Regarding Marketplace spam, see:
Best advice I think is keep calm like an experienced airliner captain.
Speculation is not positive. When 2024 is released we will soon know about multi-core improvements*, typical framerates, memory and network consumption, suitable hardware and planes/scenery/activities.
*Iâve used Microsoftâs Process Explorer and 2020 has two key threads, the render loop and the directX audio engine which make up about 95% of cpu time on a quad core Xeon.
If 2024 has 3 or more key threads, and why not, thats a huge step forward.
Here is the rub: some of us simply consider it spam when a single developer creates dozens of variations of the same product every month that we do not have nor ever will have any interest in whatsoever yet these products comingle with notifications about other releases here and in the Marketplace in a way to obscure said other products and forcing us to âweed throughâ to find what we may have interest in purchasing, which causes buyer frustration.
I am not a marketing specialist but Iâd wager that theyâd tell you that itâs not a good idea to talk down to customers who are frustrated by the way products are presented for purchase. If we feel we are getting âspammedâ then that should be taking seriously even if you or Microsoft doesnât agree with that assessment. Thatâs just smart business.
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Mark your calender 
I donât see how that explanation has been âtalking down to customersâ. They are trying to help the customers understand how the process works and trying to prevent the speculations, false accusations and conspiracy theories that are happily kept alive all over the Internet. What I do see a lot here instead is people talking down to forum moderators, Microsoft employees, Asobo employees, developers, âŠ
Personally, I donât like seeing a single developer pushing out that many products in such a short time. I understand that it is, of course, much less time consuming to create these types of add-ons compared to an aircraft or airport scenery. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But others might enjoy those products, I have no idea how much of them are sold and how happy people are with them. The ratings in the Marketplace are no indication for me because I know I have never left a rating and I canât assume that those ratings are representative.
Sure, given the little amount of other information that has been in the recent dev updates there is hardly anything for me to read in there. But thatâs not a problem with the Marketplace releases / updates.
Long story short, I am not frustrated by having them included in the dev update. I just slowly scroll over it and it doesnât cause me any pain to ignore those products that I am not interested in.
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I was referring to the general attitude of âthereâs no impact from those releasesâ in response to our complaints.
Some of us are simply frustrated beyond just a bad taste by having to deal with this on a regular basis here and in the sim with no way of permanently filtering those product avalanches out. We look at product releases because our wallets are ready to create income for Microsoft via the Marketplace. This should give MS an incentive to take our concerns seriously or at least acknowledge them properly.
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I can see both sides of the coin here. I (very briefly) get quite frustrated seeing that 40 of 45 products released on a Thursday are VA Systems rubbish (and Iâm sorry, but the total lack of Marketplace reviews indicate to me that their products are indeed rubbish). But on the flip side, it takes barely any time at all to scroll through and find what is worth looking at.
But the fact of the matter is, these packages must inevitably take time to properly vet before being greenlit for release in the Marketplace â time that many of us I think feel could be better devoted to higher-quality devs whose products are much more interesting to the majority of simmers.
Iâd wager that, while VA Systemsâ products might not take too much time to approve, their sales performance doesnât justify that time. That is, of course, only speculation on my part; but I find it highly unlikely that their products just happen to be those no one leaves reviews for. Consumers tend to be far more motivated to leave a bad review, if they dislike a product, than they are a good one if theyâre satisfied⊠yet we donât even see bad reviews.
If these items genuinely arenât being prioritised in any way, I donât really have an issue â it takes two minutes to separate the wheat from the chaff. If, however, they are detrimental to higher-quality products in any way, those responsible for the upkeep of the store perhaps ought to look into it â particularly if theyâre not selling well.
They certanly donât seem attractively priced, considering their alleged simplicity.
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Hello @JakTrax78,
I mentioned in last weekâs Dev Blog discussion thread that Marketplace releases arenât zero-sum. That is, if a new product from Developer A releases this week, that does not mean that a different product from Developer B was held back. The timing of each productâs release is determined by how long it takes its respective developer to complete testing and provide sign-off that it is ready to go.
In the most recent week of MP releases, there were 15 new products from VA Systems. If, hypothetically, those 15 products didnât exist at all, there would not be 15 different products from other developers released instead. There would just be 15 fewer releases total this week.
Thanks,
MSFS Team
I get that. But what Iâm saying is that the Marketplace team has finite time, and finite resources â so surely every release chips away at that finite time and those finite resources? if the system were to ever be truly overwhelmed, surely the butterfly effect would come into play?
My assertions are purely theoretical, since I donât have any real issue with having to sift through VA Systemsâ stuff each week. Different issue, perhaps, if they were having hundreds released in one goâŠ
I think the community just seeks clarification that other products are in absolutely no way affected by the endless VA Systems releases.
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Several years ago, the Marketplace backlog was growing at a rate that was unsustainable. Developers were submitting new products to the intake pipeline faster than the Marketplace team could process them.
