Announcement

**Swaluver88** · 18Jun2021, 12:41

Rob said its a definite possibility but will be months after the release of planes on pmdg.com

**August78** · 18Jun2021, 15:03

Its clever strategy. Looking how Aerosoft had to do a few hotfixes after their CRJ release, and from afar it looked like a pain coordinating their hotfix releases with the MS store. They were obligated to release the hotfix from their own store at the same time it became available in the sim store. PMDG's strategy ensures them full freedom over this matter, and by the time they go into the ingame store, their product will be more mature, and so will hopefully the sim

**BostonJeremy77** · 18Jun2021, 19:16

MSFS Marketplace is good for purchasing things that are not time-sensitive in terms of fixes. Like airports. If there is one airport that's messed up, surely you can fly from/to other ones. However, with aircraft and the current update cadence of products on the Marketplace, the Marketplace is the WORST place to buy aircraft. That comes from experience - I first started out purchasing things on the MP and then quickly had to readjust.

Jeremy Smirnov

**fahdriyami** · 19Jun2021, 00:55

I just hope there is a way to transfer purchases from the PMDG Store to the MSFS Marketplace. So you can purchase it early, and then migrate to the MSFS Store version later to have the convenience of all your add-ons managed and updated in one place.

I think it can be done somehow. If the PMDG Store also gave you a redeem code for the MSFS Marketplace version for example. Or make it free in the Marketplace and having users use their existing license code to activate.

**BiologicalNanobot** · 19Jun2021, 23:48

Originally posted by BostonJeremy77 View Post

MSFS Marketplace is good for purchasing things that are not time-sensitive in terms of fixes. Like airports. If there is one airport that's messed up, surely you can fly from/to other ones. However, with aircraft and the current update cadence of products on the Marketplace, the Marketplace is the WORST place to buy aircraft. That comes from experience - I first started out purchasing things on the MP and then quickly had to readjust.

Jeremy Smirnov

While I agree that there are issues with marketplace, it is a compromise many users are willing to accept for having their add-ons managed and updated in one place. It is better to have options, and I hope we get a marketplace release soon too.

**Seanmo** · 20Jun2021, 01:39

Originally posted by fahdriyami View Post

I just hope there is a way to transfer purchases from the PMDG Store to the MSFS Marketplace. So you can purchase it early, and then migrate to the MSFS Store version later to have the convenience of all your add-ons managed and updated in one place.

I think it can be done somehow. If the PMDG Store also gave you a redeem code for the MSFS Marketplace version for example. Or make it free in the Marketplace and having users use their existing license code to activate.

Even with the best intentions from PMDG, that is extremely unlikely to ever happen. Right now there is not a single company that can do that kind of transfer with the MSFS Marketplace and I don't see why MSFT would spend the time and resources to make that happen.

**Sandhill** · 20Jun2021, 02:49

Originally posted by BiologicalNanobot View Post

While I agree that there are issues with marketplace, it is a compromise many users are willing to accept for having their add-ons managed and updated in one place. It is better to have options, and I hope we get a marketplace release soon too.

If your vendor, PMDG for example, without fail sends you an email announcing an update which includes a clickable link to execute the update, the convenience factor of the MSFS Marketplace becomes less significant. I've updated the Just Flight Arrow bundle two or three times this week that way, no more effort than a Marketplace update. Yes, a ton of aircraft would be more conveniently updated through Marketplace at once, but I now have a vendor/buyer relationship with PMDG, they have a record of me and my purchase. Buying through Marketplace the seller has no relationship to you, and if you need to cry, they might not even recognize you as a buyer..
I wonder also if MS does not take a cut of Marketplace cash?

**Captain Kevin** · 20Jun2021, 13:33

Originally posted by Sandhill View Post

If your vendor, PMDG for example, without fail sends you an email announcing an update which includes a clickable link to execute the update, the convenience factor of the MSFS Marketplace becomes less significant.

