Pricing - An opinion.

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

4 different aircraft, with the M and the two-seater adding pretty distinct functionality, for $80 (Or really, $63) is pretty good. I wouldn't worry too much about the prices of other modules going up much if at all. There comes a point in which price becomes so prohibitive as to kill sales. DCS modules may very well be at that upper end. Especially with such an incredible line up. 

I got my MiG-21. I'm getting my A-6 Intruder. Anything else? I can wait. I am a patient man and I suspect I'm not alone. Once you get past the $60-$70 range for us nerds, impulse buying becomes a lot more uncommon. Once flight simming competes with other hobbies, interests, and especially responsibilities? It will lose. There's always going to be those who prioritize things over it. ED can't expect a huge plurality of its consumer base to be the "whales" as is the parlance in free-to-play and I don't believe they do. The idea of "If you don't like it, just don't buy it" is not a wise one to fall back on with such a niche part of the market. It's also not a part of ED's business they're all that dependent upon as, remember, their real bread and butter is with defense contracts; a sector which is (unfortunately) seeing quite a boom as of late. Commodities like entertainment don't see fluctuations like consumables such as fuel and food.

So, let's take a deep breath, realize our concerns are not unfounded as everyone is quite unhappy with world economics at this time, but also realize that it's an equation which becomes incomplete without customers. Hiking prices could do that, so more than likely? Prices will stay stable here, at the very least.

Edited July 24, 2022 by MiG21bisFishbedL

[Maxthrust]

my friday pub bill was more than the cost of f1.

$35 add on days are simply gone.

[Tom Kazansky]

I hope developers that are planning to give us 4 versions of their aircraft ignore this thread. (Not your fault @Rudel_chw, your intentions and reasons were legit.)

I respect the opinion that one wants just 1 version for 10$ less, and decide whether to buy another version for e.g. 10$ each, though, but that's not my opinion.

[aleader]

On 7/23/2022 at 7:51 AM, Insanatrix said:

For every 1 person who thinks $150 is fair there's probably 100 who would say "screw it, not worth it". It's not about not being able to afford it either, It's about what I'm getting and perceived value. I also have to invest time into learning to actually be able to fly it. There's a time and a monetary cost investment. One of the reasons this is such a niche market is due to that. Customer perceived value is even more important, not less. for every 1 customer you lose it's the equivalent of 10-100 maybe even 1,000 from a AAA title for instance.

Using myself as an example, I have less and less time to devote to sitting reading a manual and trying to learn how to fly some of the modules. I've gotten older, real life and other hobbies are more or less equally important. It's not that I don't want to. It's not that I can't afford to drop $150. It's that I would never use it enough to justify purchasing it and the perceived value dropped because. I would be more apt to wait for a sale, but by the time it does go on sale and actually hit a price point where I might drop money on it, I don't even think about it really and I'm talking about as the price rises because it makes the sales seem less like a sale really and more dropping down to their original price point. I'm probably more casual than those who build sim pits and spend $1000's on it as a hobby. To those people $150 is nothing because you spent $1000's building a sim pit and the perceived value isn't more or less but the value they place on their money is more or less. It's the basic whale mentality. 

All I'm trying to say is that the attitude that you would pay anything to get your hands on it isn't shared by most. I'm sure the developers will do what they think is best for the company, but even they are not infallible. I don't think the prices are all that extreme right now anyways but they are slowly approaching it. 

You hit it right on the head.  Drives me nuts when people throw out that arrogant 'if you can afford it' nonsense as though they are the only ones in the world with enough money to buy a DCS module/GPU/insert overpriced piece of sim hardware...   I spent $42,000 on a pontoon boat which seems crazy to a lot of people, but when you use it all the time and live 30min from beautiful parks/lakes (and I can always sell it and get a lot of the cash back)...makes perfect sense to me. 

Single player (what the vast majority play) is severely lacking in DCS.  Even with the paid campaigns, the AI is so bad (especially helo wingman) that it makes them pointless to buy.  You hear the creators complaining about this all the time..."sorry, I can't fix it because DCS AI is so bad."  

I like DCS, but also just don't want to devote the time anymore to learning modules as I have other things to do (and other games I like playing too).  I won't buy anything else now until some of the core improvements are finished (AI, multi-core, Vulkan, dynamic campaign).  I see this same opinion more and more on forums.  Even then I have so many modules I haven't even touched that it will take years just to play them enough within a dynamic campaign before I'll 'need' another one. 

 

Edited July 25, 2022 by aleader

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

May I ask when the special discount on EA would end?

