You took that out of context, there are plenty of issues but none for me anyway apart from the long turn around that would ‘keep long term simmers away’. This is what I was responding to because as a long term simmer I’ve used the marketplace on a dozen or so occasions.
I’ve also bought plenty of products from other stores as well because they offer a product sooner or offer an option not available on the Marketplace. Ultimately my take is, I always try to support the Marketplace first because it supports the MSFS development team but that’s not always possible.
I actually approach it in the opposite direction: I try to support devs as directly as possible. There are some practical matters for this - like allowing weapons on military planes which are against the MP TOS. But ultimately I know they get more of the money that way. And I know I’ll get the updates way faster than they appear on MP.
MS makes enough money through the planes they sell directly through the MP.
But the bigger issue, as Edson stated, is that the MP is needed for the XBox market. That’s what is really at stake here.
As always it’s about money:
as long as Microsoft achieve their financial goals on the Marketplace, they have no reason to change anything. They don’t care about the quality. They only sell it, it’s not their fault that some of it is trash. Simmarket is going a similar route when it comes to quality. They do sell a lot of garbage as well, however they at least have written reviews and you get the updates reasonably fast.
The only way Microsoft could be forced to do anything would also be with money: namely if all the top level developers simply didn’t release in the Marketplace anymore and instead went to other platforms like Inibuilds or Orbx. Most PC players would follow, I expect. And sooner or later the Marketplace would get the reputation of only selling trash.
However, since the only way for a dev to get his product to the XBox crowd IS the Marketplace that may be a significant potential loss. But I have no idea how much of the revenue for a typical high end addon actually comes from XBox players. Could be 5%, could be 50% …?
The ideal version were to release products on the Marketplace exclusively for XBox and sell to the PC players on the other platforms. But I would expect Microsoft wouldn’t stand for that either and many customers would also be confused …
I dunno. I certainly like how the Marketplace content I purchase is available on both my PC and Xbox. What you’re suggesting would mean I would have to buy it twice.
Never considered anyone playing MSFS on XBox AND on PC. But yeah, I can see how that could be a problem for some. Question is: how many actually do that?
But it’s hypothetical anyway. MS would never allow it.
One other marketplace point of contention I noticed lately.
Inibuilds have a section called ‘Store Transfers’, albeit limited in scope to certain stores, whereby you can transfer in a purchase so you can then use their installer for updating and I guess then use new features like tailoring performance with installer toggles. That seems to be where we are headed with dense scenery, and is not a bad way to go.
The trouble is I bought Ini’s KLAX via the in game marketplace and I only have receipt for FS ‘marketplace/store credits’ used to buy it so no real proof of purchase, it’s listed nowhere that I have bought this airport. So my only hope of taking advantage of the latest features to adjust KLAX performance is to buy it again but directly from Ini.
I have bought other airports directly from Ini - EGLL for example and it’s great having access to the performance tweaks via the installer. But I will likely never see them with the marketplace bought version and have no method of transfer to Ini’s installer as I have no real proof of purchase.
For me, a tester, not a dev, I have about a dozen outside purchases that I have either abandoned or purchased again in the Marketplace. I’m tired of the Community folder dance. I have the H145 in my Community folder now, and when it comes to the MP, I will buy it for the 3rd time (once on sale for EA beta testing, once when it went GA cuz I want to support a good dev, and again when it hits the MP so I can empty the Community folder again.) For me, the Community folder will always be for testing Early Access stuff.
That’s why I said rating, not sales. Now there should be a minimum amount of sales, but base it on the buyers ratings, and in that case, things like the Fox2 would still be way above the CS stuff.
What we as end users deem to be the metric (quality and user ratings) and what Microsoft would likely see as their metric (volume of sales and profits) are 2 different things.
And even when it comes to ratings, remember who the people are who buy these cheap Bredok and CS add-ons. They’re not experienced simmers that know what they’re doing and have a good frame of reference as to what to expect. It’s casual gamers who just want more planes. If it flies, they’re going to give it a good rating. To me, the entire rating system in the marketplace is meaningless.