But that's the thing. Do they? In the years I've owned PMDG products, the only time I've ever found out about an update was here on the forums. I suppose if one randomly opens up the Operations Center, it would also tell you, but then you also have the occasional update that gets so extensive that the Operations Center can't handle it, and then you have to go download a new installer anyway and re-install everything.
I wonder also if MS does not take a cut of Marketplace cash?[/QUOTE]
I'm pretty sure they do if you bought it from the Marketplace rather than from the developer.

**MacGoose** · 20Jun2021, 21:43

Comming here purely on this topic I can say I'm waiting for it on the in-game store. You can throw pros and cons everywhere - the in-game store is where I want all my add-ons. Nuff said.

**Swaluver88** · 20Jun2021, 21:45

Originally posted by MacGoose View Post

Comming here purely on this topic I can say I'm waiting for it on the in-game store. You can throw pros and cons everywhere - the in-game store is where I want all my add-ons. Nuff said.

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**commandosolo** · 21Jun2021, 20:43

One thing you might not understand PMDG is that you can get steam gift cards and then if it's in the marketplace, you can spend the money on it. Since you stopped the gift cards in the store here, how can we give something to someone. Of course I understand it will be a while but that is one thing you might not have known about.

**Ephedrin** · 22Jun2021, 10:59

Regarding the marketplace… just to keep in mind: the price for the Boeings will exceed the DC6 by far.. and there is no proof of purchase when you buy anything from the marketplace, no receipt, no way to show that you bought the addon... one system error….

**Swaluver88** · 22Jun2021, 14:31

There are three things I personally do not like about the marketplace

no keys, no emails, and an in game confirmation. Personally I have a word document with all my keys labeled all nice and neat and then I print them for a back up in case of a crash. This is really bugs me that I dont have any back trace when and how much I bought something for. I also do not like the in game confirmation as you can easily exit it out and if something goes south you have little to no proof you even bought it than a PayPal and or credit card statement
Its all over the place. You really have to take a chance with what you buy. Sure there are a lot of great products but I have bought products that are straight p3d port overs for $15 where the pictures they posted showed astonishing different and awesome scenery photos. MS looks like it will approve anything. It reminded me why I lost respect for MS (not asobo) in the first place which brings me to
MS REALLY TAKES A GOOD AMOUNT! I've read 4 articles and 2 threads and 1 comment that says MS takes anywhere from 20-40% of the revenue made off of a product. That means if its a $10 product theyre taking $2-$4 of that $10 they made. Lets make it a bigger number if its a $60 product theyre taking $12 to $24 per purchase of that product. I really don't support they take anything at all. We pay anywhere from $60-$120 to buy the sim then if you are a dev you have to not only develop you have also take a revenue hit if you sell on the marketplace. Adding in steam that I've heard and read they take anywhere from $10-15 which is way way lower that the Xbox version but still adds up. So you sell on both that combined you could lose a lot of money on a products as a developer selling on there unless you break even

the marketplace is a great idea and addon to have everything centralized but there are certain things that ruin it and can be fixed. I can potentially see PMDG going into the marketplace when sales have slowed down tremendously for a certain product (if they do).

Disclaimer: I do not speak for pmdg, I am not a developer and get my information from reliable sources (but may not be accurate towards what PMDG sees), these are my opinions and thoughts

**Vicinian** · 22Jun2021, 17:41

Originally posted by Swaluver88 View Post

There are three things I personally do not like about the marketplace

no keys, no emails, and an in game confirmation. Personally I have a word document with all my keys labeled all nice and neat and then I print them for a back up in case of a crash. This is really bugs me that I dont have any back trace when and how much I bought something for. I also do not like the in game confirmation as you can easily exit it out and if something goes south you have little to no proof you even bought it than a PayPal and or credit card statement
Its all over the place. You really have to take a chance with what you buy. Sure there are a lot of great products but I have bought products that are straight p3d port overs for $15 where the pictures they posted showed astonishing different and awesome scenery photos. MS looks like it will approve anything. It reminded me why I lost respect for MS (not asobo) in the first place which brings me to
MS REALLY TAKES A GOOD AMOUNT! I've read 4 articles and 2 threads and 1 comment that says MS takes anywhere from 20-40% of the revenue made off of a product. That means if its a $10 product theyre taking $2-$4 of that $10 they made. Lets make it a bigger number if its a $60 product theyre taking $12 to $24 per purchase of that product. I really don't support they take anything at all. We pay anywhere from $60-$120 to buy the sim then if you are a dev you have to not only develop you have also take a revenue hit if you sell on the marketplace. Adding in steam that I've heard and read they take anywhere from $10-15 which is way way lower that the Xbox version but still adds up. So you sell on both that combined you could lose a lot of money on a products as a developer selling on there unless you break even

