A few thoughts about the price

[Avimimus]

So, I reflexively flinched at seeing $139.99 for the Founders edition. Someone else commented that the price seemed a lot higher for the 'founders edition' than the 'standard edition'. So, I thought I'd do a quick breakdown.

The price works out to:
- $10 per aircraft for the standard edition.
- The founders addition averages $10.77 per aircraft - or we can think of it as $10 per aircraft and a final $10 for the "new layer of interaction with the game world".

In any case, not a huge change in price between the standard edition and the founders edition.

In contrast, the original Il-2 Battle of Stalingrad, correcting for inflation, worked out to:
$9.4 per aircraft (Standard edition)
$13 per aircraft (Premium edition)

Considering that aircraft in Korea have about 2.5 times the detail (systems modelling, physics, graphics) - this is a pretty impressive price point in comparison.

Given the potential for years of gameplay... it is still one of the cheapest forms of entertainment, and is pretty fascinating from an artistic and historical perspective - compared to travelling to another city to visit an aviation museum... it gives one a lot more... I mean, they don't usually let me disassemble aircraft or fly them at aviation museums (especially ones where I'm visiting from out of town)

P.S. It is worth noting that competitors currently sell at $15 to $80 per aircraft, and doing so without also providing a comprehensive historical theatre or historical map.

[AndyJWest]

Yup, in terms of value for money, as entertainment hours per $/£/€, I'd say it looks a very good deal. And note how people routinely gripe about the cost of software, while spending ten times as much on hardware. And the electricity to run it, which isn't trivial, though at this time of year I get free heating from that as a side effect (well, I get it in the summer too, which isn't so useful).

[Avimimus]

Good point - moving from Canada (where there is plenty of hydro electric power) to the U.K. - the increased costs of powering a video card for one year could easily outstrip the costs of the sim itself.

[LuftManu]

I recall paying 95 dollars for the BOS “Founder” edition back in 2013.

Similarly, the Normandy module launched at 90 dollars. Korea is priced 10 dollars higher, but as you mentioned, the quality has improved significantly, and inflation has also played a role. (We can get Korea Premium on Prepurchase cheaper than Battle of Normandy Premium on a normal day, non discount)

It’s also important to consider that many people focus solely on the price without realizing that the traditional Premium edition has always been 80-70 dollars on early days. The Founder’s edition is something special, intended for those who want to support the game and pay in advance for a set of aircraft that have not yet been announced. It would be great to know them beforehand, of course, but I understand that those who purchase it—myself included—mainly do so to support the team.

For those who prefer to wait, I’m confident a standard edition will be available at launch for approximately 70 dollars? Lets see.

In summary, I don’t see any issue with the pricing. In other military and civil simulators, this would amount to the cost of two aircraft or even two scenery packs without any aircraft included.

The positive side is that the cost ultimately comes to roughly 10 dollars per plane, not even counting the map or the game itself. 🙂

Also, some people are waiting to see some gemplay so they can justify the price. Not everybody is like us, reading every DD or watching every bit of info to know what they are offering.

I've got the Founders. Is cheaper than many one-year subscription services I'm using for TV and movies.

[easterling77]

Very good points guys.

Just came home yesterday to see the announcement - my first thoughts were: "Ok cool, but maybe I'll wait a day or two to make my decision."

Coming to the same thoughts you all mentioned above and seeing, that I'm not the only one, gave me the last push.

Ordered😎

 

I'm hoping we all will get the great excitement and joy out of this project, what we are hoping for.

Best greetings

DP

Edited November 29, 2025 by easterling77

[MajorMagee]

Determining price points are a tricky part of Marketing. People have a few unconscious thresholds when it comes to spending. Painless small amount that requires no decision process. Normal cost for things I need. Reasonable cost for things I want. Unreasonable cost for things I'd like to have, but are willing to forego buying.

Most of the time these price points do not have the extras like Sales Tax, VAT, or Shipping included in our thinking unless we're talking a "big ticket" item that implies that our mental barrier is already being stretched. I have been known to cancel an order at the last step when I was finally presented with the actual total cost.

For most people these values are quite stable over long time periods in spite of the background inflation that may have occurred. For example, I'm quite willing to pay up to $10 for a book, but above that it really has to be something special. That purchasing decision system has been my model for decades now.

This puts a lot of pressure on the Marketing Team to either hold the line on price increases or to add enough implied "extra value" that the temptation can overcome the consumer's mental barrier.

Edited November 29, 2025 by MajorMagee

[Trooper117]

I'll get the standard edition if after release it proves to be worthwhile... if it proves to be problematic at launch I'll wait until any problems are ironed out... I certainly don't care if don't get some 'special skins'...  

