Xbox marketplace : no new planes

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372

My friend you are blinded by your involvement with this industry. It is not functional on Xbox, your statement is baffling. It is functional on PC, but that means very little to those Xbox users who have spent money on it for Xbox. Hopefully it will be functional soon, but the time going by is a bit worrisome.

Not the developers fault again for the 11th time. Someone or some process did not work to thoroughly vet the aircraft before selling it. You can spin it it as much as you want but at the end of the day it is the same conclusion.

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373

Thats unfortunate. I haven’t seen any one speaking negative of PMDG. Wouldn’t surprise me because their name is stamped on the aircraft so the logical but uninformed conclusion would be they are at fault. Hope more join these forums.

Agree, I’m overall happy and very grateful for the sim, especially its availability on Xbox. It seems there are small things being over looked that are more frustrating to me than the DC-6….what I mentioned before the mouse, Hotas, etc. which seem like easy fixes but maybe they aren’t.

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The add-on is functional. The fact that it has an issue on a platform doesn’t make it non-functional.

My involvement in the industry doesn’t blind me. It opens my eyes to the issues that developers and publishers have to face every day. That’s because I talk to developers on a daily basis, off and on the record, and I hear their gripes all the time (mostly off the record, for obvious reasons). I know very well that what many gamers see as “easy” definitely isn’t easy at all, and what many gamers call out as “how could they miss this? They must have not done their job properly” could very easily be missed even if everyone did their job to the best of their abilities. Issues in QA can be missed without anyone being at fault. This is something I’ve been made very familiar with in over 20 years.

A very common fallacy is to say “it’s not the developers’ fault, but publisher bad.” In this case, as Robert Randazzo extensively describes, it’s no one’s fault. It was an unforeseeable issue due to the fact that no one has done this before.

A new process applied to a kind of product that it was never applied to before had a weakness, and no one could predict it. That’s normal with new processes. Considering what we know, bashing anyone for it is simply unwarranted, whether it’s PMDG, or the QA staff, or Microsoft.

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375

I’m an Xbox owner and as of this very moment, it is not functional. Maybe it will be functional in 1 hour, or 1 week, or 1 month, or in 1 year, or 5 years… But right now it is not functional for Xbox owners. I’m glad it is functional however, for PC owners.

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376

Hope MS/Asobo will fix the issue with the Controls on Xbox and the Just Flights Pipers hopefully will also come quick to the Marketplace. (as the dev stated)… then we have really the best plane also on Xbox.

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I hear what you’re saying but the the equation doesn’t work.

What youre saying is all the more reason to throughly vet the product before releasing it for sale.

If this happened prior to sale and there was an error or software issue, totally fine.

They put it out for sale and none of the buttons work man, come on. Just think about it objectively.

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I am.

Robert Randazzo said very clearly that the product has been tested extensively.

The issue isn’t in the lack of testing or vetting. The issue is in an unforeseen (and likely super-small) difference between the testing environment and the live environment on Xbox that never came up before, likely due to the relative simplicity of the add-ons that were tested before.

You can’t test something in the live environment before it goes live. You can only test it in the test environment (for very obvious reasons). So the issue could not be discovered before release. This does not mean the product was not tested or vetted.

Incidentally, this is a very plausible explanation, and there’s really no logical reason to disbelieve it.

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379

OK but I’m not sure how you can have a plane that doesn’t fly, move, or interact and say that it was vetted properly before being sold. I’m not like torches and pitch forks here or anything but come on lol.

There was a major issue that slipped through there is just no getting around it. At the end of the day it’s a sim/game and the world will hopefully keep its orbit around the sun.

And it must not be small because there is no fix yet. @Abriael Speaking of that do you have any updates on the progress of the fix? I am very much looking forward to it.

380

Exactly my concern, especially with what happened to the Global Shipping add on. That still hasn’t been resolved on Xbox. I know PMDG and MS/Asobo are working hard on a fix but it’s difficult to not get a little down as each day passes. And the last update from Rob was the 24th…

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381

A very small issue can easily prevent something to work. And Robert Randazzo explicitly describes it as such (“a slight difference” in the testing environment).

Calling him a liar is definitely something I would discourage, especially considering his reputation for blunt honesty.

