I concur with the idea “Sim Dev Updates” could be separated from “list of updated/new packages in the marketplace”
Specifically for the SU4 Beta, it would be really useful to know what are the things already committed to be in it. If SU4 includes the multiplayer weather fix (de-randomize the clouds) then our Sim Soaring Club members would be keen on the Beta.
Other flyers presumably have known issues that’d influence their interest.
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: When will SU4 Beta Open?
That’s why I didn’t buy 2024. It’s the same development plan as 2020, and five years later, we still have an unfinished simulator. The same will happen with 2024.
I still find it better than 2020. The issue is not there, the issue is how easy some of the problems would be to fix if Asobo stopped making it harder.
Seriously??? Now Dreamscenery is creating planes? 2 of them this week. Meanwhile MScenery released 3 this week.
This is the problem with not cracking down on quality or at least volume of how fast you can put items into the Marketplace. Dreamscenery finally looked at MScenery’s business model of spending 2-3 days to produce a plane, and decided they now want to break into that same market.
Google, you have all sorts of companies paying to make sure their search result comes to the top of the search results. That is because it is proven as an effective marketing means. Here in in the Marketplace however, your products come up on top if they are on sale. The most marked down products are the ones at the very top of the search results. MScenery has 77 planes now in the Marketplace. They can afford to mark down 12 of their products each week to make sure that most of the products in the top 3 rows are theirs. Other developers can’t do that. No other developer has > 10 products in the Marketplace, and these developers have spent time working on their planes, so for them to discount their products enough to be in the top 3 rows, they lose money. MScenery, they literally spent 2-3 days in development for each product. They have the volume of products and they have so little development time spent in each product that they can create unfair competition in the Marketplace. And now we have Dreamscenery seeing the business model and copying it.
Let me ask this question. Despite attempting to cut down the amount of manual intervention required, Microsoft still spends so many hours with each product before it can go into the Marketplace. How much is that? How much money does Microsoft make on MScenery planes. Is Microsoft actually losing money on the ingestion process with MScenery planes? I know Microsoft doesn’t want to seem like they are censoring. But I’m sorry, I have to believe at this point, Microsoft is probably losing money or hitting a just near break even point for each of these products. The only winner is the developer themselves.
And as another point, the very FIRST section of the Marketplace home page is New and Exclusive. These are new products that you can only get in the Marketplace. I am SURE the Marketplace team would love to expand the developers that decide to become exclusively marketed through the Marketplace. The problem is, that with an unfair competition environment that is presently there, no other developers want an exclusive deal. No new up and coming developer is going to want to solely place their product in the Marketplace, and have it swallowed up in a sea of one competitors products.
I feel it’s time the “development update” was changed in favour of a new format.
How about splitting the news into two?
The development update might then have some meat on the bones. Less work for management to check/vet it when it comes out less frequently.
Make it targeted information, instead of a one-size-fits-all-but-doesn’t-really development update.
Like many, I’d be more interested in the marketplace if it wasn’t full of low quality junk, but the marketplace exists primarily to make money for Microsoft and/or the investors. No doubt many casual players (many of which will never come near this forum) like to buy shiny new aircraft every week, as they might buy cosmetics for other games. So as a result, nothing is likely to change. It works for Microsoft, it makes money regardless, and that is what will help to keep the simulator alive. Which benefits us all, one way or another.
If the marketplace added filters for some kind of ‘complexity’ or ‘skill’ rating (like plastic model aircraft kits), it would be more useful. Then I could easily find the top-tier products that actually interest me. Just don’t let the developers rate their own products… 
A post was merged into an existing topic: [Polls] Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Sim Update 3 Feedback
I’ve been watching the numbers in the Marketplace Backlog (2020) tables and have had a hard time determining if any progress has been made in getting products into the marketplace more quickly.
So I thought I’d make a couple of charts to see if a visual representation would help. Here are the results for the past three months:
and
The “Linear” lines are trend lines created by the spreadsheet.
The trend lines, IMO, show the direction most clearly. For both New and Updated products, the number of products in MS processing is slowly decreasing, whilst the number in 3rd-party testing is increasing.