Yeah I made the mistake of buying the IFE F-35 on the marketplace on a whim. Turns out I paid the same money for less features and month+ long wait times for updates on PC. Never again. MS really should be fixing this, but I highly doubt they care.
What I believe is that they underestimated how successful MSFS, and by proxy the marketplace, would be. They went into this using past metrics - how flight simulation was a very niche “dad / old guy hobby”. It could be profitable, but the demographic is limited. They knew that rolling it out to Xbox would obviously attract a lot of others, and that was the intent.
But I think the popularity of the sim, plus the sudden explosion of 3rd party devs wanting their own little piece of that pie ballooned so far beyond their expectations that they don’t know what to do with it. They were caught offguard without the resources to be able to handle the tidal wave of developers suddenly releasing all these new add-ons.
I think the marketplace has improved significantly since launch. Updates to products that could quite literally take months to get live are now reduced to a few weeks. In some cases, less. New products are launching almost in tandem with other sources like SimMarket, etc.
Yeah, it’s not perfect, and as this thread clearly demonstrates, they have a lot of work ahead of them. There are still people waiting for 1+ year (or more) to get their applications processed, it sounds like communication between 3rd party devs and MS is abysmal at best unless it’s some of their preferred devs. And there are a bunch of other issues. But to say that they don’t care at all I think is wrong. If they didn’t care, we wouldn’t have seen the improvements that we have over the lifespan of the sim.
Thing is, if they wanted to scale up the capacity, they could have done so by now. It’s not rocket science. It needs more staff. More staff pushing through more content more quickly equals more income more often to cover the cost of those extra staff. So it seems a no-brainer to just do it.
I’m guessing there is more to it than we can see. We don’t know what is really going on behind closed doors.
Well if they do care the Trillion Dollar Company has a weird way of showing they care for their partners. Gotta get a forum post and general users talking to try to get movement!
And yeah I know they care about the marketplace. Duh. It’s where their money will be rolling in. Doesn’t change the fact that I’m still disappointed my Marketplace purchase is worse than the same priced thing from somewhere else and that I have to wait weeks to a month for an update that everyone else already has. So I think I’ll just pass on the Marketplace going forward. As you said, plenty of other sim stores
Hey, I’m not saying it’s perfect. They still have a lot of work to do with the marketplace. As much as it’s improved, there’s still a long, bumpy road ahead. I don’t disagree there at all.
As much as we look at MS as a giant company with unlimited resources (a fair view IMHO), each team / project / business unit within the corporation has to operate within allotted budgets and maintain certain levels of revenue. The more resources are thrown at a particular business unit, the more that cuts into their quarterly earnings.
And the bean counters at the top who only really care about numbers (who make the financial calls and personally may not give a flying :■■■■: about the product) only care about the financial aspect of it. Less revenue = less bonus for them at the end of the year. I can’t say for sure that’s how it works internally with MS, but seeing that’s how it typically goes with most large corporations, I’d say it’s a safe bet there’s probably some of that here as well.
In any case, they have a lot of work ahead of them to get the marketplace in shape. It’s improved, but it’s still sorely lacking. And I do hope for the sake of both the 3rd party devs that rely on it and customers who buy from it that they can get things sorted out.
Vote with your wallet. Initially, I was a big supporter of the marketplace. Then I realized how broken the whole thing is, and stopped buying stuff there. Now I’ll only buy stuff in the marketplace if it’s an exclusive and I really want it. Otherwise, I’ll buy directly from the devs or from some other marketplace.
Well, currently I am giving support to 2 new PC-users who have been using the Flight Sim on Xbox recently.
The reason they changed to PC?
Mainly the Market-Place situation!
They are now proud owners of
Yeah don’t get me wrong though, I would love for it to succeed as an in-game way to browse, buy, and download addons is amazing for marketing and general users and third parties. Just still not there yet… after a couple years haha.
There is a difference between Forum mods, Asobo and Microsoft.
Most people do care.
The ones in charge are simply not good at communicating with the community.
A simple reply from Jorg to say “we’re aware of it and here’s what we’re doing to improve the situation” would go a long way… But we’re not going to get that.