As I already mentioned you can only test a product on the testing environment before it’s released, and such a slight difference as described by Robert Randazzo can easily cripple functionality considering how interconnected the systems of a complex aircraft are.

So yes, unless you (for some reason I can’t fathom) think you know better than Robert, the aircraft has been extensively tested and vetted.

When there’s an update, you’ll likely find it first in the forum I already linked several times. Click on Randazzo’s name and you’ll find all of his posts.

382

Just curious as I’m not a developer or tech junkie (merely an accountant) but what can be done in the future to avoid this from happening again? I guess I’m still a little confused why there was no way to test this on Xbox’s “in the wild” as Rob refers to them. I get it’s a closed system but I’m struggling to wrap my head around the difference between a test console and a “wild” or consumer console (and why they wouldn’t have been able to do a beta or something on a real Xbox). Really appreciate your insight into all of this!

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383

I think people would be more tolerant and patient if they could return it and get refunded. Then it would be as if the DC-6 would not have had a botched launch and we all can pretend that way. If the DC-6 will be re-released when it’s ready - whenever that may be - they surely will buy again. But nobody can say when that happens and till that point those who purchased the DC-6 got robbed as MS has no refund policy in place for botched marketplace addons. I got refused on a different addon because I „used up all my 3 refunds“ allowed per entire year on the entire Xbox eco system.

Things can go wrong but you have a moral obligation to offer a solution that makes things right. Like the refunds for Cyberpunk 2077 when the game was pulled from the store. Keeping the money and telling the people to be patient is definitely not the way.

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384

This is an extremely unfitting comparison. Cyberpunk 2077 was not just delivered with extremely serious flaws on some platforms, but the developers were very aware of the fact that they would not be able to fix those flaws in a reasonable timeframe. This is not the case here.

The only “moral obligation” they have is to fix the issue. CD Projekt offered full refunds because they knew they could not fix it (and they still haven’t). It’s an entirely different situation making the comparison absolutely moot.

By “in the wild” Robert means in the live environment, basically commercial Xbox units in the hands of customers connected to the live Xbox environment.

You can’t test a product on those, because you’d need to release it to do so. Microsoft has (as far as I can extrapolate from Robert’s post) a test environment that is designed to reproduce the live environment as well as possible, but doesn’t require releasing the addon in order to use it. It’s likely a scaled-down version of Xbox Live to which developers can connect devkit consoles.

Apparently there’s a small difference between that testing environment and the live environment that was never discovered before, likely because simpler aircraft were not affected by it. An aircraft as complex as the DC-6 is likely a ton more susceptible to even small differences in operating environment, hence why it ran into the issue.

As to what can be done for the future, this case exposed the flaw, so it’s pretty safe to assume that it’ll lead to fixing it. Assuming that there aren’t any more similar issues, this should lead to avoiding it going forward.

That being said, 100% avoidance is likely impossible. In all branches of gaming, testing environments are never exactly the same as live environments. And it can happen on PC as much as it can happen on Xbox (PC users are simply used to it) That’s why, for instance, MMOs launch with a bunch of bugs despite the fact that they were beta tested for months, even by users.

We just gotta hope that the testing environment holds well enough. Most of the time so far it did, and likely, it will most of the time in the future as well, with the additional help that this case will help identify and fix this particular issue, but that doesn’t mean sh*t can’t happen, especially as add-ons become more complex, because the DC-6 is more complex than anything else released so far, but it isn’t even comparable to PMDG’s modern airliners.

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385

Who says they can fixed it in a ‚reasonable‘ timeframe - however that is defined. All I can read in the PMDG forums is that they don’t know or can say anything because the ball it literally in the court of Microsoft. Nobody knows when it can be fixed the the worldwide shipping addon demonstrates it might just as well be month. Knowing you won’t be able to (CDPR with Cyberpunkt) and not knowing anything about a timeframe is different how? There has been absolutely no updates since the initial statements. I admire your confidence but I don’t share it.

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CD Projekt did not offer refunds the day after release. They investigated, noticed they could not fix it, and then offered refunds.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a game published on consoles not designed to run it. It suffers from a variety of issues that can only be partially patched, that stem from the very core of its architecture. Hence, it’s logical to offer refunds to those who were promised something and will never get it.

