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Advise us....


Should we rename ourt products even if this creates some confusion?  

52 members have voted

  1. 1. Should we rename ourt products even if this creates some confusion?

    • Yes, makes sense.
    • No, it's not worth it.


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  • Aerosoft

Here is a a nice question. should we rename some of our products?


See we got bit of a problem. For some reason we have been a bit sloppy in the naming of our products and have worked ourselves into a corner we need to get out of. This is how we intended our products to be named:

FSX+FS2004:

  • Airport X (smaller airport)
  • Mega Airport X (the big hub airports)
  • Aircraft X
  • Aircraft X Extended (when we do a new version for Aircraft X, like the Airbus X and the Twin Otter X)

    X-Plane:
    • Airport XP
    • Aircraft XP

    Boxed with both version (FS+X-Plane:

      [*]Airport X Hybrid

      [*]Aircraft X Hybird

      But we now have a few products that got names like 'Airport Zurich'. clearly not as it should be. But changing the name of a product is considered just about the worst marketing since a local sushi shop started to advertise it's goods as "cold, dead and raw fish".

      In the Aerosoft management we can not get to decision. So we decided just ask the people who know most about this, the customers. Should we rename all products to the new scheme (meaning a few, say 5 out of 50, will have to change names) or do you think that this will lead to a lot of confusion? Or do we live with the few issues we got?

      If you got an opinion, vote and when you feel like it, give is some comment (and comments in non-English are more then welcome!)

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I'm all for renaming the products so they match the rest of the aerosoft catalogue. I don't really think the confusion would be that great as aerosoft is always good at passing on information of changes to the customers. I always wondered why Zurich wasn't part of the Mega Airports range. As for the cold dead raw fish, I'll pass, I prefer my fish deep fried in batter :lol:

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I'm all for renaming the products so they match the rest of the aerosoft catalogue. I don't really thing the confusion would be that great as aerosoft is always good at passing on information of changes to the customers.

+1 , agree with Matt.

Perhaps when updates are released to existing products, also include the name change.

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I mostly agree with it, altough there's one point that doesn't make sense in my opinion and that's the X. I think the X stands for FSX and if a product is FS2004/FSX it's just as hybrid as FSX/X-Plane. I think there should be something in the name showing wether it's FS2004 compatible or not. Maybe for FS2004 products you can leave the X behind.

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I think the confusion would be worse if the costumer doesn't know for which simulator the addon is for. As far as Aerosoft makes this clear, everything should be ok.

Shouldn't you also make a difference between FSX and FS2004? There are enough FSX only products out there, in my opinion....

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I mostly agree with it, altough there's one point that doesn't make sense in my opinion and that's the X. I think the X stands for FSX and if a product is FS2004/FSX it's just as hybrid as FSX/X-Plane. I think there should be something in the name showing wether it's FS2004 compatible or not. Maybe for FS2004 products you can leave the X behind.

To an extent the confusion arises where product X is marketed for both FSX and FS9. Then you get for example Catalina X (my bad lol) Hughes H1B with clearly has a big X next to its name on the box art, which is purely FSX. But the online shop is maked very clearly as to what product works with which simulator.

If you add Airport P3D or use it under Hybrid too aso would be nice ^_^

If its says FSX then its safe to assume it will work :lol:

To some extent anyway

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The Aerosoft shop indeed does make that very clear, but don't forget Aerosoft products are for sale at other sites as well. For example SimMarket is a big reseller. And what to think of boxed versions that are for sale in local retail stores?

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People still shop in retail stores? :lol: I see your point there, though I wonder to what percentage of sales are retail store compaired to online sales?

A lot of electronic stores still have a nice selection of FS Add-Ons here in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I also found the PMDG 737 being offered €10 less than Online (ask me if you would like to know where) and it's always good to compare to Online prices, you'll find some good offers around. Sometimes online cheaper, sometimes you're local store.

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I voted Yes, because I tend to be a very orderly, organized person. For example, I have folders containing hundreds of pictures of various aircraft on my PC, all of them organized by aircraft type and named with a strict nomenclature. Some people think I’m crazy, but I’ll tell you this: I’m not the one having trouble finding files on my computer!

Anyway, I know nothing about marketing, but a messed up naming system would bother me. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the change if you’d changed them without mentioning it.

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A lot of electronic stores still have a nice selection of FS Add-Ons here in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I also found the PMDG 737 being offered €10 less than Online (ask me if you would like to know where) and it's always good to compare to Online prices, you'll find some good offers around. Sometimes online cheaper, sometimes you're local store.

Wow! I wish that were true here in the US. It's hard enough to find flight sims in American electronics stores, much less add-ons.

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  • Deputy Sheriffs

I voted NO and ther are 3 things that came into my mind:

1. The brand is Aerosoft and not Airport XYZ, so take care that the product name always starts with Aerosoft....

2. It is important to have a naming convention, that reflects the brand and the plattform(s) the product is intended to be for

3. Never rename a product during its normal lifecycle! Do so, when you come up with a realy new version, like the AIrbus Extended or the successor of the Twotter.

jm2c

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I think it would confuse things as customers may regard the relabelled product as a new or updated version.

Personally, I would use your new naming convention only on new products going forwards. What has passed has passed.

