For the record Working Title are partnered with MS/Asobo and are helping build the core functionality of the sim. The NXi will be part of the base sim when it is out of beta. Probably explains why they are the only devs remaining in the Xbox free section thus far.
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Itâs not the devsâ fault.
As far as I understood, obviously MS doesnât make any money by selling free stuff on the marketplace, so they have no reason to go out of their way to make it happen. Devs might consider it worthwhile, especially in case itâs a donation-ware project, the more people are exposed to your (hopefully) good product, the higher the possible donors, but without the will of MS, these devs are faced by a lot more work, and more sacrifices to make (usually people behind freeware are doing this in their limited free time as a hobby) and at that point itâs not worthwhile for them either. Iâm sure if MS made sure to make these freeware add-ons for xbox an attractive option for these small devs we were going to see a lot more of these on the MP. Hopefully the new freeware section is a step in that direction.
Also itâs not good that those small devs are inundated by support request that should have been directed to MS. Iâm sure there is a higher percentage of XBOX people in that category.
Also there is an issue of licensing your code, and small devs are (rightfully) scared that a big payware dev might legally steal their work and sell it as part of their own product, which obviously doesnât sit well with them
Is that even free on the marketplace for PC users?
Or just on their own webstore?
It might be their own web store actually
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Feel free to mark that as the solution.
Not only does Microsoft not make money, but they would also lose money as they would still have to pay for hosting, bandwidth and any admin time as well.
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I think this is the most logical reason as to why msoft are in no hurry to include 3rd part freeware in the store.
This isnât specific for MSFS. One big advantage with PC over console as a platform is the modding community, due to reasons already mentioned (logistics, closed platform, terms/rules etc)
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Guys and Gals,
A freeware Category is on the development roadmap and development has started - Wishlist #27. How many times is this question going to be asked?
I canât imagine any reason for it other than for Xbox users to share in the bounty. The support it will generate for sales in the Marketplace will more than pay for the cost of supporting the feature.
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Youâll probably see the question asked until the category arrives.
Hereâs the thing. It shouldnât take a developer more than about 5 minutes to create a âfreewareâ category on the marketplace.
Asobo has created such a category already, but they have only put their products in it. My question is, why? If it is a priority worth noting as âstartedâ â2021â on a release road map (and itâs been there for quite some time), why not show some progress? Each week Microsoft features an item from the freeware community, why not publish some of those mods (with authors permission)? -
If they (Microsoft) are waiting until they have the staff to be able to handle ingestion, why not just say that? Why not build a system that isnât fully dependant on staff? Google did it with Google Play, looking closer to home, flightsim.to have done it. Itâs not that difficult it just takes some time and money.
So why are people like myself sceptical that this feature is actually planned? I know the cost of such a feature and make no mistake itâs expensive, and would yield no direct financial reward, definitely not when compared to all of the payware they are so catastrophically failing to publish.
We also know that theyâve done a terrible job at delivering on their key features that have been promised thus far (anyone remember multi-screen support, reply, shared cockpit?) and finally Microsoft still refuse to show any progress on this feature. No screenshots, no dev-blog detailing the plan and progress on this feature. All we get is the same picture each week that is very close to a carbon copy of the one before that says the feature is due within three months.
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I will admit that itâs concerning that we havenât heard from them since July I think it wasâŠ
And then I remember Iâm an American, and Europeans do tend to disappear for a month or two at a time from work. Iâm imagining everyone was scrambling to get Xbox out⊠then⊠âpoofâ⊠off for vacation. Probably not a ton got done in that time.
Iâm very interested in what they have to say in the Q&A. I know, with those Q&Aâs gone from view, my interest has waned. Thereâs pretty much a direct correlation. Not to mention the negativity here is pretty annoying.
I would love nothing more than to be able to host freeware on the marketplace.
The group I work with develops a mix of free and payware airports for New Zealand and Australia, with two of our freeware being featured here recently. Any PC user can grab the airports from our website, but Xbox users donât have the ability, and because the marketplace only accepts âpaidâ products, they canât have the ability. Hopefully, this is a thing that gets corrected in the future, but I honestly just donât see Microsoft wanting to deal with all the cost and hassle.
If I am right, they could at least met the community halfway by hosting their official marketplace partners freeware. That way itâs limited and relatively manageable.
Edit: The content in my post(s) above are my own opinions and donât necessarily reflect that of my affiliated partners.
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I love that people think the people prepping files for the Marketplace âtestâ the mods⊠
Test them for what?
I do imagine they check the manifest and few other structural aspects of the package, but, they donât even look for duplicate paths/filenamesâŠ
Well Jorg has already stated they donât want to be a gatekeeper for the marketplace. I would totally support that mentality if they provided proper tools for community moderation (i.e., comments, the ability to report dodgy mods, reliable ratings etc.). - and weâve seen evidence that the testing they do conduct is subpar (broken mods when they release), which really begs the question, why is ingestion so slow?
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Would it be possible to publish at a symbolic amount of letâs say 10cents?
Yes and no. Developers could publish their product for the minimum amount, though I believe that amount is messured in dollars not cents.
What is the minimum amount? I mean 1 symbolic dollar might already be considered as almost free and people would get the content. However I am not familiar if that would be in line with the GPL licenses that are being used often for such freeware projects?
PC freeware is a bit of a minefield.
Payware developers will usually try and make sure their new âPolynesian Village with Erupting Volcanoâ addon does not clash with tthat other payware âKnights Templar addon with animated Temple of Bahometâ located nearby, though you may still get CTD issues when people fly their âHarry Potter Nimbus 2000 Broomsticksâ through the temple - and yes some freeware authors go to a lot of trouble to avoid conflicts as well. BUT - some freeware is just rubbish.
⊠yes and some payware is rubbish too as seen in the marketplace. Free or not free does not always give an indication of quality.
I think the biggest problem of implementing a freeware category is time. Looking at flightsim.to there are thousands of mods with dozens being uploaded every day. This is no problem because we are responsible ourselves for what we do with our own computers. The Xbox network however doesnât know antivirus software, any unmoderated/uncontrolled software is a potential risk for the xbox network, such a huge risk that I donât think it will ever be available to us with free access. Someone WILL upload a virus eventually, thatâs safe to say. So the process wouldnât change in the slightest from what itâs now, every single item will have to be made available to xbox manually after custom checking. I doubt that there will be a freeware category that is even a bit comparable to a website.
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