The DC-6 runs on Xbox Series S and X on Microsoft’s testing environment. It’s not an aircraft that the consoles can’t handle, and absolutely nothing in Robert’s post even hints at the fact that it’s unfixable. As a matter of fact, he says he’s confident that it will be fixed, and I’m fairly sure he knows better.

You don’t need to share any confidence since you’re not affected at all by the issue, not having purchased the aircraft, but it’s clear as day that your comparison with Cyberpunk doesn’t even come close to being appropriate.

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Appreciate the explanation.

Not to beat a dead horse but is there no way for MS who owns the platform and produces the consoles to port over these add ons for testing on a live Xbox for the QA team?

I think that’s where I’m getting hung up. I understand why PMDG wouldn’t be able to do it themselves, they don’t own or produce the platform.

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388

That’s very unlikely. Ultimately, unless you test something in a fully live environment (IE: released to the public, with all the minute differences in conditions that can derive from a live environment located all over the world), there will always be some differences.

Just to give you a banal example, a difference in local bandwidth could easily cause hangups into the simulator as a whole, and cascade into the performance of an aircraft. That’s very likely to be overlooked no matter how you test.

That’s why betas, as public as they may be, almost never manage to catch and squash all the bugs.

It’s likely a lot more constructive to focus in removing as many relevant differences as possible between the testing environment and the live environment. Fixing this specific issue will contribute to that. Whether there’s more, who knows. We can only hope there isn’t.

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389

May I ask. When video game reviewers and the media get early access to “live service games” before the public does for review purposes, are those games already in a “live environment”? Meaning if you got access codes to review SU7 or Reno Air Races or GOTY or Destiny 2 on Xbox before the official release, is it already on a “live” server?

The reason I ask is because I wonder if they would have been able to do this with the PMDG: release the plane to reviewers like yourself, or IGN, or Gamespot, or a few known YouTubers or Twitch streamers on Xbox and you would have quickly seen that it is not functional on Xbox in a “live” environment… Just trying to understand how that part works.

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This subject is too personal to you to think about it critically. I didn’t call him a liar. He said what you say when there is an issue. I have no problem with that. Don’t act like there isn’t more to it though.

I’m grateful to all those that have made this revolutionary sim. Don’t know this man but I’d thank him if I did.

But the fact remains the same, If it was vetted 100% then there would be no issue. To say everything was done 100%….well then why is there a massive issue. There was undoubtedly a missed piece in the puzzle, that is a fact. But it’s all good! I’m more just trying to get you to admit there was a dropped ball here.

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It was on a live server but not on the live environment. When the media preview was done for the Reno Air Races, it was completely separate from the live servers. It was even separate from the beta environment that everyone else that was doing the beta flight on (with the results that there was only a few people competing and winning was waaay too easy haha).

As far as I’m aware, third-party developers don’t have a way to give early access to media of aircraft on the marketplace, which means that there is also no early access on Xbox. The only way they have to give early access is on PC, via their own installers/packages, thus bypassing the marketplace and the live environment entirely. I don’t have any experience of it being done differently. As a matter of fact, I’ve had a couple of times in which a review copy was refused because the developer released the product only on the marketplace.

Robert’s message clearly describes a situation in which extensive testing was done, but the problem cropped up from an unforeseeable issue regardless of said testing. Saying that it wasn’t tested properly definitely conflicts with what he describes.

I’m sorry, but you don’t know better than he does (nor do I). You’ve already been given extensive explanations on what likely happened, as much as the fact that testing is not entirely bulletproof regardless of how well it is done, as myriads of situations in the whole gaming industry prove every year.

You behave like testing is a magic wand that will infallibly expose all issues, no matter what, and it simply isn’t. Testing can only reduce the likeliness of issues, but not eliminate it, regardless of the environment, regardless of the software, and regardless of how many people you throw at it. There is no pre-release testing in this world that can completely replicate the conditions of a released product.

You won’t get me to admit something blatantly false just to satisfy your need for a culprit to blame, so you may as well not keep trying (and I’m not sure why you even would). :thinking:

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