To resolve the problem, we made several changes over the past few years to get the backlog under control and make it sustainable.
- As mentioned by Jorg in a Developer Livestream some time ago, we added more members to the MP team and introduced new automation tools.
- We also changed the process so developers themselves â not Microsoft â are responsible for functional testing of their own products.
When we first publicly shared the MP backlog figures on March 16, 2023, there were 1,050 products in the backlog. That number has been reduced by approximately 70% and is currently in the low-mid 300s. The size of the backlog is now more or less in a state of equilibrium (i.e. the MP team is completing the intake process and moving products through the pipeline at roughly the same rate that developers are submitting new products into the pipeline, so the overall backlog numbers donât change much on a week-to-week basis).
This is correct.
Thanks,
MSFS Team
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I think that a solution might be to limit the number of products that a single developer can release per week. Maybe three would be a good number?
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Hmmm, wouldnât that mean the MP team could actually make a dent in that constant 300 product backlog if there were less of these endless VA systems releases? 
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As mentioned above, most products in any given weekâs backlog have already had their initial intake processing completed by Microsoft, so their release is pending functional testing and sign-off by the developer.
For example, of the 324 products in last weekâs backlog (see below), 228 of them â or 70.3% â were pending test completion and sign-off from the developer. Of the remaining 29.7% that were listed as undergoing MS processing and testing, those will all move through the Microsoft intake process relatively quickly and be made available to the developer to start testing.
However, developers submit new and updated products into the MP release pipeline every day. The only way the backlog will ever reach zero is if every developer stopped submitting products altogether, which Iâm sure nobody wants. Due to the changes mentioned in my previous post above, the backlog is no longer growing at a rate faster than the MP teamâs ability to process new items in a timely manner. Formerly, the volume of new submissions each week exceeded the MP teamâs capacity to process them all, so the backlog was growing larger and larger. That is no longer the case.
Thanks,
MSFS Team
I think that the moderators may be missing the point on this issue, itâs all about perception. When certain developers flood the marketplace with sub-par products week after week, it just looks bad. Iâd hate to be one of the good devs whose product may get overlooked because itâs mixed in with the junk. Thatâs why I suggested a weekly limitation to all developers. This makes the most sense in the short term, since we are unable to block certain developers, or at very least block categories from showing up in the new product list.
Have you looked at the Missions backlog? This will not be ending anytime soon.
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Are you saying the reason updates to popular aircraft often still take weeks to make their way through the MP ingestion process is all due to the developer not completing functional testing and sign-off and not at all affected by availability of MP personnel?
Thatâs exactly the problem. There will always be people who think something is âoffâ or âwrongâ or just not the way theyâd like it to be. Giving us additional filter options in Marketplace would certainly help.
A weekly limitation would just create other problems. Imagine a well respective aircraft developer would like to submit four in a single week just because they happen to be ready or itâs different models of the same aircraft sold separately. People would grab their pitch forks immediately.
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Where theyâre going, they donât need roads 
Yeah some limitation per developer per week would be great.
And MP mods have said many times that if 15 VA products didnât come, doesnât mean 15 different would come, just that there would be 15 less.
So? Thatâs not a problem. Iâm fine with having less, or at best allowing more approval time to be given to allow for diff items to appear. Itâs not the loss of 15 products is an issue, itâs the spam of low end items always. Iâd rather have 10 releases in a week of good planes and airports then 30 with the same 10 lost thru the rubble
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I posted this is a different thread, but I will summarize it here too.
Currently, in 4 months, VA Systems has 248 out of the 5000 products in the Marketplace. In a year, they will have 750 products. At that rate, 4 more years, and they will have half the products on the Marketplace. At that point, people just wonât use the Marketplace because they will view it as filled with low quality stuff.
Orbx first carried VA Systems. They stopped because of their release practices. SimMarket first carred them. They stopped. VA Systems OWN web site does not advertise their products, and neither does the parent company SoFly. The ONLY place that carries VA Systems products is the MSFS Marketplace. I am sure they have automated the submittal process. Microsoft spends more money in adminsitrative costs by first testing, and then encoding and placing into the Marketplace. VA Systems doesnât even spend that much money submitting their product. Yes, if their products were limited, we would only have 10-20 products a week. Iâm perfectly ok with that, as is probably everyone else. We canât have free products in the Marketplace because of administrative costs to put products in the Marketplace, but Microsoft is taking that cost as a hit that not even VA Systems themselves want to do by listing their own products on their own web site.
And not only that, but look at their products. A320 Routes - British Airways and A320 Schedules - British Airways. What is the difference? You certainly canât tell by reading the descriptions. They look the same. Routes costs $25, Schedules costs $20. For essentially the same product I am assuming. ALSO, look at their website. They offer schedule packs for 5 British pounds, which is $6.56. Yet they sell them HERE for $25. So not only are they annoying customers with their spam, they are OVERCHARGING them. If you bought these packs on their web site, you would only be paying $6.50
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