the marketplace is a great idea and addon to have everything centralized but there are certain things that ruin it and can be fixed. I can potentially see PMDG going into the marketplace when sales have slowed down tremendously for a certain product (if they do).

Disclaimer: I do not speak for pmdg, I am not a developer and get my information from reliable sources (but may not be accurate towards what PMDG sees), these are my opinions and thoughts

At the same time, though, what Asobo has done with MSFS is absolutely incredible, and the upkeep of MSFS is a constant ongoing process, which requires money, alongside their constant updates that they plan for years. That $60 dollars that you spent won't mean much a few years in with the huge costs being spent on its development and upkeep. We are talking about hundreds of jobs, after all, compared to 8 at PMDG, I think? Of course, PMDG deserves whatever they're charging, and I think the DC-6 is very reasonably priced. What I am saying is that MSFS also deserves support over time as well, and that is what the marketplace is there to provide.

**Swaluver88** · 22Jun2021, 17:47

Originally posted by Vicinian View Post

At the same time, though, what Asobo has done with MSFS is absolutely incredible, and the upkeep of MSFS is a constant ongoing process, which requires money, alongside their constant updates that they plan for years. That $60 dollars that you spent won't mean much a few years in with the huge costs being spent on its development and upkeep. We are talking about hundreds of jobs, after all, compared to 8 at PMDG, I think? Of course, PMDG deserves whatever they're charging, and I think the DC-6 is very reasonably priced. What I am saying is that MSFS also deserves support over time as well, and that is what the marketplace is there to provide.

At most 5% is reasonable, ms is starting to act like EA where they're charging for everything now. If it wasn't for flightsim.to, avsim.net and other freeware websites. Everything would be charged for. All I see is the same as fsx/p3d addon developers selling from their websites so they don't have to worry about getting the revenue taken away by a multi billion dollar company (which im for) and freeware addon websites. Just dont agree with ms taking any money with how big of a corporation they are. But hey thats the reason the came back to the flight simulation genre because there was money to be made

**Vicinian** · 22Jun2021, 22:10

Originally posted by Swaluver88 View Post

At most 5% is reasonable, ms is starting to act like EA where they're charging for everything now. If it wasn't for flightsim.to, avsim.net and other freeware websites. Everything would be charged for. All I see is the same as fsx/p3d addon developers selling from their websites so they don't have to worry about getting the revenue taken away by a multi billion dollar company (which im for) and freeware addon websites. Just dont agree with ms taking any money with how big of a corporation they are. But hey thats the reason the came back to the flight simulation genre because there was money to be made

Well, but that's exactly it, if there wasn't money to be made then we wouldn't have MSFS right now. And if no one bought from the Marketplace, then MSFS would be shut down the moment it starts losing them money. But yeah, 5-10% would be reasonable I think. All I am saying is that MSFS deserves support as well, and I hope Microsoft is paying Asobo well for their efforts.

**Crabby** · 23Jun2021, 03:49

Originally posted by fahdriyami View Post

I just hope there is a way to transfer purchases from the PMDG Store to the MSFS Marketplace. So you can purchase it early, and then migrate to the MSFS Store version later to have the convenience of all your add-ons managed and updated in one place.

I think it can be done somehow. If the PMDG Store also gave you a redeem code for the MSFS Marketplace version for example. Or make it free in the Marketplace and having users use their existing license code to activate.

That's like buying a quart of ice cream from Walmart and taking it and the receipt to Target and expecting and exchange or refund. Where do these business (or non-business ideas) come from today?

