The Boeing 247D status

[YoYo]

Yes it wasnt relesed in the end 2021 as it was announced earlier, here is a reason why:

https://wing42.com/dev-blog-15-why-d...v=9b7d173b068d so new features incoming too.

(continuation of the topic: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...247D-(Wing-42) (I do not know why its closed)


please only talk here about this project .

[Paul K]

Controversy aside, it does look very good. Defintely on my 'maybe' list.

[Tom Clayton]

I do not know why its closed

It was closed because of the developer's past reputation and the fact that there were already some posts trying to take the thread in a downward spiral. I hope that doesn't happen again.

[YoYo]

Small Dev. blog update, rivets :
https://wing42.com/dev-blog-11-rivet...v=9b7d173b068d

[YoYo]

Wow, we have news about the price - 19,99$.
It will be released at 2nd of April.
https://wing42.com/wing42-boeing-247...v=9b7d173b068d

Fully agree from customer’s point:

If you sell 100 units for $10 or 10 units for $100 Dollars makes little difference for a digital product, but in the later case you end up with 90 more people enjoying your product and potentially showing it to their friends. The only downside is that you will have to deal with more support tickets the more units you sell.

[YoYo]

Btw.
Flame on engine (demage model will be present!?)

[SeanTK]

Those flame effects look amazing. Let's hope that he can build some goodwill with the community and have a successful release.

[DennyA]

Wow, we have news about the price - 19,99$.
It will be released at 2nd of April.
https://wing42.com/wing42-boeing-247...v=9b7d173b068d

Fully agree from customer’s point:

Yep, absolutely agreed. Look at Microsoft's price for their add-ons... MS doesn't make pricing decisions arbitrarily.

Too many third parties are still selling with an FSX/P3D mentality. This is a very different market. A price like this not only makes for a much larger market, it also makes piracy less worthwhile. (Why steal it when for $20 you can have support and updates?)

Great call. I hope Wing42 sells a boatload of these. I'm certainly buying!

[bazzar]

The plain fact is that ever since the commercial business of developing began, pricing has been led by the need to recover costs. Developing for this game has become extremely expensive making the decision on pricing a product even more critical. There is a reason why you see many of the better-known developers charging what they do - it isn't just some kind of "cash-grabber" mentality, it is a commercial necessity in many cases. Professional sound production, programming code and now, in cases where modeling is sub-contracted, out-costs can be huge. I'm afraid the old "halve the price and you'll sell twice as many" just doesn't wash and never has. Any developer in this volatile market has to tread with care and have a keen sense of the future to survive. Make the wrong choice and its curtains.

Microsoft/Asobo have control over the market to the extent that they can charge what they want. The costs to them to develop an add-on are miniscule comparitively. They will never and should never become a benchmark.

Push for lower prices by all means but I will say right now that if the acceptable price for an add-on gets to under US$20, there are going to be many casualties to come in this business, shortening even further, the choice for purchasers wanting something new, let alone good.

[ColoKent]

The plain fact is that ever since the commercial business of developing began, pricing has been led by the need to recover costs.

Agreed. A degree of business acumen and a basic understanding of sales models goes a long way in understanding that prices in the community are usually not arbitrary.

Kent

[Tom Clayton]

I've always heard (and often had) the mentality of taking 21 nickels to the bank is better than four quarters. But the reality is that what you're taking to the bank is net profit. If your margin isn't ridiculously high, then the different between $0.05 net profit and a $0.25 net profit may be the difference between a $15.75 price tag and a $15.95 price tag. So in reality, that twenty-cents price reduction isn't likely to have customers beating down your door. So I suppose a retailer has to find a sweet spot between profit per unit and total unit sales. I'd imagine that can't always be easy.

[bazzar]

There are other costs to take into consideration. If you use outside vendors as we do, you have to pay commissions. These can vary but usually range between 25 and 35% of the purchase price, before tax. Then there are taxes. Witholding tax in places like the U.K. for example which is another 5%. The net profit is often way lower than people would like to think. Also, the market, although bigger than that of P3D and FSX is again, not as big as people imagine. Releasing a freeware product and getting 5,000 downloads is no indicator of how that same product would go with a dollar on it. Probably 500 if you're lucky. This business is definitely not for the feint-hearted, believe me.

