Captain Sim Releases 737 Captain Under New Release Paradigm

I've debated whether I should mention this, but since there isn't much else going on right now, I may as well.

Captain Sim announced a new three stage release paradigm about a week ago:

Stage 1 - Exterior - Call this an early alpha stage of the release, with only the exterior model available.  Interior systems are typically aliased to one of the default FSX aircraft for now.

Stage 2 - Experimental - Work-in-progress version of the product, essentially an early beta.  Product is flyable, but may CTD, and some items are not yet implemented.

Stage 3 - Release - Product is in a state worthy of release.

In essence, if you buy the product at Stage 1, they will charge you around €10.  If you buy the product at Stage 2, the price goes up to around €30.  If you wait until Stage 3, the price goes up to around €40.  They charge you to upgrade at each stage, although the purchase price of the previous stage is applied toward the cost of the upgrade.  So, if you paid €20 for Stage 2, it will only cost you an additional €10 to upgrade to Stage 3.  The 737 Captain is the first product that introduces this tiered release model, and it currently sits at the Experimental stage.

The tiered model seems reasonably fair, I guess.  You can decide to pay to help test what is essentially a beta stage of the product, and then have that amount applied toward the final purchase price of the release version of the product.  I'm not in that big of a hurry to get hold of the 737 Captain yet, so I will just wait a while until the release version is here - or at the very least, something close to that.

This  is also why I am holding off on doing any sort of mini-review of the 737 Captain for the time being - as a general rule, I do not review works-in-progress here, although I am happy to talk about them.