freddy
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I don't want to seed this discussion any more than has already been done. Nor do I want to take it in another direction. But I have just discovered the following and it provides an interesting scenario along the lines of this discussion ... One of the aircraft in my P3Dv4 hangar is the Majestic Dash 8 Pro Edition. In November 2021, a new Edition of this aircraft was released (Training Edition). At the time, Majestic announced that customers who already owned a Pro Edition of the Q400 could receive a special discount price for the upgrade from the vendor from which they had made their original purchase. I was happy with the Pro Edition and did not want to purchase the Training Edition at that time. Present day, a new patch has been released for the aircraft and it occured to me that it might be a good time to "bite the bullet" and purchase the Training Edition. This would give me the latest patch included, as well as other new features that I did not currently have in my Pro Edition (for example, TFDi Design TrueGlass which provides precipitation visuals on cockpit windows). So it seems like a good time to "go for it". But, this is where the plot thickens ... I had purchased my Dash 8 Pro Edition from PC Aviator. I note that PC Aviator is one of the vendors offering an upgrade price for the Training Edition. Good. And, happy days, it looks like the upgrade offer is still avaiable for existing owners of the Pro Edition. Excellent! HOWEVER, my purchase was from PC Aviator Australia, which has since closed it's doors. And, as I did not purchase my Dash 8 from PC Aviator USA, they will have no record of my Dash 8 Pro Edition purchase. Therefore, despite being a legal and registered owner of the Dash 8 Pro Edition, and an upgrade price is available to go from the Pro Editon to the Training Edition, I will not be able to receive that upgrade price, even though I purchased it from "PC Aviator" and "PC Aviator" is offering the upgrade deal. It seems I will instead have to pay the full price for the Training Edition. OK, so, whilst I do understand this from PC Aviator USA's position (they do not have my original purchase money), it kind of seems "unfair" for me to essentially have to pay the full purchase price for a product that, in this case, is indeed being offered at an upgade price, and one that I would certainly otherwise qualify for. Now, to be fair, I have not approached / contacted PC Aviator USA to plead my position and to politely ask if I would be eligible for the upgrade price. They may, for all I know, honor it. But, that said, it is obvious that I clearly did not actually make my original purchase from them. They are essentially a different "branch", and are their own entity, despite being "PC Aviator". So, logic says that they are entitled to the full purchase price from me. All up, this seems to be a kind of "Catch-22" scenario. I will probably just end up begrudgingly paying the full purchase price. I don't think I'll even bother to contact PC Aviator USA to ask. This story highlights a different (yet similar) sort of scenario that customers can find themselves in when it comes to having to (unfairly?) pay full price. (In saying all of this, it is acknowledged that the Training Edition is essentially a different product from the Pro Edition, and therefore paying full price does make sense ... but, that's a bit sour when an upgrade offer is/was on the table here if the circumstances were different.)
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Yep. Other companies may do it similarly, or differently. But, I believe the approach above is the correct approach. And the chosen price should reflect the work involved to bring the product to release. 👍
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Actually, no, I agree with what you have been saying. I am just finding it difficult to explain my thoughts. I have always been happy to pay for work done by developers. It is when developers do not do any additonal work (because the existing product will already work perfectly fine on the new platform) and merely recompile that existing work in to a new wrapper (new installer) and then flog it to unsuspecting consumers at a price ... that is what I don't agree with. I actually work in the software business and the company I work for is constantly having to re-work our stuff to be compatible with the latest Windows version, or Android version or whatever. Often, our front ends look and feel the same. And, often, our customers question us as to why we are charging a small fee for what they see as the same product. So I (we) deal with this exact issue, quite often. In rare cases where a product does work fine in the new platform, then we create a new installer, with the new platform name in it, upload it for our customers to get it, and we move on ... little or no charge to the customer. The key is good communication. If the customer is kept in the loop, and understands the time and effort involved, then they are happy to pay the charge / small fee. Agree. Agree. The customer should not perceive or notice any change to the product's functionality and features. However, in this case the company should make it clear to the customer that a lot of work has been done to provide them with the product they already know and love and make that product work on the new platform. Ideally, that communication should happen whilst the work is being carried out. "We are working on updating our product to be compatible with the new platform". "Work continues on updating the product to be compatible with the new platform". "We have encountered some unforeseen issues during the update process which we are working through". Periodic communications, at different periodic stages or milestones in the process, keep the customer in the loop ... and, in turn, the customer can appreciate the time and effort involved. No, I don't have that expectation. As I mentioned above, I have always been happy to pay for work done by developers. But, yes, I agree there are some customers out there who expect this. True. True. No, not true of me. I know first hand the work involved in having to update and port things over to new platforms. For example, I myself do a lot of AFCAD work and I did find myself having to do updates and modifications to all of my personal FSX AFCAD files to make them work for me in P3D. At the time I had some 100+ personal AFCAD files which needed modifying. Hours/days of work, regardless of how trivial the changes needed to be for each individual file. So I do very much appreciate that there is no machine where you simply feed an airport or aircraft into one end and a new version emerges from the other. And, as I said earlier, I work in the software business and see and deal with this exact kind of thing very often. Nick, I actually think you and I are on the same page. Reading your post here, you have made points that I myself would have made. There may be some customers out there who change their sim and then expect to get updates for free ... but I believe there are more customers out there who are certainly willing to pay (myself included) once they can "see" that a lot of work has gone in to making a product compatible with the new platform ... even if that product looks and feels the same, with no feature changes. On the other hand, if the customer suspects that no work was required on the product and all that has been done was to recompile a new installer, then the customer (including me) will and should question the need to pay for that if the expected price is "full price" as opposed to a smaller "upgrade amount". Getting back to the original post that sparked this conversation, a change from PC platform to X-Box platform ... I personally can appreciate the different code-base and the work done/needed for each platform. So, yes, the product(s) on each different platform should certainly be paid for. Whether or not the payment is "full price" or an "upgrade amount" based on previous proof of ownership ... well ... that is what started this discussion in the first place.
