I’m not sure that’s completely accurate. There are plenty of aircraft being developed that are non licensed. Take Carenado or Captain Sim for example. None of their aircraft are ‘licensed’ or even PMDG itself; do they have a licence from McDonnell Douglas for the DC6?
I don’t see how being part of the base product or an add-on can alter the legal position?
There’s a difference between licensing and trade mark protection. How the product is described is the important aspect.
Many years ago UbiSoft was sued by Northrop Grumman for breach of copyright when they were the distributors for a CFS game called Pacific Fighters. This game contained both the Grumman F4f and F6f. They weren’t sued for the content of the game but for the description on the DVD box artwork; it breached Grumman’s copyright .
PMDG make a big thing of their licensing agreement with Boeing but it’s difficult to see exactly what they’re getting out of it nowdays; Boeing no longer allow them to publish their flight manuals and so far PMDG haven’t made any currently produced Boeing aircraft for MSFS.
It does make it all sound good though doesn’t it?
Kind of like the printer in the fbw 320.
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Douglas Aircraft merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967. McDonnell Douglas merged into Boeing in 1997. So the DC-6 was licensed through Boeing.
Does the 777 not count?
PMDG gets access to Boeing technical and systems data and in the 777 are including the actual electronic checklist systems as implemented in the aircraft. They also get permission to use the company logos, logotype and product names in their own simulator products. And if you don’t think the latter is a big deal in this day and age, show me the Rafale or Gulfstream in your sim hangar.
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The 777? Yes, it certainly is current but it first flew thirty years ago. There’s a lot less to come for this airframe than has gone before.
Logo’s are important to a certain sector of the market but as I’ve tried to show; it hasn’t stopped other developers.
I believe Gulfstream represent a different challenge as certain details of their aircraft’s structures - the windows - are protected by copyright.
Whether this could be defended successfully in a court of law is debatable. Unsurprisingly, so far, no third party flight sim add on creators have been prepared to take on the financial challenge of facing a multi million dollar corporation in court!
There’s like 4 Airbus a320neos from different devs. There will be multiple maxs from different devs also. Why would this be any different? Asobo makes theirs (complex but still not to PMDG level) and PMDG makes theirs plus the whole max family to their standard. I don’t think asobo cancels out pmdgs max
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They’ve said it’s the most complex Asobo aircraft to date. So it’s better than the 787? Or the Longitude? I don’t think we can count the A320neo v2 as that’s not Asobo.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s around the level of Inibuilds A320neo, I think MS have made it quite clear that’s the top level they are going to aim at. Even the ATR Expert series isn’t better than that.
This leaves the likes of Fenix and PMDG still well clear of the default provided aircraft in depth and overall quality, with their bespoke engine simulations and much more. So I think for serious tube simmers nothing much changes.
However this will affect midrange buyers and inevitably cost sales from the premium products, which might mean that those developers have to start charging the kind of prices that are common in other simulators in order to make money. Which would certainly be unfortunate for those who appreciate the depth and quality.
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It will need to be far, far better than their A320 Neo / 787-10 / 747-8 airliners. If lessons learned from those up to now are the baseline for the Max, it should be better at least. Here’s hoping but I will keep my expectations low and enjoy it if those expectations are exceeded.
Ifly also has a MAX in development.
I would not expect the MAX in the base game to be on the same level as PMDG in the system and failure simulation but it will be very good for point A to B flying and very useful on the likes of Vatsim or IVAO. I’m sure Working Title will be doing the avionics which will be excellent.
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Asobo paid for the A320 v2. They likely consider it theirs. I would. That statement was so ambiguous as to really be open to several interpretations. Others have argued the dreamliner and 747 are not Asobo because they were turned into sort of mid-tier aircraft by Working Title (really do enjoy them, just trying to provide some distinguishing between those an something like PMDG.
Asobo had made a point of licensing the Boeing and Airbus logos and aircraft. The original poster I believe was simply assuming that will continue. But yes, historically, one does not necessarily have to have rights to do something. Though take for example the Piper M500 … er … FSR500. It was going to be a Piper until it turned out he clearly couldn’t get the trademark. So mixed bag.
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They did say that this was not the end of partnership announcements. If you saw the entire stream, after he finished the current partner intros and had that summary slide of I think it was 18 partners, he went on to say the fun is not over, that there where 10 more partner announcements to come in the coming months. 1:22:50 in the video stream, right before the actual MAX announcement. So they quite clearly are piece mealing this all out and are continuing to do so. Some of these as yet unannounced partners are probably aircraft developers. Not saying that means PMDG is one of them. Maybe they are, maybe they are not.
Based on what PMDG charges for a single model aircraft, I doubt Ms/asobo has decided to purchase and pay them for any of their aircraft. PMDG will simply make a lot more money selling individually as they do now. Why short yourself for a lower bulk price to MS?
For some of these smaller devs this makes sense.
This one is an Asobo in house 737, nothing to do with PMDG or any other external developer. They’ve made this very clear.