How many commercial Add Ons do you own?

[kujuSabrina]

Hi all,

We have now announced our working relationship with 3rd Party add ons, and following this the Rail Simulator team would like to find out more info surrounding this area.

So....we're running another Poll!

[OTTODAD]

Hi Sabrina !

Do you mean 3rd Party Payware Routes only or including Freeware ones ?

What about 3rd Party Rolling stock add-ons. Count them too ?

O t t o

[cbq311]

Otto, did you read the title of the thread? COMMERCIAL - i.e. payware.

So add up the routes and engine (packs if more than one) and get a total.

I have quite a few, but most I got gratus.

[OTTODAD]

Thanks, Bob !

Missed that in the title ! :-(

O t t o

[adamw]

Majority of my commercial add ons are realised by Bluesky Interactive of the Pro Train series. They are very good but of course, very much limited by the badly written graphics engine of MSTS.

Adam

[rocky]

Must be Sabrina working for the bean counters working out how much they can charge the add on folks.

[OTTODAD]

Microsoft can afford to turn a blind eye, everybody using MSTS code and files without paying them a cent in royalties, but by improving it and the range of add-ons enhancing sales of MSTS !

A small outfit like KUJU which had to borrow money to create KRS can not afford to give anything away for free and are entitled to see a return on their investment to also finance further development of KRS !!!

O t t o

[sstyrnol]

Doesnt help if nobody is going to develop payware because those small outfits can't justify putting down a couple of thousands as start-up investment before they actually can begin developing a route. What may seem "reasonable" to Kuju may be "unbearable" for a small company like VSC or 3DTrains (just naming for the debate's sake - not based on facts...).

What this essentially may come down to may be that:

- Even fewer stuff that will come with routes (we already said goodbye to printed manuals and trackplans mostly)...

- Less variety - This model ultimately favor the "mainstream" products, that can be sold to the majority of customers, e.g. probably focusing on modern mainline routes with one of the major railroads. Smaller niche products like the A&O sub, that are being sold to fans, will not be viable.

- Equipment recycling - in order to cut down on development costs, more equipment, be it scenery or rolling stock will be recycled rather than creating different new stuff for the variety's sake in order to cut down development costs.

I may paint this picture in a very dark colour, but it just shows how narrow the path is that KUJU chose to go. It might be interesting to see their licensing structure, ie. will it be adapted to the size of the outfit, to the expected sales volume, will it be a lumpsum amount or a percentage of sales?

Also, I would be interested, how KUJU imagines to cope with this additional load on payware developers in the light that they also have to pay licensing to the railroads they are modelling?

You see, there are heaps of questions coming up on this proposal from KUJU and as a payware developer I'd be wary about what will come out of this...

[mrmike]

Sebastian,

How did you arrive at the"thousands of dollars"?
No one has said what the license will cost. Until KUJU or one of the payware developers quotes a price, anything said is pure speculation.

In my opinion, I don't think KUJU will make the fee so high that the small developers could not afford it. Their incentive would be for other developers to make routes to further their own sales

Mike
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/mrmike1/PELogo.gif
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/mrmike1/sylvester.gif
This smile says it all

[landnrailroader]

I am a lot more concerned about what the "editor" or whatever they choose to call it will cost us poor folks that do routes for a hobby. I could probably spring for $50 for a seperate editor, but beyond that, no thanks, I'll stick with MSTS unless I can figure out how to get real world coordinates & scenery into TRAINZ, which has a good graphic engine, but for the life of me, I haven't got anywhere with importing real world data, which is so easy to do with MSTS. Maybe we'll get lucky and somebody will write a add-on editor for MSTS - ought to be able to use that through another couple of iterations of operating system, maybe another 6 or 8 years. I only own two payware routes and am considering another - the Donner Pass route.

Jerry Sullivan aka landnrailroader

[Bill Hobbs]

Sebastian,
I find it ironic that you use "Cheers" as a closing to your posts. Most of your submissions would make Eeyore look the optimist. Lighten up a bit.

[sstyrnol]

LMAO!

Well, what do you refer to "most" of my submissions??? Even though I am not a fan of this business model with the license fees, I may still be friendly, may I???

Swissie, the "thousands of dollars" are indeed speculation with me painting a negative scenario. But tell me? Where does it start to hurt? 100$? 500$? 1,000$? What may be paid off the cash in the wallet for some payware outfit might be ruinous for the other. Also lets not forget, there are some payware developers out there who also want at least a bit of return from their investment.