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Changing diesel for petrol would be a change that is obvious to the customer and the customer would certainly notice there has been change, including new features that would come with that change (a different method to start it, for example). The customer would also acknowledge that hard work had been done to make that change. So, most likely, the customer would not mind paying for that. A problem arrises where there is a "perception" by the customer that nothing has changed. When that occurs it is easy to understand why the customer feels the need to question having to pay. If one has a Boeing 737 from a well-known vendor, and they need to (re)purchase that exact same Boeing 737 from that same well-known vendor ... and, the feature list for that product shows the exact same features with nothing new ... then the customer can get the impression that there really hasn't been that much of a change, if any at all ... maybe it's merely just a new installer that puts files in the new, correct paths. In that case it is easy to see why the customer would question having to pay. If the vendor subsequently makes it clear to the customer just how much work has gone in to making the product work on the new/different platform and the customer thus gains an understanding of the time and effort that's gone in to it, then the customer is likely to be happy to pay. Some vendors in our hobby are good at this kind of communication, and other vendors are not.
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My two cents and personal experience ... It is quite frustrating to purchase a lot of add-ons etc to improve your simulator, only to have to re-purchase those same add-ons again at a later date. When my FSX PC died, I purchased a brand new PC and the latest P3D (v4.5 at the time). I had to re-purchase a lot of my existing add-ons as many were FSX only and not compatible with P3D. So I had to purchase P3D versions. To be fair, many were compatible, and that was great ... but, sadly, those that were not compatible were generally the more expensive ones. So, with the new PC purchase, and many already-owned FSX add-ons having to be re-purchased again for P3D versions, I ended up spending quite a large sum of money to get my sim back to the same as it was when I ran FSX (ie, it was now P3D with all the same add-ons that I had in FSX). I had mixed emotions about this ... as it didn't seem fair that I had to re-purchase a lot of stuff that I had already purchased before ... but that was how it had to be ... at least I had the latest version of the sim, and, once again, all the add-ons that I knew and loved. Then, literally about four months after finally getting everything installed, tweaked, tested and updated with the latest hotfixes and all my add-ons installed and working (both compatible ones and re-purchased ones) ... P3Dv5 was released. That was frustrating. I had just got P3Dv4.5 up and running and I was damned if I was now going to purchase this new version (ie, spend even more money) and go through the whole install, tweak and test mucking around again. Worse, I note that some of my P3Dv4.5 add-ons were not going to be compatible with P3Dv5 and I would need to wait for developers to update their products accordingly, or, in some cases, re-purchase again! Nope, bah-humbug that all that. And, not too long after all of that, MSFS was announced. Sheesh. To this day I am still happily running P3Dv4.5 with all my add-ons. I am currently a happy camper. But, there is a part of me that wishes I had unlimited funds, and the latest of the latest. I think of it all like this ... if you have a PPL and fly for real, then it is an expensive thing to do. If you have a VPPL (Virtual PPL) and you fly at home on a screen, then it is still also an expensive thing to do. 🙂 I do agree that it doesn't seem fair to have to re-purchase a lot of things that you have already purchased before, but, just like flying in the real-world is expensive, the virtual flying is also an expensive thing to do too. It's not necessarily a good justification, but it is a justification nonetheless.
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I also concur. It didn't affect my frame rates at all and is indeed a great add-on / enhancement product.