[Avimimus]

3 hours ago, Trooper117 said:

I'll get the standard edition if after release it proves to be worthwhile... if it proves to be problematic at launch I'll wait until any problems are ironed out... I certainly don't care if don't get some 'special skins'...  

You certainly have every right to take that approach.

It might be a bit hard to resist the temptation though. I know it will be for me.

[Shinobimono]

3 часа назад, Trooper117 сказал:

I'll get the standard edition if after release it proves to be worthwhile... if it proves to be problematic at launch I'll wait until any problems are ironed out... I certainly don't care if don't get some 'special skins'...  

In case of nowadays Il-2 there is no big chance of major problems and failures on launch unlike with some Bethesda games for example. I don't remember anything big on November 2014 (early access period is different story though but that's why it's an early access). And you will still overpay.

I personally do pre-orders but in most cases I pay in few weeks or days before launch. And I recommend to try the same.

[AndreiTomescu]

Let's take the price you put in a sim like this, in about 3-5 years. Just for software, not hardware. First module, some new ones, some planes, some campaigns, and so on.

for me that was about 550 USD.  and i've spent about 2000+ hrs in it. That's a cost of about 25 cents/hour of entertain. beat that. 🙂 

[AndyJWest]

25 minutes ago, AndreiTomescu said:

...beat that. 🙂 

I paid £4.99 for Besiege, back in 2019, and have played 981 hours so far. 😛 But yes, do the calculations, and griping about the price seems silly.

[Shinobimono]

23 минуты назад, AndyJWest сказал:

griping about the price seems silly.

We don't know anything about circumstances. Someone can have another very $$$ hobbies simultaneously and in that case pre-orders have really low priority. 

[Aapje]

8 hours ago, Avimimus said:

The price works out to:
- $10 per aircraft for the standard edition.
- The founders addition averages $10.77 per aircraft - or we can think of it as $10 per aircraft and a final $10 for the "new layer of interaction with the game world".

In any case, not a huge change in price between the standard edition and the founders edition.

But with the standard edition you get the map, so if you factor that in, that edition is much better value, unless that 'new layer of interaction' is more valuable than a new map, which is extremely unlikely. Also, planes are not equal to each other, as most of us surely fly some planes a lot more than other planes. The standard edition has some top tier planes and it seems hard to put planes that are equally exceptional in the DLC.

I will most likely get the standard edition, because:

• It is enough to be able to enjoy the new engine quickly. Having that new engine is more valuable to me than having more content. I'm not the early adopter kind of person anyway, so doing a preorder is already a stretch for me, let alone a pre-preorder.
• Having just the base game is sufficient to see whether I can run it in VR in an acceptable way, whether the campaign mode is fun, etc. Already ordering the DLC means that I could be out more money without any benefit, if there is an issue.
• It is very unclear how much the value of the DLC is to me with this little detail, not knowing what planes are in there, whether you can use the carriers without the DLC, what 'new layer of interaction' actually means, etc.
• The phrasing of the Founder Edition text suggests that there is no actual financial benefit to taking the risk of ordering it, and the cost may very well be equal or less if one orders the DLC later on, with the benefit of knowing much better what we get and how good the new game engine is.

But I'm not in a hurry, perhaps 1CGS will divulge some more information later on. Surely they had to rush to get everything done in time for the reveal and the Moscow game event thingy. And they didn't know how we would respond. So they may reflect a bit on how things went in the coming weeks and then respond in ways that may be very helpful to a purchase decision.

Edited November 29, 2025 by Aapje

[Aapje]

9 minutes ago, Shinobimono said:

We don't know anything about circumstances. Someone can have another very $$$ hobbies simultaneously and in that case pre-orders have really low priority. 

We also have players with very low gaming budgets, often simply because they have little income in the first place. IL-2 GB works on quite old hardware, and we have people who run it on very old systems, and with just a cheap joystick. There are even a few people who didn't even move up to GB, since they can't afford the hardware upgrade, and they still play older IL-2 versions.

Keep in mind that forums like these tends to be disproportionately visited by those who are better off than average, having more expensive hardware and more budget than the average player.

Upgrading hardware is quite a challenge for a lot of gamers with the increase in GPU prices (and now with the RAM issues), so for a bunch of people, their budget may already be depleted after upgrading to hardware that can run Korea.

Of course, the nice thing about gaming is that in many cases the companies give increasing discounts over time, so people with lesser budgets can then join in later on.

