You may have heard about the recent controversy surrounding FlightSim Studio’s new Embraer E-Jets for Microsoft Flight Simulator. In this article, we will review the addon pricing, release schedule, and aim to provide an overview of what has occurred and the reasons behind it.
Please do not confuse this article with our Simcident Report series. This is not part of that series.
Pricing and release schedule
The team at FlightSim Studio has confirmed, within their stream held with our German colleagues at Cruiselevel, that they will release the first early access version of their E-Jets for MSFS on January 10th, 2023, for €30. This proved to be correct as the addon was released for that price on schedule today.
The team plans to bring feature updates to the aircraft in the future. The price will increase with certain, yet to be announced, updates of the aircraft until the stable release version is out. The team specified that this price increase will only happen twice. They did not detail yet when to expect a stable release of the addon and what will the final price be.
Controversy
From the previous section, you may have noticed a couple of things that are not typical in the flight sim community, which led to a significant part of the community being very vocal on this topic. The first is that FlightSim Studio chose to release the aircraft as early access. The second is that the aircraft will gradually increase in price before the stable release.
Based on various discussions in forums and Discord communities, many people have agreed that the video teasers shared earlier led to an overhyping of the addon. And when the developers finally unveiled the capabilities and capacity of the new product, it led to significant disappointment among the community and a loss of confidence in the developer’s ability to deliver the promised product. This is a common reaction when a company builds excitement for a product but fails to deliver on expectations.
To give you a better understanding, upon its initial release, the E-Jets do not include standard features such as VNAV, AP bank limits, or speed and altitude constraints. Furthermore, the 3D model was developed by X-Crafts and only converted to MSFS by FlightSim Studio. In other words, it appeared that FLightSim Studio took a 3D model from X-Crafts (with their approval), somewhat tuned default systems, and are asking €30 for their product.
During the preview stream, the team also repeatedly stated that they were not pressuring anyone to purchase the E-Jets for MSFS, and that it was an early access release, hence the missing features, in an attempt to justify the situation. While it is understandable that the developers do not want to force anyone into buying the product, it gave the impression that they were discouraging potential customers from purchasing their own product, rather than trying to be transparent with the community about the product’s development status.
As a cherry on top, FlightSim Studio announced that simmers will pay €30 just for the initial release version, but the price will increase in the future as new updates will come and the addon will gradually move from early access to a stable release. This brought up a lot of questions from the community, demanding answers about what the final price will be like or what the increases are going to be like.
There were a few streamers who showcased the aircraft despite all the negative feedback the team got after the initial preview stream. The aircraft behaved strangely for some of the creators who decided to showcase it and even crashed on TheFlyingFabio’s landing.
So all in all, the team hyped up the community about proper E-jets finally landing in Microsoft Flight Simulator and then revealed that they use default systems, the 3D model is from another developer, we have to rely on their promises to not abandon the product, and all this for €30 after anticipating high-fidelity product for weeks.
Release & Consequences
The E-Jets for MSFS were released on schedule as promised for the price they announced. A few days after the stream, FlightSim Studio made a statement and revamped their site to be more transparent with the community on the status of the addon. The website now clearly states the features and what to expect from the addon, and details every aspect of the aircraft.
Unfortunately, this did not affect only FlightSim Studio, but also FSimStudios, a Canadian X-Plane scenery developer, that was by many community members confused with FlightSim Studios, and their Discord server and email were subject to a spamming attack as a result of the confusion during the live stream.
What does this all mean? FlightSim Studio’s brand certainly got hit by their poor decisions, unfortunately it did not stay with them but also caused harm to FSimStudios. FlightSim Studio did, however, make some good steps to rebuild the trust of the community, and hopefully, we’ll going to see proper E-Jets renditions for MSFS soon. Whether the trust in the developer and this series of unfortunate steps they took, will be forgotten anytime soon within the community is just a big unknown.
Did you purchase the E-Jets for MSFS, or are you awaiting a more feature-rich release? What do your think about developers pushing our “early access” products in our community?