**rsrandazzo** · 23Jun2021, 06:16

Folks,

Please allow me to add a bit of clarity here to this discussion, as it does seem that there is quite a bit of conjecture and opinion. We haven't talked too much about our plans for MSFS Marketplace simply because we have been focused on other tasks.

Will PMDG Products Appear in the Marketplace?:
PMDG fully intends to have our products available in the MSFS Marketplace. A small developer like PMDG can gain a much wider market exposure through placement in the MSFS Marketplace, and thus we anticipate fully participating.

How long until this happens?:
We have not yet decided. There are a few factors playing into this decision right now, and the decision is entirely analytical with the goal of ensuring a smooth customer experience above all other factors. We really only have a single concerning factor here, and that relates to our flexibility in updating the products that customers purchase. The normal update lifecycle for a PMDG product is that we release the product and then update it rapidly in response to service reports during the period following release. The rate of updates tends to start out high and the reduce over time because we are simulating a highly, highly complex piece of machinery, often times with very advanced systems and computational processes that sometimes do an effective job of masking problems until the software is employed on a wide array of customer installations. Thus, we tend to work in overdrive to tamp down any issues that appear initially, but the update rate slows dramatically the further you move out along the release timeline, as you would expect.

To facilitate this, we have long used our PMDG Operations Center application to distribute updates to customers. This tool allows us to employ a rapid update cycle to PMDG products that allows us to quickly identify, resolve, test and push fixes for problems in our aircraft in order to ensure a uniform, stable customer experience. This is the primary method for updating PMDG products and has proven to be reliable, quick and simple for the vast majority of PMDG customers.

Unfortunately, there are some technical reasons that prevent us from updating Marketplace originating installations. If we wish to push an update to customers, we can easily hand it to PMDG.com originating customers within minutes, but the update for Marketplace originating customers will take days-to-weeks depending upon the flow of bits through Microsoft's pipeline. This isn't some evil plot on the part of MSFS, it is simply an offshoot to how the Marketplace distribution mechanism works.

For this reason, we feel it is highly important to ensure that a product is stable and down to a low-rate of updates before we hand it to the marketplace, and this will be a driver in the decision to begin pushing any PMDG product to the Marketplace. The moment we feel stability is sufficient to allow us to absorb the longer lead-time required for Marketplace update cycles, we will put the product in Marketplace.

What is the Truth About Costs?:
[NOTE 23JUN21: The information in this paragraph has changed since I was last updated- read the post below if it interests you...]
Placing a product in Marketplace is expensive. When an MSFS user purchases a product from Marketplace, Microsoft and sometimes Valve gets paid. For MSFS users who purchased MSFS via MS-Store, Microsoft will take a 30% share. For MSFS users who purchased MSFS via Steam, Valve will take 35% and then MS will take 30% of what remains (effective rate of 54% give-or-take.)

Before anyone howls too loudly: MSFS wasn't developed on a shoe-string budget, and it exists because Jorg Neuman was able to convince the corporate hive that it would make money. It is in all of our best interest if it makes money- and Jorg's team, in combination with Asobo have created an environment in which the potential market for products is so significantly larger than the old market that developers like PMDG can be quite healthy if we deliver quality products.

I am less enthusiastic about the value equation of Valve's contribution, but there is an old saying about "you cannot fight City Hall."

What About Pricing?:
Pricing will be the same across PMDG.com and Marketplace. Product functionality will be the same across PMDG.com and Marketplace. In a perfect world, you should only notice a difference in the update process and the update cycle time- and if we have done our work properly- you may not even notice that lag.

Okay- so I didn't read Any of That: When Will DC-6 Be in Marketplace?:
We cannot say at this time, as we haven't decided yet. It will depend upon our opinion product update stability.

There are many folks with many opinions about whether you should purchase from a developer directly or if it is better to purchase from the Marketplace store. To those of you waging argumentative battle with one another, I offer this:

Do what is best for you, as that is the correct solution for you.

**rsrandazzo** · 23Jun2021, 20:23

Folks-

I received some updated information this afternoon on the various cost structures and I think it is important to update the information to give you guys an idea what is taking place on the back-end of things.

