Hi, I’m only see the same 6 addon planes in market place for the last 4-6 weeks, I’m just wondering if for some reason my market place isn’t getting plane updates, i get the world updates, a free airport weeks ago but nothing else, is everything i’m seeing on-line 3rd party downloads that you need to place into the community folder? Appreciate any thoughts,
Dominic,
There is a Cheese Ad in my Country that States…
Good Things Take Time!
We live in a Commercialized World where everyone wants to sell you an Airport or an Aircraft. The only way this Sim self perpetuates is if the addon scenery is within a reasonable price range from the third party software developers!
Total Airports in the World 17,678 If developers want to get real about pricing and make it affordable for future generations then they should be a little more realistic about their pricing!!!
If I paid $10 dollars for evey airport 17,678 of them x $10 that’s $176,780.00 dollars for all airports in the world. Trust me when I say I would pay a certain amount for my area! $30 dollars an airport is steep.. Todays Games look for $1.50 or so for an upgrade! Granted that is all Phone Apps but… “This is about Excellence within the computing World!”
Ask Asobo and MS If Mods bring down the Game. Pretty sure they will say “If they Code it wrong… Yes”
So are Mods worth the price? Only 0ne I have done is the Liveries So Far!
Hi @CursedTester15.
There are smaller GA aircraft appearing on the marketplace, but it will likely be some time until there is a wide array of complex aircraft available. At the end of the day, the scenery is far simpler to produce.
The Aerosoft CRJs are going to be coming soon, and several other well-known developers have either announced plans or interest to develop their flagship aircraft including the like of Quality Wings, Majestic and so on.
So the 6 planes i see, are the total that’s available via the MSFS store?
And the Scenery is a Gorgeous addition to MSFS2020!
I’m not sure, as I am not logged into the sim at the moment.
Let me know if you can, appreciate it.
regards Dominic.
From the devlog yesterday. 
Yes thanks, that’s what i’ve got too.
Lionheart Creations has the Trinidad and Kodiak in the pipes.
Totally agree with you ! I do not understand that I am being asked $ 15.99 CAD for a single airport. The same goes for planes. Very few choices and the ones available are $ 38 CAD while I paid the full SIM $ 79. This is nonsense! An airplane should sell for around $ 10-12 in my opinion.
It feels like this is/will be an early days money grab, but looking at the racing sim community plenty of free product will develop and become available I’m sure, will Microsoft give it the market place platform though?
The problem with that argument is that the sim ships with 30,000+ airports that are auto-generated as part of the base price. These airports are free, and enough for you to get going, but they are generic and not realistic.
Third-party payware airports are highly specialized. They can take tens if not hundreds of man-hours to cover research, planning, modelling, testing, marketing & publishing. These airports are designed to appeal to people who like hyper-realism on the ground, which is why they have value.
I can’t imagine you, or any other person would be wanting to buy 10,000+ let alone the ~30,000+ that are in the sim.
Honestly, $15 isn’t that unrealistic. There is the potential for significant cost when developing an airport. If the developer(s) is an organisation with staff, they have to pay wages, software licences, other development fees potentially including IP licences, research and even publishing costs, not to mention web fees if they have their own website, forums, domain, email, support system etc.
All of these costs add up, and they need to be paid for, and while an airport may be relatively cheap to develop, think about the complexity and cost involved in developing realistic airliners (Q3/400, ATR, 737, 757, 767, 787 etc).
Developers need to ensure they get enough money from sales to cover their development costs, and to help fund future development, plus their other services.
WelI…I agree with you but as a sales representative in marketing and business development, there are two ways of looking at it. They charge high prices and sell little or they reduce the price and sell a lot while encouraging customers to buy other planes. Take the example on Microsoft. Do you know the number of working hours and the costs to develop such a product? If Microsoft had asked $799 for MSFS, very few people would have bought it but by asking for a price of only $ 79 CAD, they will seek the mass and take advantage of it afterwards to try to sell Ad-On. The math is not difficult to do. They are asking a high price because it is expensive to develop. I believe it. But do they actually sell a lot of them? At least I wish them luck, but personally at $ 38 CAD, I don’t buy planes.
Oh, I agree, but without having access to any market data it’s hard to know what is a reasonable price.
There are some airports that I would dearly love to get, including TNCM. Unfortunately, as someone unemployed $30NZD is just too expensive to spend on an airport I only fly to occasionally. If the price were closer to $10 I would be inclined to get it.
With it being on the market place, it has the potential to reach a wider audience, especially if XBOX users can buy DLC, so it may be feasible in the future to lower the price on popular products like that. However, compare that to my former home airport NZNV. It isn’t an insignificant airport by any stretch of the imagination, but I highly doubt there would be much interest for non-Kiwis, and I also doubt it would be on the top list for most NZers. So if such an airport were to be developed, it would likely require a higher price point.
On the other side, aircraft while way more complex to build can be used anywhere within the sim, unlike airports or scenery packs which are static and in one location. In theory, I would expect this to make them more appealing. But I also wonder how much of a market there really is for ‘Study Level’ aircraft like the PMDG 737. Is that market group small enough that it forces the price to stay high?
Majestic Q400 have an interesting approach here. They offer different tiers which introduce more complex features, at higher price points. The nice thing here is people who are willing or wanting a simpler version of the aircraft can pay more, where people who want more complex features pay for it. In theory, a model like this could enable developers to get as many people as possible while still covering costs.
Apologies I tend to ramble on Friday nights might have something to do with what I am consuming.
Aircraft are a little different people see it as a one off purchase and then they have that plane. I myself bought a number from PMDG for FSX. Its the psychological thinking of… I spend most of my time in the aircraft and I’m only at the airport for takeoffs and landings. I also have a number of purchases from Orbx who I find to be very good at what they do. I am waiting specifically on their F86 to be ported over to MSFS 2020. Fell in love with that plane after downloading from https://www.sectionf8.com/index.html
I’ve played around with Blender and the SDK etc so I know the man hours are up there for higher end Airports. All I’m saying is I would find it hard to justify to many Airport purchases on what I earn
What the airport developers maybe still need to realize is the economy of scales.
Sure, it might take hundreds of hours to create a nice airport. If they need to recoup their costs by selling 1000 versions of it at $15 a piece, that would also mean they would be able to sell it at $5 if they could sell 3000 copies.
It’s the same thing as mobile games. You’re much more likely to sell a LOT of copies at a very low price, as long as the target audience is large enough (like the App store provided).
MSFS seems to be a pretty large platform, so maybe dropping the prices by a large margin could actually be the more profitable strategy.
I for one don’t buy airports currently, since I’ll likely visit it 2 or 3 times. So for me it’s not worth it at current prices.
A plane I’m willing to spend a bit more on.
That pretty much sums up what I was trying to get across. English never was my forte.
My hope is that manufactures come to that conclusion in time. I suspect we will see a larger influx of users in six or so months time.
I will say, I have seen some phenomenal freeware airports popping up for this Sim + aircraft mods, and utilities, that gives me great hope for the future of add-on content.
Though Ironically, I would still rather buy a payware item from the in-game market place than I would get it through a third party, that way I can have easy package updates without the need for additional software.
Your analysis is interesting. We will see what the future holds. Can’t wait to see the Majectic Q400 !