Now, that having said, we shall stop the speculation and wait what KUJU comes up with!

[OTTODAD]

Hi Jerry !

As far as I remember reading their releases, the KRS editors will be part of the package so that users can create and modify routes better than we what have been able to do with MSTS and what's more switch from them into running the route to test work in progress and back again ! ;-)

Royalties on audited Payware sales are what I would go for and the better the add-ons, the more sales and the more royalties there would be, but hope that somewhere in the process there will be better quality control than what we had with MSTS payware in the past.

I still shudder, thinking about the 3rd party MSTS payware rubbish I wasted good money on ! :-(

O t t o

[rocky]

OK Lets get a discourse going here.

You are a Add On developer.

How many hours are you going to spend developing a Sub, say 120 miles to a level that purchasers expect nowdays?

Lets say NA. Most of the original MSTS shapes, tertex, weather, engines, cars, etc are now unacceptable/or out of date so you are going to have to develop your own. So lets be very conservative - 1600 hours? Say 40 weeks.

How am I doing?

Now sales. There is only so many boutique routes that have mass appeal. Today they are all mostly covered. You could go after them but always a big risk that the original author is going to revamp. He/she is going to be ahead of you on the learning curve or, at the best, you are going to share sales 50/50.

Once again - how am I doing?

Let's say 1000 sales for your wonderful route at net, what $20 each.

Jees, I make that a whole $20,000. That's a $12.50 an hour.

I forgot, there is the rail companies and KUJU to deal with.
Hard to figure in but certainly ante's up the risk factor.

But of course you are a probably a college educated person, computer literate, with a high tolerance for MSTS who does it for fun and works down at the at the 711 for a living.

Right?

You must be as nuts as me.

Right?

[OTTODAD]

Right?

Not quite, Jim !

The KRS World Editor being part of KRS can be used by anybody for nothing, providing it is used for the creation of FREEWARE only.

Commercial vendors who have the expertise and manpower for creating present day games and sims software add-ons with, using the latest Graphics Cards Technology under DirectX-9/10 & AGEIA PhysX, coded with suitable Graphics Editors as used by KUJU, can do so and paying Royalties on sales could use KRS objects and scenery, creating new ones to increase the appeal of their add-ons, speeding up making them and if they are good, make a lot of money thanks to KRS !

If I were KUJU I would make it a condition for all commercial KRS add-ons to be submitted to them for quality control and if good enough to be passed to EA for worldwide distribution, the vendors would benefit from, getting their share of sales proceeds after taking into account reasonable cuts for EA & KUJU !

That to me would be a reasonable and sensible arrangement ! ;-)

O t t o

[muskokaandtahoe]

> Most of the original MSTS shapes, tertex, weather, engines, cars, etc are now unacceptable/or out of date so you are going to have to
> develop your own. So lets be very conservative - 1600 hours? Say 40 weeks.

Not conservative enough. Off by several multiples. Building and skinning everything for a large, well detailed route takes a lot more time.


> Now sales. There is only so many boutique routes that have mass appeal. Today they are all mostly covered. You could go after them
> but always a big risk that the original author is going to revamp. He/she is going to be ahead of you on the learning curve or, at the
> best, you are going to share sales 50/50.

> Once again - how am I doing?

Quite badly actually. You've overlooked all cash expenses; you've got web sites, buying research materials, sometimes software, and don't overlook paying others for models.

Let's say 1000 sales for your wonderful route at net, what $20 each.

> Jees, I make that a whole $20,000. That's a $12.50 an hour.

Nope. First route -- because you have to do everything for the first time -- is going to be less than $2.50/hour... perhaps a small fraction of $2.50/hour. It isn't until later routes when you can reuse a lot of stuff do you get your productivity gains so your earnings per hour start to look like what you're talking about.


[b]Dave Nelson
SLW Route Design: The Cal-P, 1950.[b]
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y51/muskokaandtahoe/Avatars/Dancing_Genma.gif
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y51/muskokaandtahoe/Avatars/4ad3d633.jpg

[sstyrnol]

That plays well with my arguement that KUJU are going to destroy or at least narrowing down the payware scene considerably with their extra charge.

[moose49]

Why would anyone buy more kujunk they never finished or fixed MSTS.
All the real gains in play-ability have been made by 3rd party providers and players. What have we seen to make us belive they will
treat there customers any better this time?