More on ESP

I see some people talking about ESP already, which is good.

But I see the discussings blurring ( pun intended ) the boundaries between consumer and commercial, they are distinct.

By that, I mean ESP is a separately versioned, side-by-side application. With an SDK that targets that separately versioned, side-by-side application.

And issues like:

1) Branding ( being brand neutral ),

2) EULA ( licensed for commercial purposes that are expressly forbidden in the FSX consumer EULA ), and

3) IP ( commercial reship rights for all content )

taken care of for the commercial customer to take the platform, add their solution, and ship it in volume.

ESP Client licenses are estimated at $799, but they are offered thru the Volume Sales channel. Last time I checked, min purchase was 5 licenses. Maybe some reseller will buy blocks and offer individual units so consumer side 3rd parties can get an easier leg up to leverage the new platform.

Yes, this does offer new opportunity to the 3rd party community, but there are issues there similar to what we face. IP clean issues, EULA and licensing issues, volume sales and support issues, quality issues. Not insurmountable by any means but to be successful in this new space they do need to be accounted for.