy them.

[Guest bjablonka]

Mike, I am very sorry I missed the first 23 times you explained your ideas:) If you don't mind, would you share what you do on a professional basis?ThanksBernd

[j1o2h3n4 0]

OK folks,Its "Spot the wally time again", and I hold my hand up. In a moment of madness and wanting another toy to play with I downloaded this program and would you believe got suckered into the bundled Voice Buddy package.Result is Tower Sim will not run past the DirectX check, says my version is not sufficient and I have to install their inbuilt DirectX which is Version 9.0c. I would if the mouse would work, but it disappears behind the window and hence I cannot press the OK button. My only way to shutdown is via the status bar. All this should not be required as I already have this version running anyway, if my DXDIAG window info is to be believed.So getting nowhere with that I tried running "Voice Buddy" only to find that I could not register it with the download key and so have a version which at present will run for 15days and then vanish.Please can we restrict this thread to comments about this software and any info that will possibly help the unfortunates, who have it. Because as usual with Wilco/Feelthere help is extremely limited. Incidently anybody know where this Tower Simulation Forum, which they say you will need to register with, resides?I do think this software is a case for the Trades descriptions act, as "Fit for purpose", in my case certainly does not apply.As for cost, lets be realistic, just think back to when the IBM compatibles first appeared and how much software was in them days.Very disappointed user.JohnT

[Guest zzmikezz]

bjablonka,I've been in the computer business since 1963, first as a system programmer making mods in assembler to the IBM operating system for the 709/7090/7094 series.Then I created the world's first minicomputer disk operating system (for the PDP-8), and then I created the world's first cross-platform computer software development debugging simulator -- MIMIC.Then, during the 70s, I was first a development manager and then a marketing manager at DEC. Along the way I did several important corporate staff analyses, including the one that brought software subscription services into being, which I then put into practice as Product Line Marketing Manager for the PDP-15 product line.Then I became an independent software entrepreneur, and then the pioneer producer of MIDI music cover sequences for computer bands, establishing THE brand -- Golden Midi Music and Software -- a name that is known even today in certain music industry circles.Then I joined MCI as a staff business analyst.Then I went back into business for myself, this time with my wife, as owner/operator of a leading edge computerized graphic arts and print shop company.Then I went back into software development, again for myself, working on a software product that out of fairness to Tom Allensworth I will not name here though you can read all about it on Another Site.I am also engaged in a pioneering joint venture with the managment of the Other Site, again not to be discussed here out of fairness to Tom.I should also mention that thirty years ago I set myself the goal of being able to read every line of the Wall Street Journal. I met the goal in two years of spare time reading, though I haven't tested myself in twenty-five years.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxSo I have notched my marketing gun many times. Now ...Marketing is not sales though it is often confused with sales. Rather, marketing is the planning of the specification, development, production, distribution and support of new products and services. Pricing is, of course, part of the distribution planning process.So those are my credentials, and my having told you where I stand, you now also know where I sit. I'm sorry you missed my earlier posts on this subject. They are scattered across four different FS-related sites, occurring mostly in the context of the many anti-piracy discussions I held last fall and winter on the various sites.I'm active on Avsim generally only in short bursts, so if you've never run into me here before it would be easy for you to conclude that nobody else knows me either.

[Guest ToMy Li]

I'ts a big failure project and software, Wilco / FeelThere should be accepting this criticism and refund our money!

[Guest bjablonka]

Mike,Thank you for your background. For me the whole fairness in pricing is very simple - it is perceived value which can be different from person to person. For someone who makes $1 mill. a year $70 for TS might be fair, for someone who has to work 5 or 10 hours to afford this piece of software might not be fair especially if it does not work as advertised. Look, I have run several companies but that is besides the point. What is more important for me is customer service or the lack of it. You have companies such as Flight 1 who have great customer service and then you have companies such as Wilco. What I don't get is by not issuing refunds, for example, companies will lose so much more in revenues due to the negative press they receive. Like I said before, I wish we had a dedicated site, maybe even here at Avsim, where we can vote of FS related add-ons. Take care,Bernd

[january 19]

Mike- you're just a young whippersnapper! I go back to the IBM 701 & 650 where there was NO assembler- we programmed in machine language!The latter M/C being a huge leap forward because it had a 2000 word(10 character) Ram memory on a spinning drum. The term "Byte" was still a few years away from being invented. Mean Time Between Failures on these machines was typically 2-6 hours! When the MTBF got too bad, the (full time)service man would do a "Tube Test" by connecting a meter to each tube, then rapping it with screwdriver handle to see if it was failing!In those days transistors were a Bell Labs curiosity you read about in Scientific American.Alex Reid

[Guest zzmikezz]

bjablonka,You wrote "What I don't get is by not issuing refunds, for example, companies will lose so much more in revenues due to the negative press they receive."This certainly does happen. Most developers are more nearly artists than businessmen and sometimes it shows. Rare are the individuals like Lou Betti of DreamFleet and Ron Hamilton of Eaglesoft, both of whom are successful businessmen as well as developers and project leaders of great skill and creativity.But we can't require that all developers be great businessmen, just as we can't require that developers price their products some way that we would like them to.The free market has a good way of determining who the winners and losers should and will be -- repeat business.

[Guest zzmikezz]

january,Yes, you have me beat. I'm just a young whippersnapper. However, Seymour Cray, the now-deceased supercomputer pioneer, had you beat ...Cray not only did not use assemblers ("for people who don't know how to program" is how he described them), he also did machine language in his head, keying in his programs directly through the panel switches, with no writing stuff down on paper beforehand!As you know, it's not remembering the opcodes that's hard, it's doing all the address computations to make the jumps and loop control stuff come out right -- those plus dealing with matrices.

[january 19]

Mike- I remember a very sweaty armpit day when our factory union (UAW) threatened a walkout if we couldn't produce the payroll. I stood behind my sr. programmer as he programmed in a tax change patch via the 1401 console switches- with about 30 minutes remaining to deadline! It worked-whew.Alex Reid

[Guest Super 27]

I spent the money on this sim, and it's a complete waste. The audio quality is TERRIBLE, the graphics are mediocre at best, and procedurally it's not accurate at all. The instructions in the manual for actually controlling traffic are a joke. It's a VERY simplistic approach to air traffic control procedures, and doesn't even really seem to be much of a challenge. On a whim, I went searching for the old BAO Tower program and found it somewhere online, downloaded it, and got it working. I had forgotten what an awesome sim that program was. Since I've installed both BAO Tower and the Feelthere version in the past few days, I've spent about 10x as much time with the old one. It's a MUCH more realistic program in terms of actually controlling the traffic, the audio is WAY better (even though there's only one pilot voice), and it's just a more stable program (despite being 15 yrs old...go figure).

[Guest bjablonka]

It looks like a lot of people are more than unsatisfied with this software - any idea how and if we can get our money back?Bernd

[Guest RichUK]

Contact your credit card company and ask them to deal with it, and don't buy anymore Wilco / Feelthere products.Rich.

[Guest ToMy Li]

>It looks like a lot of people are more than unsatisfied with>this software - any idea how and if we can get our money>back?>>BerndIm still waiting a reply from Wilco (about my money refund request) I will get my money just after dead...Suggestion, try the old Tower of BAO released on 1995 it's much more fun and contains better image quality etc...