[DennyA]

And just to be clear, I have huge respect for Baz's long experience in the market and I know financial decisions are critical to putting food on the table!

My enthusiasm for the price point comes from a decade in working on digital game retailing outside of the flight sim side of things. There's a lot of price sensitivity for add-ons outside of the core flight sim enthusiast group. Nobody wants AH or anyone else to make less money or thinks they're being greedy. (I know nobody goes into FS development to get rich!) The number of sales titles hit at lower prices compared to higher retails can be pretty mind-boggling.

The theory is that dropping the price to the $10-20 would result in a hugely larger market. If a plane sells 500 copies at $39.95, and 25,000 copies at $19.95 even with higher support costs and the commission, that's an enormously higher gross profit.

25K might seem pie-in-the-sky, but it's not for an in-game marketplace.

$10 might seem unsustainably cheap, but if someone sells 50K copies at that price vs under 1,000 at $50, you're making a half-million dollars prior to fees, 10x as much gross income. Even after the expenses of scaling, that's a lot more money left after fees.

Maybe Baz is right. Maybe Wing42 is right. Personally I hope it's the latter, because that would mean Baz and team could make more money and more people could enjoy their work.

I'd love to see AH, Just Flight, and some of the other classic developers put a wide-appeal plane, with realistic performance and a mainstream level of systems details, on the Marketplace at a low price and see how it does. It'd be an experiment, but perhaps one that pays off big. (The 247D is such a niche plane that it's not enough of a test. If it does well, that's a great sign, but it's not a mainstream test.)

I've talked with a dev who said they couldn't make money on $10-20 planes. That's true at 500 copies. But at 5,000 or 50,000 copies, it's not. It would be nice if the MS marketplace folks would share some data with the devs on how various price points land with the customer, but I'm guessing this isn't happening right now given they haven't even gotten their approval/update process working decently.

[pilto von pilto]

And just to be clear, I have huge respect for Baz's long experience in the market and I know financial decisions are critical to putting food on the table!

My enthusiasm for the price point comes from a decade in working on digital game retailing outside of the flight sim side of things. There's a lot of price sensitivity for add-ons outside of the core flight sim enthusiast group. Nobody wants AH or anyone else to make less money or thinks they're being greedy. (I know nobody goes into FS development to get rich!) The number of sales titles hit at lower prices compared to higher retails can be pretty mind-boggling.

The theory is that dropping the price to the $10-20 would result in a hugely larger market. If a plane sells 500 copies at $39.95, and 25,000 copies at $19.95 even with higher support costs and the commission, that's an enormously higher gross profit.

25K might seem pie-in-the-sky, but it's not for an in-game marketplace.

$10 might seem unsustainably cheap, but if someone sells 50K copies at that price vs under 1,000 at $50, you're making a half-million dollars prior to fees, 10x as much gross income. Even after the expenses of scaling, that's a lot more money left after fees.

Maybe Baz is right. Maybe Wing42 is right. Personally I hope it's the latter, because that would mean Baz and team could make more money and more people could enjoy their work.

I'd love to see AH, Just Flight, and some of the other classic developers put a wide-appeal plane, with realistic performance and a mainstream level of systems details, on the Marketplace at a low price and see how it does. It'd be an experiment, but perhaps one that pays off big. (The 247D is such a niche plane that it's not enough of a test. If it does well, that's a great sign, but it's not a mainstream test.)

I've talked with a dev who said they couldn't make money on $10-20 planes. That's true at 500 copies. But at 5,000 or 50,000 copies, it's not. It would be nice if the MS marketplace folks would share some data with the devs on how various price points land with the customer, but I'm guessing this isn't happening right now given they haven't even gotten their approval/update process working decently.

Unfortunatley your experience in the digital game retailing is working against you in this case.
The addon market is more like Etsy rather than steam/origin/GOG etc . Devs arent seeing 5000 copies or ... 50 000 copies. Or in some cases not even 1000 copies. Just is not happening. Its like people saying there are MILLIONS of FS users.

As for your experiment idea. We are working on one. But there are caveats.

Would you say it fair that if you pay 16.95 then you get 16.95 value ? because I think ( not you ) there is a feeling in the community that devs should give 32.95 dollars value for 16.95. How much support would you expect ? How many changes and features would you expect for $16.95 ?