Chris

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I agree that yes, that more specific labeling will be beneficial to the customers in their ability to deduce a product's relevance to them more quickly, and maybe this should have started earlier. Online, on your website as well as other resellers like FSPilotshop and SimMarket, they all have in the "description" section the required sim and specs, on both boxed versions and download versions. So, for an actual retail, (to which I have never seen a boxed addon in a retail store) it would probably be more beneficial, though adding that across the board seems the logical choice to avoid the confusion of "well the box in the store says 'this' and is called 'this' while on your website the download says/is called 'this'", know what I mean?

Finally, I do agree somewhat with Chris, changing the old ones now might be like a back street sushi shop where you don't know what you're actually getting, in other words people might get confused if they do not follow the forums and look back at a product they already purchased and see it has a different name. To me, if I saw that, I would immediately question as to whether it is an updated product or if it just has been nominally updated.

That all said, I think your plan should be to include these name changes on all future product releases across the board, downloads, boxed, and retail boxed.

Kyle

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Guest cptawsom

Rename all your product line, adhering to strict rules, and keep them, from this time forward.

Also have a very specific naming for updates. You can learn a lot from Linux and open-source on this. As a rule:

Whenever something changes, no matter how trivial or minor, increment at least the most-minor version by one.

For example, I remember that sometime in February (I think) this year, Oliver Pabst had made an update to AES (that had to do with the algorithm it checked serials whether they were valid or not, and it did not include any new features/functionality/airports). However, both himself and you (Aerosoft) made the mistake of keeping the filename and version number the same (unchanged). Result:

Users had no clue a new version was out (how could they -> the filename and version number were the same), and serials bought (and issued from your purchase confirmation emails) did not work. Your AES support forums were flooded with support requests (understandably), with Oliver, Mathijs, and Shawn spending almost their entire morning and afternoon telling users that there was a new version and that they should download and install it - while at the same they could have used their working day for something more productive.

So again:

Whenever something changes, no matter how trivial or minor, increment at least the minor-minor version by one.

And a second "rule" about file naming (again learning from Linux and open-source), have a strict policy of suffices used in filename for the version of the product (is that update for FSX, for FS2004, or for Prepar-3D). Again, you do not confuse users, and you do not make them consume the working days of your staff. The less support issues arise, the less time your support staff has to spend on support on the forums, and the more time it can spend on more serious matters, ie real support problems-requests, or other things (project management/developing etc.).

Suffices can be very simple, and yet extremely clear, for example:

-fsx-

-fs9-

-p3d-

All just 3 letters, but enough to adequately inform the users.

So second rule:

Filename suffices that determine the exact product an update is meant for.

Example (for both):

Today I bought Yekaterinburg-X, and I had 3 new files available on my account. Again, while it was clear from the names which I should download, it could have been better -> the names were inconsistent as there was a "2012" in one of them.

So here is an example of the proposed naming scheme for Yekaterinburg:

Yekaterinburg-fsx-1.01.zip

Yekaterinburg-p3d-1.01.zip

Yekaterinburg-fs9-1.01.zip

Clear, consistent, precise, simple.

Alternatively, since we have the ready-made ICAO codes, for airports, something like the following can also work:

USSS-fsx-1.01.zip

USSS-p3d-1.01.zip

USSS-fs9-1.01.zip

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Something else occured to me. A newer version of a plane is being called Extended. Right now that would be the Airbus X Extended for example. But what if in the future the current Airbus X Extended isn't good enough anymore and you decide to do it a third time? That would be the Airbus X Extended Extended. So I think there's a point that can be improved. Maybe instead of Extended you call it Second, and instead of Extended Extended you call it Third. Is that an idea?

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Wow! I wish that were true here in the US. It's hard enough to find flight sims in American electronics stores, much less add-ons.

I am surprised too! I even saw FS2004 still being sold at Mediamarkt, FSX too of course, xPlane also, but that in the new version, is fairly recent, there must be a big community of Flight Simmers here because I am surprised that even new add-ons keep appearing, most of Aerosoft :D ... must be because they publish and sell them in these stores. I don't know another PC game that has such a long life... with so many add-ons.

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As I see it, there are currently 4 different platforms wherefor Aerosoft is producing add-ons. That's FS9, FSX, P3D and XPlane. So just the difference between FSX and XP is not enough, every compatible platform should be mentioned.

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NO! Forget the past Mathijs. Implement your new ideas from this moment onwards. No time left to fix the past, just concentrate in improving the future of Aerosoft.

Also, in another note, answering something you mentioned a few years back. I can't/won't give up FSX-ATC nor do I want to read a bunch of charts prior to a flight (so SID/START be darned) cause I don't flight VFR either because no Sim is that good yet. Nothing wrong with the ones that do mind you. To each its own. So, you were right in your guess/assumption/intuition/suspicion whatever.

Cheers,

MAB

PS: Yes, I read about add-on(s) like the rest of the community. So, save it.

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  • Deputy Sheriffs

I think the Hybrid name is a bad name. Should be explicit in saying FSX and XP

I agree with Matt regarding the renaming, just do it (but communicate it).

I also agree with Joshua about the hybrid name.

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I mostly agree with it, altough there's one point that doesn't make sense in my opinion and that's the X. I think the X stands for FSX and if a product is FS2004/FSX it's just as hybrid as FSX/X-Plane. I think there should be something in the name showing wether it's FS2004 compatible or not. Maybe for FS2004 products you can leave the X behind.

+1

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