Microsoft Marketplace and Orbx Direct

[Drooly]

Thanks for the update Nick

 

TBH I can see this separation becoming a bit of a pain for customers as the years roll by. 

 

Folks tend to prefer to keep all their eggs in one basket and like to track their purchases from one store not by the amalgamation of two or three. Because the MS Store is a separate entity and quiet apart from everyone else's stores and products Drzewiecki Design's, Aerosoft, PMDG etc I can see that we're pretty much heading off towards sticking with our old third party stores if we want keep track of what we own and where it is. This is a massive disappointment when there's a potentially such nice centralised store-front AND more importantly asset inventory database built right into the platform itself. To be clear I'm not suggesting we all use the MS store I'm suggesting it should at lease behave as an inventory pointer for everything we purchase from any store if the asset is in the sim.  

A couple of observations

 

a) I already bought two Orbx products from the MS store before I knew Orbx were opening theirs (to MS2020). My bad, I know. If I now switch back to Orbx Central then I've pretty much have to remember to keep track of those two already outside my Orbx Central database. Not the end of the world granted but it would be nice if you could at some point let us bring these stray purchases back into Orbx Central where they belong?  

 

b).  Am I right in thinking that we'll be forced to repurchase our existing P3D and XP11 products from Orbx Central in order to get our 40% discount? If so, then that pretty much decides it for me.  

c). I wonder if MS, Orbx and other store vendors would considering synchronising their store databases - and soon. At the very least least they could add 'purchase pointers' to the other stores to help customers with split purchases keep track of where their stuff is? It would be nice to see all our scenery came from (and is stored if somewhere weird) wherever we look in the MS Store/database. We paid for it and shouldn't be penalised because you guys want your own store fronts and because MS want a cut of your efforts? TBH this shouldn't be that difficult. If they can stream the entire world to our desktops Devs on both sides should be able to synch asset purchase info up? They'd probably only need to sync our MS and Orbx account names, our purchase inventories and current versions and a maybe a link?  

 

d). Could someone accidentally purchase the same scenery from both stores by mistake? Is there a safeguard to prevent that from happening (in both stores)? Based on FS long history we'll hopefully be purchasing this stuff for decades. 

 

e) On balance I think I'd prefer to use Orbx Central because I can't configure any of my Orbx products from within the MS store yet. I just hope the different stores and their different backup strategies don't end up plonking massive scenery files and assets all over our hard drives again. 

 

f) I think we could all use a smarter, more joined up plan for managing Flight Sim DLC and yes it could easily be done and still accommodate multiple stores and their individual commercial arrangements. After performance configuration, managing our DLC and licences was by far the biggest pain of the older sims and here we are with a golden opportunity to get it all synched up and in order. Please get your collective heads together and please do it now while purchases haven't yet really started yet.

 

I predict a big old mess down the line if you don't. 

  

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

thanks.

I have split this from the pinned topic, which was created in response to numerous customer questions on the subject.

It is intended to explain how things stand today and in the light of that, these answers are as things stand today.

 

a) as mentioned, at the moment, there is no link between the two methods.

I cannot say if this will change, as I do not know.

 

b) the 40% discount again is something that applies today, I cannot say if the offer is indefinite, because I do not know.

Because the offer depends on the ownership of a licence that must be in the Orbx Direct customer account, that is the

only place that the offer can be implemented.

 

c) I cannot comment on this at all, I simply do not have the knowledge. My personal opinion is that it would require a

sharing of customer information that would be in breach of any number of data protection laws, but that is just an opinion.

 

d) a customer is certainly able to purchase the same product from each of the two marketing mediums, in exactly the same way

that they could buy the same product by any developer from any two online retailers who stock the same product.

 

e) and f) thanks for expressing your preferences. Once again, I cannot comment, as I do not know the answers.

 

[Drooly]

Thanks for the reply. I think the market has opened up already. Simmarket and others are selling numerous utilities, sceneries and all the regular flight Sim paraphernalia. Looks like we're back to the wild west already. Us old hands are used to this. Familiar territory 

 

Take care