b737800

Exactly right. As I mentioned I'm in exactly that position now and I have to make estimates based on something that has taken 1 year of my time to create and having done exactly the same thing 3 years or so ago. My own calculations give me a reasonable expected sales volume of 10,000 units. The "Microsoft" involved takes 50%, however they do all the marketing and POS. At $80 per unit to the end user that gives me a gross of $400,000, of which 25% goes to my investor, leaving roughly $300,000 for me, spread over a likely timeline of 2 years. Given the risks involved, what I *could* earn from other efforts etc. means that although that income might sound high to some, it's only just hitting the "go for it" criteria for me. The fact that there is also a "for professional use" possibility from the same software with little to no extra effort tips it over the edge. ...and after this project comes another, so the cycle repeats.

What is your profession, and can I buy whatever product or service you might be involved with at a price that I choose, not you, even though I can only guess your costs? If not, I'll steal it anyway. All that written in the same post that talks about fairness. At $60 or less per unit they would have to sell 3 times the volume to be in the same financial position.

How dare you bring sanity and rationale into this thread. No place for it. Actually I'm close to bringing a piece of software to (an unrelated) market and I need to set the initial price point and I have to weigh up costs, perceived value, profit targets and many other factors against what I think the market will bear. I'd be interested in knowing some "guesstimates" as to PMDG's potential market size as an exercise in futility, so please add some more sanity to any figures below that you think might be WAY off, taking existing sims as a baseline and a product that is a single aircraft type and ignoring the possibility of a new sim (FS2020) that might increase numbers at some point in the future: P3D / FSX / XP active users: 3 million % of those that have paid for any add-ons: 20% = 600,000 % of those that are interested in 1 specific airliner type: 20% = 120,000 (this is my target market) % of those that I can expect to be made aware of and consider my product: 30% (total guess) = 36,000 % conversion rate: 10% = 3,600 units sold Timescale to sell those units: 2 years Price point $140 Gross income = 140 * 3,600 = $504,000, over 2 years, heavily weighted to 1st year, I would be very interested in which of the figures above you might think are way off the mark. This of course ignores any "commercial" market - only looking at the serious simmers down to the gamers. Thanks

No need to apologise my friend. If it's your opinion it's your opinion. I'd sell my wife for this thread.

Perhaps the gamers aren't PMDGs target market.

Come on Noooch, you write many quality posts. You might think the price is too high, even totally unjustified, but $140 for software is insane?

It is in the phone manufacturers interest to release new OSs as often as possible. They want your phone to run slower and slower so you buy a new one. ... and we drift off topic.

T-shirts on sale next week.

At last, a well written post on the non-supporting side of the PMDG pricing point. I'm on the other side of the fence (in case you didn't already realise) but I totally understand and accept your rationale.

Interesting. I have the Rift S which in some ways is a step back from the Rift, although newer. I don't get screen door affect at all, but age might have a big impact here. Biggest peeves for me are the limited field of view and the nausea which probably comes from my inner ear not receiving the same motion cues as my as my eyes. Resolution can always improve but it's better than I expected from the feedback I read before buying. In terms of the field of view, it reminds me of some of the earlier Level D sims, where the view (which was graphically awful anyway) was cut off before the end of the L2 / R2 windows. However, the "enclosed" cockpit and 6 DOF motion are mind blowing. I'd take that motion over graphics every day of the week, but of course want both.

You're not alone. I'm the submarine in the parking lot.

It's interesting that people have such polarized views, but that also makes it a pointless exercise in discussion. With that in mind, I'm off to get my $99 worth of play time.

Very true. Don't underestimate "pride / prestige" as a buying motive.

If you want to totally discount the expected market size as a factor of pricing then your post is spot on. I once worked as the head of a software product line and each product of course had sales targets. The sales manager of one of the products (let's call it Wibble for short) came to me and said that Wibble was overpriced by about 30%. I asked what I thought were all the right questions of him and a few months later, when he still wasn't hitting target, the conversation went something like: Him: "My Wibble sales targets are too high. Now that we've reduced the price I have to sell more units just to hit the same figures as I did before. Plus, we need to hire more support staff because there are more people using Wibble". Me: "I quit".

The peanut remark was good. This one wasn't thought out. I can imagine the response from the car salesman when I ask to purchase the newest equivalent of my existing car and then demand an upgrade price (while still keeping the old car) just because it's just an upgraded version of what I already have. Surely they used a lot of the same technology and know-how in the new car? How dare they charge me the same or more. Don't they know I'm a customer! I don't know how long it took PMDG to develop the first version of the 737 and I also don't know how long it took them to develop the latest. However, I could quite easily believe they spent just as much on the latest as they did on the original. I could easily believe they spent more time. The level of detail is incredible. They are simulating a $100M dollar airplane for a market that is far smaller than race games, and the complexity of that airplane with its flight model, options and systems is far more complex than any car I can think of. I've spent a fair amount of time in Level D simulators and the cost is... quite steep. I can easily believe they spent tens of thousands of dollars just on that alone. Just playing devil's advocate here... if it took PMDG just as much time and effort to create the new model as it did the previous, do you still think it's a rip-off to have to pay the same price? I'm with you that an upgrade price would be nice if the effort in producing the upgrade was less than the effort for producing the original, but perhaps it wasn't.