So, the answer to my question appears to be “No”, because of the number of products in 3rd-party testing is on the rise. 
This would show that MS is processing things at a higher rate than third parties are testing them, right? Or is that an oversimplification? Still feels like the data is showing that the onus for most releases is on the third party developers themselves, who are either not testing their releases in a timely manner, or are finding issues with their Marketplace versions (I know PMDG recently mentioned they had some things pop up specifically as a result of the Marketplace-specific encryption that did not affect their direct-release products, as an example).
Well, if you do a little research into these fluff producers, they have content that goes back to FS2000. Write a little conversion script, and you’ve got loads of “content” that legally passes the mark.
Marketplace team process my updates in a matter of hours sometimes, I have zero problems pushing updates to my products for PC and Xbox on marketplace.
I just released updates for my entire fleet, went live on xbox yesterday.
Very efficient, no idea why other developers claim is slow, if I submit an update on Tuesday it would be out by Thursday that week. I submitted a update 1.030 for FSR500 on Friday and was released by next Monday.
Is a matter of days really.
That’s my experience.
Best,
Raul
Goes under the category of, “If you have nothing to say its best to say nothing at all.”
Lets hope their reasons are they are hard at work trying getting SU4 out ASAP.
I dont get that repetitive complaining about the marketplace with every new development update.
Just dont use it and buy somewhere Else?
World Updates and City Updates come free to you, right? How do you expect that those get paid for? By sales within the Marketplace. We all want to see the franchise remain viable and healthy. Unfortunately, business practices by some developers drives away customers.
Telling everyone to not buy in the Marketplace does not promote healthy financial environment for the franchise. People should be able to choose whether to purchase externally or internally, certainly. However, Microsofts continued allowing some developers to saturate the market and exercise in practices that are unfair competition should concern all of us.
It would be interesting to see similar graphs for 2024 products
Sorry mate, I don’t believe that at all. I was only joking.
I think you’re ascribing too much maliciousness on Microsoft’s or Asobos part in all this - no matter the state of the sim or the marketplace, I truly believe there’s not a single person involved who doesn’t want to make this thing the best that they can.
They just haven’t gotten there yet.
With regards to the Marketplace, I don’t believe there are any intentional delays or other nefarious goings on. Trashy vendors flood the market with low quality products that take no time to make; quality products take longer, and there are fewer of them.
Microsoft has been very clear about not really wanting to take a stand on this - and that is actually less than many people want. I’d personally love for them to take more control over what gets in and what doesn’t.
Folks, several off topic posts have been hidden, please ensure you keep to the topic!
@Zadma - One cannot determine the cause for the trends shown by the data from the data. I can think of quite a number of reasons, but speculating is not productive.
As @SimbolFSReborn mentions, the Marketplace team can process updates " in a matter of hours sometimes".
A more interesting statistic would be the mean time a product has remained in each of the categories - e.g. for this week, there are 87 new products in MS Processing. If the mean time for all those products was 1 day, then that’s pretty good. If it was 2 months, then that’s not great.
The same metric could be applied to 3rd-party testing, though one might want to remove products where the developer has put testing on hold due for reasons unrelated to MSFS (vacations, illness, etc.)
Since we do not know the names of any of the products behind the numbers, all 87 products in MS Processing could theoretically be brand new & completely different from those behind the number for the previous week.
All 3rd party developers do their own testing.
You submit, MS process it and you perform your own tests, once you aprove the content to be released, it goes live on the next available window.
3rd party developers are responsible for Submission, own testing, quality assurance and release. Just like any other content delivery shop (Contrail, Simmarket, Just Flight, Inibuilds, ORBX, etc).
There is a lot of misconception about how the process works, I don’t understand why, and where it comes from, but in reality marketplace is not any different from any other content delivery portal available out there.
And once again, I can push updates pretty fast, just as fast as I did when I used my own website and other content websites available for flight simulation.
Best,
Raul
Hi, As a matter of interest how are updates or releases rated in the star system? Does a developer rate their own product when it is released or does someone else do it and who might that entity be?
