First draft of a table:
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Shame it’s double the price it is from fs.to in UK 
Microsoft currently has a team that checks marketplace addon submissions for basic functionality. They make no judgements other than that (apparently).
If I submit 100 low quality airports over a six month period while developers who put more time and effort into their products only submit one product, then it is without doubt that my 100 submissions will slow down approval of the more well thought out products.
Perhaps MS should place a limit on the number of products a developer can submit as an initial offering per six month period. Make the number two products per six months. It won’t happen of course.
I created a wishlist item so that I could remove what I consider to be bad developers from my own personal marketplace but that hasn’t been done yet. Hopefully soon.
I wonder how many single developers have multiple marketplace identities?
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[quote=“hobanagerik, post:8, topic:572020”]
10 shovel-ware planes to 1 AAA one,
[/quote
This is a good point. They don’t tell us how many products are tested and rejected. All we see are the ones that make it. As I understand it, they test every submission that is to go up on the Marketplace. Every…single…submission, they have to.
Of course, what they are testing is “Does it contain malware” “Does it work”, or at least not crash the sim when loaded (as the only item non-stock item in a stock sim setup, so they very likely are not testing for addon interaction issues, how could they?).
So, let’s take that into account as well. I wonder what the rejection rate is? Not only do they have to test a ton of junk products, but also a ton of poor quality products I bet as well (of course that could be fixed with better documentation to some degree).
As far as “Quality Control”, IOW, Microsoft “rating” the “quality” of an addon, and even going so far as rejecting products like the Captain Sim stuff, etc.? Come on, that’s not even remotely possible. How do you judge what customers want and don’t want? Some people LIKE the Captain Sim stuff, believe it or not.
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Now that you bring that up hmmm I’m now wondering.
Solid points!
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SoFly posted a good reading of the current situation on their website:
“When will it be on Marketplace?” - Trying to answer that question - SoFly
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Keep in mind there is the added drm/encryption stage, I guess testing that encryption hasn’t broken anything is probably a priority. With aircraft bought via marketplace we don’t need activation/license keys, they just work as the DRM/encryption must be in built (and tested).
Even airports are not spared encryption with a ‘fsarchive’ file being created from ‘.bgl’ files.
If they speed up release schedule without testing it could come back to bite, and be just as frustrating an experience for end users.
Agree though that updates can never be rolled out fast enough for us end users.
From my understanding as a software developer such a test can be made without any human being involved (read automated) unless the encryption breaks anything. And even then rejecting it and writing an e-mail to the creator can be made automatically.
And how long would such an automated test take? A few minutes?
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They are also rolled out in a certain FS ‘fspatch’ / archive compressed format too. So that too has to be created and checked.
I can’t however possibly comment on level of automation or indeed testing. I though they did hire people a while ago to speed up marketpalce releases so presumably it’s not just all automated, otherwise we’d probably see releases/upgrades fairly quickly.
We should have clipped all the funny moments when twitch streamers (don’t want to call any names) and their watching audience of about 70 - 100 viewers made fun and good jokes about Microsobo marketplace and quality of their products, and put all those clips together in a hilarious scene 
Just to o mention an example:
Microsobo products are like, u orders a hoody, but it comes delivered after 9 weeks but in pieces, so u have to stitch it together yourself, and the actual hood is missing too, so u need a third party to fix that product:person_facepalming:
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When the current situation wasn’t that serious (because we are talking money here) I would have laughed out loud.
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Do you have evidence (announcement by the original developer etc.) that the product was submitted at the same time to the marketplace?
In fact, some developer studios prefer to first release on external vendor sites where they can expect faster „turnaround cycles“ in order to iron out more quickly the major issues first that the product may encounter. The PMDG DC-6 is such a prominent example that was only submitted like 6 months later to the marketplace after its initial release.
Also, my own experience as a user of the marketplace isn‘t as bad as some posts here may suggest. Two - annectodical - examples:
- An update was announced for aircraft A to be available on some external marketplace; two weeks later it was available on the marketplace (that‘s IMHO not too bad)
- Another update for aircraft B was made available, but didn‘t show up for quite some weeks; turned out that there were issues with the update and it had to be re-submitted with fixes several times (according to the developer)
The later illustrates that MS actually does some (basic) QA, at least on a „technical level“. And users of the „external marketplace“ were exposed to thise issues.
So for me it is actually a win-win: publish more often - and quicker - „bleeding edge“ features for those who can‘t wait, have more infrequent but stable releases on the in-game marketplace.
