SimHQ.com - Staff Roundtable: The Future of Simulations

"...people plunk down $20 for a DVD movie they might watch once..." Beach: Yeah, I have to admit it is interesting that people will plunk down $15 to $20 for a DVD movie that they might watch once or maybe a couple times giving a total value of $5 to $10 per hour. Compare that to something like Falcon 4, EECH or LB2 and start to break down hours of enjoyment versus purchase price. It's a bizarre thing that people gripe about $40 sims.

Weasel_Keeper: You still have the MS Flight Sims that easily fetch $50-$70 new. They come out with a new version every couple of years and some, like me, always buy them. I have MSFS 98, 00, 02 Pro, and 04 and they're always priced above the normal flight sims. Of course MS has the money to produce a killer general flight sim without needing much work... and people know that based on past titles and reputation.

I'd gladly pay bigger bucks for a great sim if I knew it was going to hold my interest. The way many of the sims are coming out now it's just as easy to wait a month or two for them to be in the bargain bin for $10-$20.

One thing about today's sims that bugs the hell out of me although many people absolutely love it which is cool too, is the "moddability". I got hooked on online flying and being in a squad for four years with Jane's USAF. At the time there was nothing you could mod other than skins and sounds... which wouldn't affect anyone else's game who was flying online with you. There was a huge community of USAF pilots and we could always find people to fly with/against.

Now you have mods with every sim out there, and have to match mods just to be able to connect with someone. It's things like this that I personally am having problems with because I love to fly with and against humans rather than AI. Get a group of guys with voice comms flying a coop or dogfights and it increases the immersion greatly.

On the other hand, I love MSFS because I can mod it. Mainly because I just enjoy flying that by myself.

Consoles — can't mod, already steady, easy to connect to MP. Now if they could make a great flight sim and controls maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

"...we should be paying around 100 bucks a sim..." Uther: I think that sims like the IL-2 Series would fetch up around 100 USD from most simmers. How many years have we gotten new free content? Sure there will be griefers about price, but that is as old as the first haggle.

Do you know what would stop a dev from asking 100 bucks for a product like IL-2? The suits in marketing. They are usually so anal about these decisions. Having the console mentality they formulate decisions based around the console or "Movie release" theory. That is, blow all your advertising on aiming for the first month of release. Any profits thereafter are secondary.

This works great for consoles and movies. It's not a good strategy for a platform known for longevity. Pound for Pound we should be paying around 100 bucks a sim now. Heck I was paying 50-75 in the 80's! How do we get the marketer to see this when they "know" they have to be competitive with the console price limit?

I personally feel the dev's are not getting enough. Maybe this is why we get a lot of unfinished products that need several patches before they operate the way they should.

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