My original numbers were based upon information/conversations that have changed since our last review of this data. Microsoft made changes to the fees they charge developers in order to put less strain on the sale of third party products through the steam channel. That is not an insignificant move, I should point out. When you hear me talking about how Jorg's team has been trying to build a simulation environment that embraces small developers, it is things like this that I am pointing to...

I have also been reminded that Valve has a "reducing scale" that gets triggered after certain revenue tiers are exceeded in sales within the MSFS channel. The initial tiers have been exceeded, so costs are reducing all across the steam channel, which is beneficial for everyone involved.

Net costs to developers like PMDG will have dropped from ~54% to ~36% a bit later in the summer. That is a big deal on our end and it puts costs for distribution within the margin of error for what we product and how we distribute.

Overall, PMDG very much wants to see Marketplace be profitable as this promotes continued growth and investment in the platform. To the extent that Microsoft is working to keep costs in line, I think the future looks quite promising.

Now I need to get back to getting the DC-6 stable so we can push her to Marketplace...

**Henrique** · 30Jun2022, 16:24

Mr, Randazzo,

If I read correctly you have commented on DC-6 availability.

"When Will DC-6 Be in Marketplace?: We cannot say at this time, as we haven't decided yet. It will depend upon our opinion product update stability."

Could you please elaborate a bit with respect to Marketplace availability for Xbox users?

From an Xbox point of view, does that means it is technically fixed and PMDG is cautious on releasing it due to marketplace update mechanism nature or it just applies to PC version ?

Thank you

Henrique Coelho
Itapevi, SP
Brazil

**cmakris** · 30Jun2022, 16:33

Originally posted by Henrique View Post

Mr, Randazzo,

If I read correctly you have commented on DC-6 availability.

"When Will DC-6 Be in Marketplace?: We cannot say at this time, as we haven't decided yet. It will depend upon our opinion product update stability."

Could you please elaborate a bit with respect to Marketplace availability for Xbox users?

From an Xbox point of view, does that means it is technically fixed and PMDG is cautious on releasing it due to marketplace update mechanism nature or it just applies to PC version ?

Thank you

Henrique Coelho
Itapevi, SP
Brazil

The DC6 is int he MarketPlace for a long time now.

The XBOX release waits from Microsoft to fix some issues on the XBOX in order for it to be able to handle complex addons. When this will be done is up to Microsoft as we have no control over it. As soon as they fix the issues then will give them the green light to re enable the DC6 in the Xbox.

**Henrique** · 30Jun2022, 20:54

Originally posted by cmakris View Post

The DC6 is int he MarketPlace for a long time now.

The XBOX release waits from Microsoft to fix some issues on the XBOX in order for it to be able to handle complex addons. When this will be done is up to Microsoft as we have no control over it. As soon as they fix the issues then will give them the green light to re enable the DC6 in the Xbox.

Understood. I'm aware of the issues. So Robert´s comment does not refer to his decision to hold availability to to marketplace update nature. It is still the technical issue from last year. Asobo did mention they were working on a workaround to this issue and it could be implemented in SU10 if testing proves successful. Let's see how it goes.

Other developers are removing WASM or simplifying things in order to run on Xbox. I do perfectly understand PMDG´s DNA. However, even a "DC-6 Lite" would be a must in Xbox.

Thank you Chris.

Henrique Coelho
Itapevi, SP
Brazil

**cmakris** · 01Jul2022, 06:38

Originally posted by Henrique View Post

Understood. I'm aware of the issues. So Robert´s comment does not refer to his decision to hold availability to to marketplace update nature. It is still the technical issue from last year. Asobo did mention they were working on a workaround to this issue and it could be implemented in SU10 if testing proves successful. Let's see how it goes.

Other developers are removing WASM or simplifying things in order to run on Xbox. I do perfectly understand PMDG´s DNA. However, even a "DC-6 Lite" would be a must in Xbox.

Thank you Chris.

Henrique Coelho
Itapevi, SP
Brazil

Robert comment on this thread is way before we released the DC6 in MarketPlace...

There would be no "lite" version for any our products just to run in the Xbox. This is not possible

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