Of course the problem of (apparently and reported) long turnaround cycles for a given submission to the marketplace should still be addressed, e.g. prioritised by sales figures or so… (but some people may be surprised what products might be on top ;))
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I have definitely noticed times slowing down from submission to approval in the Marketplace but you make some good points.
That said, the grumblings I heard around Christmas hit home. Developers who were banking on that holiday missed their window because approval took so long.
IME as someone who primarily buys from the Marketplace, approvals take longer than regular MS and Xbox games and patches (which are also on a few days delay compared to the PlayStation). Best results come from developers who just don’t release elsewhere so it comes out for everyone when it comes out on Marketplace so nobody feels like that have to wait to buy it.
There are definite advantages to the Marketplace. Especially the way it can update everything you need updated in one click. And it is the only option on console.
But yeah, I am finding myself less excited about addons by the time I can finally get them on Marketplace because part of the fun of a new addon is enjoying it with everyone else when it is a NEW release!
I hope it improves. These delays can and have impacted my enjoyment at times. And for Pete’s sake! I just want to give them my money! 
And still ended in the DC-6 WASM desaster …
So much for QA-testing.
Might could have been 8 days, when updates get pushed to the MP as soon as they are ready to push. And not in a weekly fashion.
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Wait times for new products are ridiculous. They say its because of short staff and everithing is tested. Yet they frequently leave in bugs on release builds of the game, some intentional.
Also regarding quality of products, I say sell anything, just be fair with refunds. Thats the main reason keeping me away from the marketplace.
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and to add to my previous comment, they should also require updates to products with issues. If a developer abandons the product or doesn’t fix it within a set amount of time with no justification, then it should be an automatic refund for everyone that wants it, and the product removed.
It’s already broken though. I hope they know that, and are doing something about it.
If they don’t know, then that’s a bit worrying in itself.
If you think the marketplace process was opaque, try the partner/developer submission!
It’s like throwing a stone down a long dark well it seems.
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Slightly OT, but in a similar vein re marketplace issues. I have bought (silly me) many airports from the in game marketplace. The convenience and also the many sales they have bring me back, but my bugbear now that I know better is that the airport I now have is handcuffed as it were with encryption and doesn’t have and never will have some features. No one explained this to me at point of sale.
Two prime examples-
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Newer high detailed airports (think Ini and Drzewiecki) now have external installer options to tweak performance. Market place doesn’t have this option. Only one predetermined version will ever be available (high end? low end? who knows!)
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Encrypted airports have no access to BGL files so programs like GSX have issues reading “afcad_path” BGL files as they are all encrypted into an ‘fsarchive’ file in marketplace version of the airport
I think it’s unfair to consumers to sell things that are deliberately restricted in how you can use them without fair warnings on the restrictions they cause. I feel slightly duped,
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That’s interesting. I don’t think it’s too offtopic, as the MSFS Marketplace is the elephant in the overall marketplace ecosytem, and there are dynamics between them all as can be inferred from a lot of the comments here.
Is there a thread or google sheet somewhere that is cataloging and comparing all the marketplaces along dimensions such as the ones raised here? ie: submission times, deployment times, normalised price deltas after FX rates taken into account (ie: price divergences). What would also be interesting is comparing marketplace %'s that they charge developers, as that’s a key metric as well (exclusive vs non-exclusive).
There’s been a huge stink in the bigger game world over the last year, sparked by the EPIC (literally and figuratively) Apple spat. However, it did result in both Google and Apple dropping their revenue takes from 30% to 15% for developers under a certain threshold. That in itself was a huge win for indy devs. I don’t think Microsoft did though, would have to check.
To give some input from a non-Developer pov… purely a consumer’s take on it:
I’ve never purchased any product via the Marketplace for some of the reasons stated above.
I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be to know an update (regular or bug-fix) was released and it would take so long for it to make it to the MP. For me, it would be maddening. As soon as I learned of the long delays involved, it became an absolute no-go for me.
I really like the idea of having all of my purchases together in one place for convenience, but the delay FAR outweighs that. By a HUGE margin.
As an example, I was extremely interested in the HondaJet. Watched as it progressed and was really looking forward to release (with a day 1 purchase in mind). But, it was released on MP only. Even though I had been salivating over it, I just couldn’t pull the trigger. Could not do it. Huge disappointment. I thought about it for days but I just couldn’t do it knowing of the massive delay problem.
Note: In writing this post, I just learned that it’s available from Orbx now.
Anyway, there’s my take on the topic.
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