You'd never guess that Pete Wright was involved with the "consortium of well regarded developers", would you?
How about that, following the protracted attempt to get Microsoft to sell the franchise to them, unsuccessfully, the fact that it was sold to DTG so quickly might have been because Microsoft didn't want to sell to the consortium?
Possibly because MS were aware that there was a lot of competition between said developers, that they had different goals and opinons and weren't exactly likely to be able to hold up as a single entity for any length of time without breaking up? That's my guess, not based on any published evidence, but knowing who was involved and knowing how long MS held out for, they clearly weren't overly impressed by what was on offer. I do also suspect that DTG significantly overbid, though, to agree with his point there. I really don't think they did their homework at all well before deciding to get involved, but they were a single company with a single opinion on how to use the franchise they were bidding for. They had, to someone like MS, a lot more credibility behind their offer than a disparate bunch of developers, most of whom had been roundly attacking Microsoft in public about Flight.
Anyway. A few challenges to the actual speech...
First, DTG did engage with the community - and what they got in return was a massive amount of abuse from people who had already, having decided that FSX was dead, bought very heavily into P3D. The sheer amount of bile aimed from this "community" at DTG was appalling to see. That said, though, DTG did try to build their own community, but their reps were on Avsim, they were on Steam forums, they were on their own forums, they went to flight sim shows... It wasn't that they didn't engage with the community, but a lot of the time, when they did, they were met with utter hatred.
Second, why didn't the likes of A2A or PMDG try and sell products that they were just bringing to market during that period? Because neither company
brought any products to market during that period. Other companies, such as JustFlight and Aerosoft, advertise constantly. So why didn't his chosen developers advertise products? Not because they're somehow pious and perfect, but because they had nothing new to sell. DTG were adding products to the line-up (although often they were somewhat iffy and I'm not surprised most people weren't interested) so they were advertising them. Perhaps a little too heavily. Perhaps because I'm used to the fact that TS stuff is almost always on sale, I ignored the fact that FSW stuff was. Why didn't Pete Wright pick up on the fact that the sales weren't just for FSW products, but also for FSX:SE, TS201n and TSW? My guess is he did. he also got the advertising mails, Facebook posts and Tweets from other companies, but he chose to ignore them, to hammer home a single minded point about "evil DTG trying to steal the money from your pockets".
Third, he keeps hammering on that "it wasn't released". Well, when it exited early access, it
was released. You could argue with good ground that it wasn't finished, you could argue that the EA period was pointless, but you cannot say it wasn't released, so why keep saying it wasn't?
Fourth, he didn't mention why, having had so much opportunity to do so, DTG haven't already used their mythical ability to hold L-M to ransom to do so... Could it be because L-M aren't in breach of their license with Microsoft, so DTG wouldn't have a leg to stand on? Plenty of people are in breach of their license agreements with Lockheed-Martin, but I suspect that what others have said is quite correct - L-M want the developers on board and they know that if they're only selling to a tiny, if lucrative, customer base then most developers will walk away? Don't know. That's conjecture.
Now, I am biased here because I don't like Pete Wright. I haven't liked him since way before DTG had any involvement with the FS world (small w!) and this "editorial" shows exactly why. He's full of himself and puts out his opinions as fact, without any evidence to back them up and often when the evidence actually points a completely different way. He always has done and I don't think I've heard him apologise once when he's got it wrong. He's just said that he's "surprised" or "amazed" and gone on to explain how he will eventually be proven right all along. If he has, then I apologise. It's because I don't tend to listen to his rants, so probably missed it.
I do agree with him that the big opportunity here is for Laminar Research. Lockheed-Martin have no interest in whether DTG succeeded or not (other than had DTG succeeded, it might have solved L-M's licensing problems...
) as they didn't and still don't see them as a competitor. However, a lot of people who had already tied their flags to P3D's mast have
a lot of vested interest in seeing DTG fail. Odd that wasn't mentioned as well, isn't it?
To be honest, it's all a moot point, because it was DTG's management's decisions that led to this point. "We're in it for the long haul, we're in it for the long haul, we're in it for the... we're out." - they kind of lose any credibility that they had, there, don't they? To us, as simmers, however, it means that we've lost an opportunity, though. We now have to choose between a developer that could pull the rug from under our feet at any time and a developer that has a track record of not actually listening to the community either, although, to be fair, that does seem to be changing significantly for the better. I do agree with Mr. Wright on that point - X-Plane is probably where we should be looking and aiming to try and mould into what we want. Maybe DTG will sell the license to PMDG et al, so we can see how well that arrangement actually does stand up to reality, rather than trying to protect their own incomes without diversifying their development paths (which is why
they wanted the sim in the first place, after all... No, it wasn't about the community, it was about protecting their incomes.)
Ian P.