We always use the plastic kit analogy when it comes to this as the market is VERY similar. You can go out and buy a 1:72 plastic bag matchbox spitfire for 16.95 or a trumpeter 1:48 spitfire for a lot more. which one is going to have the more features/detail/support ? Why would a 16.95 plastic kit have the same features as a more expensive one.

At the end of the day it wont make fiscal sense. We see that in EVERY industry across the entire pantheon of human endeavour. So as much as it would be wonderful for devs to make 50 dollars worth of addons for 16.95 for the community , The community has to realise at some point that the constant pressure to lower the prices whilst increasing the offering will have ramifications, in either the offering being commensurate with the price point or worst case scenario Devs leaving the addon market for greener pastures. And then you get stagnation.

[bazzar]

Gee if I saw 25,000 copies, I'd make just one add-on and retire from the field. Imagine the size of my Gibson collection....

[heywooood]

this appears to me to be another downside to the MSFS Marketplace. They can produce and sell their own addons (or partnership addons) for less than the traditional
FS P3D developer - holding prices lower or making the independents who price according to ROI out to be excessive.

By not vetting the products they allow Marketplace access to AND holding the sell prices down they can affect customer perspective and harm reputable established vendors a couple of ways.
We expect good product support in addition to good or excellent quality of the product itself. All of that is more expensive now given MSFS much broader capabilities (eventually) in all aspects - from visual rendering, to audio, technical and so on.

I was pretty shocked when it became clear that the addons for this sim were priced lower than the average for P3D - I'm hoping there wasn't an agenda behind that.

[DennyA]

When you have X million Game Pass users with access to MSFS, folks who are bargain hunters by their very nature, 25K wouldn't be unreasonable at all for, say, a $9.99 F-14 or F-16 or MiG-28; something that the mainstream knows from movies.

[bazzar]

OK but then why haven't the "majors" followed that theory? And if they did, that would suggest that they would be making up to half a million dollars on each $20 add-on. Seriously? I'm obviously not on the same planet.

[Tom Clayton]

As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), Game Pass users only get the base version and upgrades are not discounted. I doubt you'll see any of them getting the Deluxe version just to get five more planes and airports for $90 when they already have the $60 base version for just cost of their Game Pass. I also suspect that very few will be looking to spend money on addons - even those on PC.

[pilto von pilto]

When you have X million Game Pass users with access to MSFS, folks who are bargain hunters by their very nature, 25K wouldn't be unreasonable at all for, say, a $9.99 F-14 or F-16 or MiG-28; something that the mainstream knows from movies.

Unfortunately the percentage of those game pass users with access could be broken down like this.

- Percentage that are interested in MSFS
- Percentage of those that consider buying DLC for MSFS as normal.
- Percentage of those that consider 9.95 USD as a fair price.
- Percentage of those that are interested in the subject itself.


The latter brings up 2 rather important issues to the likes of SOH and passionate flight enthusiasts.
1 . If a developer after working out all those percentages can see the ROI on making a F-14 or F-16 for 9.95 he/she then needs to work out what they provide for 9.95. My point still stands. Commensurate features for commensurate price. Or even easier fair pay for fair work. This could mean a flood of quick and competent models with fewer details than you expect. Is that what you want to see ?

2. Probably more important is the death of choice and subjects modelled. In your example if the F-14/f16/Mig etc sells and sells well then a developer is not going to make a westland lysander he's going to go on to the SU-27 or A-10. Which is fine for people who like that sort of thing. However I really want to see a westland lysander.

At the end of the day however we are making a product to the price point to test the market. Simple really, you want to pay 16.95 then you get 16.95 product no more no less. I personally think it is a race to the bottom and I think it will eventually hurt the hobby in general , and certainly split it even more.

Sorry boys this thread has been derailed slightly... but that is the nature of conversations. I get a LOT of emails about this through to help@AH so its a pet issue for me.

[Dangerous Beans]

I doubt that many of the Game Pass users buy addons seeing as they only have access to the base Sim as long as they keep paying for the Game Pass.
If they stop paying the subscription they cant use the addons without the Sim.

[Twice43]

Due April 2nd, 2022.

https://wing42.com/boeing-247/?v=7516fd43adaa

T43