[Avimimus]

21 minutes ago, Aapje said:

We also have players with very low gaming budgets, often simply because they have little income in the first place. IL-2 GB works on quite old hardware, and we have people who run it on very old systems, and with just a cheap joystick.

Very much. We also have to recognise that there may be many people in different parts of the world where a price in USD is quite a bit more expensive (e.g. Founders edition is $195 for Canadians).

I expect that the developers will try to keep system requirements manageable, and will also provide significantly reduced sale prices within a couple of years. Of course, the business situation could change in the future. But at least that is what they've managed to do in the past. One of the benefits of having Russian lead developers is that they don't assume American levels of income, a favourable exchange rate, or universal access to reliable Internet (something very much valued by Canadians as well - our Internet can be quite sparse).

I've also noticed that the 'standard edition' also includes two 'Collector Planes' - so it may well be the case that a slightly more affordable version with just six aircraft will be released at some point in the future.

[Aapje]

1 hour ago, Avimimus said:

I've also noticed that the 'standard edition' also includes two 'Collector Planes' - so it may well be the case that a slightly more affordable version with just six aircraft will be released at some point in the future.

If so, it's rather strange that they didn't call it the Premium edition. In general I find the naming a bit baffling. Standard has always been without collector planes, so why now have those in the standard edition? And Founders edition doesn't make much sense either. Nvidia uses this for the cards they sell directly to consumers, because those are the cards that come directly from the manufacturer, instead of an intermediate company, but this has nothing to do with the difference between the two Korea versions. Other games often use Deluxe edition for the version where you prepay for one or more DLCs.

Perhaps it all makes more sense in Russian 😛

[Avimimus]

42 minutes ago, Aapje said:

If so, it's rather strange that they didn't call it the Premium edition.

I could be completely wrong about this.

 

42 minutes ago, Aapje said:

 And Founders edition doesn't make much sense either.

I think it is because we're helping to found a new series or new epoch of flight-sims... there was something a bit similar with BoS I think. Basically, encouraging us to think of ourselves has helping them bring the project about with our support... that is my interpretation anyway. A 'thank you' for trusting us that the DLC will be worth it - even if the aircraft are officially secret - or something like that.

[Shinobimono]

7 минут назад, Avimimus сказал:

because we're helping to found a new series

That's correct.

Edited November 29, 2025 by Shinobimono

[SharpeXB]

Don’t forget inflation. $89.99 in 2013 for BoS is the equivalent of $125.13 today. 

[MajorMagee]

That was my point above. The consumer's mind, as a general rule, does not automatically factor in inflation the way an accountant would.

[JFM]

I'll probably get the Standard edition, mainly because I don't want to pay in advance for (as of now) unknown DLC airplanes. I.e., some are bound to be Russian, and I don't fly Russian planes. Not because of any sort of ideology, it's just personal preference because the gauges are foreign, I don't even like some of the planes, the radio comms to me sound like robots, etc. I prefer to pick and choose the extra planes I'll buy (*cough* Panther and Corsair *cough*). 

[Avimimus]

1 hour ago, JFM said:

I'll probably get the Standard edition, mainly because I don't want to pay in advance for (as of now) unknown DLC airplanes. I.e., some are bound to be Russian, and I don't fly Russian planes. Not because of any sort of ideology, it's just personal preference because the gauges are foreign, I don't even like some of the planes, the radio comms to me sound like robots, etc. I prefer to pick and choose the extra planes I'll buy (*cough* Panther and Corsair *cough*). 

Wait... so you are saying that you would only fly American aircraft because of the gauges? Because you don't want to learn to read a dial in German, Russian, or because a British trim tab might be spelled 'centre' rather than 'center'? Is this an aversion to metric or something like that?

I'm just trying to wrap my head around this... it seems like a very specific reason to never have the experience of flying a Fw-190 or a Spitfire etc.

P.S. I suspect that the aircraft in the DLC will all be American, with the exception of maybe one or two British designs.

[Shinobimono]

16 часов назад, JFM сказал:

radio comms to me sound like robots

Not only Russian comms.

But do we have a sample of final audios for the new game? I doubt it.

[Elf]

imho the price is affordable for both editions, especially in comparison with DCS )

the problem (for me) is whether 'Korea''s damage-model shall resemble BoS in any way... I really don't like such in BoS, and hope devs won't make the same in new sim

[Panzerlang]

5 minutes ago, Elf said:

imho the price is affordable for both editions, especially in comparison with DCS )

the problem (for me) is whether 'Korea''s damage-model shall resemble BoS in any way... I really don't like such in BoS, and hope devs won't make the same in new sim

If it's as good as Cliff's it'll be pukka; if better, stellar. 😄