In theory, the marketplace should be the ultimate place to buy stuff…
1 account / login - you don’t need a dozen different logins / passwords for different stores
no keys / codes
you get update notifications in game vs having to follow some 3rd party site
you don’t need to have your credit card linked to a dozen different stores
you can easily add or remove addons from the content manager
you don’t need to keep track of some rarely used addons that are easy to forget about
no need to keep backups of installers
marketplace purchases ensure that the platform stays profitable and continues to be developed
This is why I was such a huge supporter of it initially. After a few months, I realized it was a complete mess and just stopped using it. Now I have to deal with all of the flip side of all of the above. Once they get it sorted, I may be back. Till then, it’s off to 3rd parties I go.
We’ve actually gotten that several times over the last 2½ years in various Q&As. And tangible improvements have been made. But there’s still a long way to go. From the perspective of a consumer looking to spend my money, the marketplace isn’t in a shape that I feel comfortable giving my money to.
Same as me, with one difference:
I will surely not return to the marketplace as my Priority One source!
No matter how they might improve it. They got their chance for over 2 years now.
And that, good sir, is voting with your wallet. I fully support your choice. Like I said above, the only time I’ll use the marketplace now is if it’s a product I really want and it’s not offered elsewhere. If it’s available elsewhere, I’m even willing to pay more for it from those alternate sources if that’s the case. That’s how much I don’t want to use the marketplace.
And you’re right. For me, it’s too late now. I already have said multiple accounts from different stores, etc. MS pushed me to that with the state of the marketplace. Outside of marketplace exclusives, I’m very unlikely to spend any of my money there even if they fix it.
They have apologized for things in the past and indeed improved on feedback given by the community but we shouldn’t have to wait for months on a situation like this with the hope that, perhaps, we’ll get another apology on the next dev Q&A.
People’s livelihood depend on income provided by their work on Marketplace and the absolute opacity of the process is killing the reputation of the platform, specially for Xbox users.
This has been an issue for many months now and we have yet to get an official reply on the situation both officially and inside the publication process itself. It shouldn’t be this difficult.
You’ll hear no argument from me about that. Much has been said in Q&As, and it seems that much of it is forgotten quickly thereafter, or a small gesture of “good will” is made, then it’s forgotten.
Outside of announcing new stuff, I take pretty much everything in the Q&As with a rather unhealthy pinch of salt. Call me cynical, but I’m very much of a “I’ll believe it when I see it” kind of person.
That will come. I have no doubt about it. It opens up a potential flood of money with expensive, high end planes on Xbox. And it’s better for them to take longer and get it right than have to process a ton of refunds from angry Xbox users returning new expensive stuff that doesn’t work. Not to mention the bad press that would get them by a ton of influential Twitch streamers and YouTube channels.
Not taken out of context just your poor choice of words I think. If you didn’t mean it was the only issue don’t use those words. I also don’t agree it’s all that stops people from using the MP. Having content that can’t be modded when it’s got issues and a slow or non responsive dev is a deal breaker.
As a result I”m with others here and actively don’t use the MP. Well at least not for aircraft. Doesn’t mean that can’t change if the MP changes.
I’ll add to that… Wednesday’s Q&A will be focused on a list of topics and they won’t consider questions outside of that. I have a feeling it’ll stay that way looking forward.
I think you’re right. I have a feeling future Q&As are going to be nothing but carefully curated questions to avoid uncomfortable topics being brought up.
Great to hear you’ve gotten that; we haven’t. Remember that we give up a HEFTY percentage of every sale directly to them. It’s not unreasonable for us to expect/deserve answers.
The message on my social media went live after AMPLE time for Jorg (tagged) and/or team to reply to a similar post in our partner portal. You know that portal they like to brag about being a 1-to-1 connection with their “partners”? Yea, that one…and still no reply to this day.
As with a lot of things in this world the MP is a good concept but a terrible implementation. The list of all those things it has going for it is positive stuff but it’s so sadly let done by the negatives. It seems to be a recurring theme of great idea but can’t/won’t make it work well. The only way to make it better is to listen to the people that you want to use it.
This this this a thousand times this, pretty Q&As are one thing, directly responding to issues (no matter the severity) is another and that’s where this Dev & MS team have seriously failed since day dot on numerous occasions.
Back in the day, I bought the C310R on the Marketplace, simply because it was a lot cheaper there and I didn’t think it would be such a great problem dealing with the marketplace. I’m not even sure if the SP1 update for the C310R has been delivered on the marketplace, correct me if I’m wrong, but I for sure never bought anything again from it.
ORBX, Just Flight or from the developer directly are my go-to options since then.
It can’t all be automated. For example, fighter jets have to be reviewed to see if they have weapons on them. We know this happens because some developers have had their submissions rejected because of this. But this process, it requires a human being to do the review.
And the did hire people. Originally they had 2 people doing the marketplace submissions. After SU5 and the release for XBox (PC and XBox versions, even though 1 product, count as 2 submissions that have to be handled), things got backed up for months with all the updates that had to go out along with all the previous PC products that were now being released for XBox. So they hired several more people. Things caught up and it was back to about 2 weeks for a submission to make it to the marketplace, but with the sheer number of products that came in November and December, it seems we are backlogged again.
As for priority levels for developers, it would make great sense to Microsoft too. People are accusing them of just wanting money, even for the cash grab products. But if a low quality minor regional airport is relased, the number of people who will be interested in it will be small. Maybe it only sells less that 50 copies. If it is a $10 airport, and only 50 get sold, and say the marketplace fee is 30%, that comes to only about $133 total for Microsoft. Meanwhile a place for $40 that will sell in the tens of thousands will bring in considerably more for Microsoft too. So you can rate developers based upon sales. That will go considerably better than going off of ratings. If you go off ratings alone, a product that only sold 5, and only one person rated it a 5 would be ranked higher than a developer that sold 15,000 of a product and had a rating of 4.8. Going by ratings would not solve the problem people are trying to solve.
Oh, one other thing. People tend to think that “shovelware” developers have some nefarious agenda to get rich. What if they know they don’t have excellent modelling skills? What if they are producing small regional airports that no one is going to do, but people in the area of that airport might purchase it. So they know they may only have 25 sales for each airport they do, but perhaps they collect $200 a week from sales. They aren’t intending to get rich. They know their sales are going to be small. I get that the community doesn’t like these products. And I get these products interfere with the pipeline. But I don’t think there is nefarious intentions. I think they know their audience is small, but they are aiming at a different demographic of consumers than the big developers are, and have different sales projections.
Reposting my post from the Osprey topic so it’s in the right spot:
The marketplace really has folded in on itself at this point. Take the GotFriends Wilga. It has been 7 weeks and 5 days since it was released on their website. Longer still since it has been submitted to the marketplace. That’s 2 months! That kind of a delay is not just an inconvenience anymore, it is a sign of a defunct system that hurts the revenue of developers.