[exhausted]

On 7/21/2022 at 10:10 AM, Rudel_chw said:

Hi all,

 

Well, the module is now on the shop: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/shop/modules/mirage/

 

To be honest, I was looking forward to getting this module on day one .. but I never expected that it wouldn¡t have at the very least an Early Access discount 

I know that it's got 4 variants and lots of skins, but even so I finde the price a bit excesive .. I was expecting a price similar to the Mirage 2000, not something like the Tomcat's.

I will most likely purchase it anyway, both because I like the aircraft, the era and I want Aerges to suceed .. but I feel that this pricing is a mistake on their part, as it will undoutedly make a lot of DCS users to think twice before purtchasing it .. and that in turn will mean there will be fewer players to fly it on the MP scene,  which will diminish its appeal for the MP crowd.

Let's hope I'm wrong and the aircraft will still sells well, as I wish the developers all the best.

 

 

Eduardo

 

Edit: Well, what a relief .. just saw that the store is now discounting the price by 20%, to US$64 ...    ... that's a much more palatable price, thank you Aerges

 

 

 

Price is why I didn't buy it.

[Ala13_ManOWar]

47 minutes ago, VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants said:

May I ask when the special discount on EA would end?

That's unknown, probably even for devs or ED themselves. Discount usually ends the moment it's released in Stable version, that means most outstanding bugs are squeezed, but we don't know when that's going to be, maybe next week, maybe next month, who knows.

[Rudel_chw]

29 minutes ago, exhausted said:

 

Price is why I didn't buy it.

 

If you like cold war aircrafts, then it's your loss  .. if you only like modern aircrafts or WW2, what are you doing on this thread? 

[exhausted]

1 hour ago, Rudel_chw said:

 

If you like cold war aircrafts, then it's your loss  .. if you only like modern aircrafts or WW2, what are you doing on this thread? 

Well the big idea of my single sentence message is to convey I did not buy this module because of its price. People vote with their money, and I've voted. I love the Cold War, I love the level of depth people are able to go in this era. But we must make tough choices. The line has to be drawn by each individual, and there's a group that isn't willing to pay this much.

[Dragon1-1]

Between that and the fact they messed up international pricing on Steam, there's a chance this module won't sell as well as it could have had. I hope that whoever came up with this will learn that price hikes often do the exact opposite of making more money. 

[killkenny1]

On 7/23/2022 at 11:18 AM, dorianR666 said:

it appears to be $150 on their website (though, temporarily, 1e equals $1 now). fslabs is well known as greedy (and to install malware into customers pcs and then threaten to sue them for finding out). but that product used to be top of the class. in msfs, its competition nowadays is the fenix a320 which is nearing fslabs level of detail and surpassing it in some ways - and costs $60.

dcs modules arent on the level of depth of neither to justify a 150e pricetag, was my point.

 

I would say in general DCS modules are harder to model than civil aviation A/C. Not only do you have to model FM and avionics, you also need to model weapons. And when talking FM you have speeds at different Mach numbers and military avionics are more sophisticated than civie A/C. But even though in some instances I am prepared to pay big prices for the things I like, I agree that I don't want for DCS to reach those price points at the moment...

At the time I bought FSLabs A320, the money I spent on it was totally worth it (checked my invoice, it was 128 EUR). There was not much like it in civil flight sim scene, apart maybe Majestic Q400. But yeah, looking now at competition, I doubt I gonna buy FSLabs product again (or PMDG for that matter, dislike that company more) because there is that great Fenix A320.  Heck even FBW A320 is amazing, and it's freeware!

[aleader]

On 7/25/2022 at 6:06 PM, exhausted said:

Well the big idea of my single sentence message is to convey I did not buy this module because of its price. People vote with their money, and I've voted. I love the Cold War, I love the level of depth people are able to go in this era. But we must make tough choices. The line has to be drawn by each individual, and there's a group that isn't willing to pay this much.

I agree.  Cold War aircraft are where they should focus their efforts as they generally take a lot less time to learn, and are more 'fun' to fly.  But what exactly are we supposed to do with it right now if we (like most) have no time/interest in Multiplayer?  Spend a bunch of time making my own missions and watch the inept AI screw it up?  No thanks.  I get that they make their money pumping out modules, but the core fixes are LONG overdue.

[Rudel_chw]

@BIGNEWY  Hi, can you please lock this thread, as the original lack of EA discount that made me start it, is now solved and the current posts are very off that topic?

Thanks.

[BIGNEWY]

33 minutes ago, Rudel_chw said:

@BIGNEWY  Hi, can you please lock this thread, as the original lack of EA discount that made me start it, is now solved and the current posts are very off that topic?

Thanks.

Locked as requested. 

I hope you are all having fun with the F1 

thank you