A potential Blow to many folk.... Wrapped Up in a Sale

[lateagain]

A potential Blow to many folk.... Wrapped Up in a 50% Sale offer.

Many of you will have received an e-mail from Trainsimulations with an extended 50% OFF Offer lasting into October.

How many of you read the notice on Trainsimulations Home Page?

http://www.trainsimulations.net/news.html

As it reads I'm not really clear about the full implications or logic behind this announcement? On the face of it it looks like just swapping labels on many sets? and if the relabelled product contains additional items will these be freely available to folk who bought the originals?

We've already lost many of the early sets that folk spent hours doing freeware reskins for. Many sets have been "amalgamated" with some items no longer included.

Whilst SLI's reskin policy was welcomed they must acknowledge that the efforts of freeware contributors gave them free publicity and extra sales. A "win/win" situation initially? But their subsequent actions have rendered some folks efforts unusable. A fine reward for boosting their sales

I'd suggest in view of the above announcement that trainsimulations should consider uploading any models that they no longer want to sell or support as freeware to one or all of the freeware libraries. If nothing more it would be a courtesy to the freeware supporters who've worked on additional skins and a bonus for those of us who have been paying customers over the years.

[Don6218]

I think that would be a great thing for the Team at Trainsimulations to do. If they are no longer Supporting a Product, it should be up;oaded as Freeware, or available as a "Shape & Textures File" without an ENG File.
Then at least "the early sets that folk spent hours doing freeware reskins for" can be reused and carry on with reskinning/repowering.
I hope they pay attention to the wants and needs of their Customers.

[drjayyyy]

A few years ago I experienced a worst case scenario . My storage drive crapped out with ALL of my MSTS dlc. TS/SLI Railworks, Trainz EVERYTHING!!!. More than 10yr$$$$$ worth of content. Then my hard drive crashed. I had been collecting Streamlines/TrainSimulations stuff from day one. If TrainSimulations would put their old content up for say a "Clearence Sale" I would be more than willing to repurchase all the stuff I lost.







'

[mword77]

It's a great time to fill in any holes in your collection or pick up stuff that you may have been on the fence about. You won't beat $5 sets, old or not.
The freeware idea is interesting but I don't feel they owe us anymore freeware at this point considering nearly all of the 'Beck-era' stuff was dumped here as freeware.

[lateagain]

It's a great time to fill in any holes in your collection or pick up stuff that you may have been on the fence about. You won't beat $5 sets, old or not.

That completely misses the point. It's not an issue of cost but one of availability.

The freeware idea is interesting but I don't feel they owe us anymore freeware at this point considering nearly all of the 'Beck-era' stuff was dumped here as freeware.

On the contrary I feel they DO owe it to the folk who gave hours of their time for no personal gain but who in so doing boosted their income? If you read what I posted again I suggested that they upload as freeware only the content that THEY no longer wanted to sell or support.

The Devil is in the detail and I covered that in my initial post?

Golden rule for anyone with a customer base... "DON'T piss off your customers" ?!

[geepster775]

I agree with Mike. You have 2 weeks to save your money, pinch your pennies, beg your parents, seek permission from your wife, whatever, and buy a combo of 2 or 3 prior sets at 50% off for only $5 each. $5 for combo packs that others paid $45 for as 3 individual sets is damn near as close to free as you will get.

We are in the new era, where payware prevails (everywhere, all platforms), and with Open Rails, repaints are gravy and more than welcomed but are no longer the backbone. They haven't been for the last decade. The fact that they are willing to forego revenue from sales potentially brought to the table by 'file libraries everywhere' just shows how little that aspect contributes to bottom line nowadays.

Their objective is to get people over to the new content grade and physics of Open Rails. You don't achieve that by giving older things away for free or enabling a massive library somewhere full of their older lesser grade material.

I am far more worried about the other payware vendors who are still fence-sitting and trying to play to both worlds. They are going to get so far behind in their understanding and troubleshooting of the new world they will fail to conquer it. I really only see 2 vendors fully contributing to the shared discovery and teething process.

[MsSheare]

well I just went and looked to see what I was missing and noticed that the BN GP15 is no longer available. I am going to need to learn about DDS.files and just convert them back to ace. I think this change will be interesting in how it plays out for everyone.

[slipperman]

Hi Michelle,
I don't know if this'll be of any help, but there was a GP15 in the "UP on the GREEN RIVER ROUTE" add-on.. I noticed that this add-on is included as a bonus within the D&RGW Green River route. There's no information as to whether it's the full add-on, or just a subset.

Cheers,
Ged

[MsSheare]

Hi Michelle,
I don't know if this'll be of any help, but there was a GP15 in the "UP on the GREEN RIVER ROUTE" add-on.. I noticed that this add-on is included as a bonus within the D&RGW Green River route. There's no information as to whether it's the full add-on, or just a subset.

Cheers,
Ged

I have the BNSF GP 15 but if others do not then using this as a base to repaint is no longer going to work. And will leave people unhappy. I understand why TS is going this way cause OR is the way to go forward but I also understand people like the old MSTS
still. I could never get mine running again so I switched over to OR and I never looked back.

I just wish we could have had the option for either ACE or DDS. But after seeing the Mullan Route it's amazing and worth it.

[lrc2]

I think it's quite ironic that people are expecting that a small company like Trainsimulation should as part of its business model, include indefinite support for software products for a platform that has not been supported for what, 16-17 years now.

I can't imagine in any business telling a client looking for a new product oh here's something that we made 10 years ago you only have to download it and make changes to it yourself manually on your end using information that you're going to find in a forum in order to use it on open rails properly.