One of the missing pieces of the aircraft puzzle for MSFS 2024 has been PMDG’s line of 737NG products. Offering everything from the -600 through the -900, the developer is one of only a handful offering any kind of 737 content so naturally airliner fans are looking for news on when these will be re-released for MSFS 2024. That date is apparently coming up on the 18th.

Excitement, trepidation

According to PMDG’s Robert S. Randazzo, the 737NG series will begin to release on December 18 with the -800 coming first, the -600 and -900 in January and the -700 in February.

The latest announcement makes the case that the aircraft are representing a significant upgrade.

The upcoming PMDG 737-800NG for MSFS 2024 is a significant overhaul of our earlier product line, built right down to the foundation to capitalize on MSFS 2024 capabilities. The core 737 technology package brings all of the incredible, professional level depth of simulation to MSFS 2024, but benefits from a heavy focus on the capabilities offered by the MSFS 2024 platform. A vastly improved VC with all new use of materials, lidar scanned model updates, new lighting and surface textures is combined with entirely new, high resolution cabins, a full suite of game-play features and gizmos for you to interact with inside and outside the cockpit, customized door logic (for both pax and freighters!), operable cockpit windows and door plus an entirely new, 3D sound-set built by a professional sound engineering team using an instrumented airplane (lead by our own sound engineer who also happens to have logged significant hours as a 737 qualified captain, thus eliminating quite a bit of ambiguity as to whether it sounds right!), vastly improved lighting and texturing and an enhanced external model are just a few of the things coming to you with this release.

Robert S. Randazzo

What’s not included at this point in time is pricing. For some reason, the developer has not yet offered what the release pricing will be for the product nor the upgrade price for current owners. They have been consistent in saying that there would be an upgrade price though no indication of what it would be except that it would be around “a couple of cups of coffee” in at least one statement. Here it says simply that it would be a “substantial discount.”

Hopefully, PMDG will be able to make the case on the value of the upgrade and how different the product is. And also hopefully we’re looking at a nominal upgrade price, particularly for those who have more than one product that they are looking to bring to 2024. Competitors have offered upgrade packages for free so this will be a difficult hill to climb.

777 news

One item that has been hanging over the PMDG 777 release is an upgraded soundset. The project was reportedly nearing the final stages back several months ago and then there’s been a fair bit of radio silence on what has been happening. Now we have some confirmation that the team had been prioritized to help with the 737 release and that resources will be back on the 777 in the new year.

We pulled all dev resources off 777 in order to get 737 finished and we changed tasks on the sound team back in October in order to facilitate the 737 release and allow more time to collect some 777 recordings that we weren’t fully satisfied would do the job for us. Some resources are now going back to 777 now to clean up some loose ends in the product, as well as finish addressing the sound update and a few other items. You can expect to start seeing 777 updates again in January! The sound team is very much looking forward to implementing the sound environment for the 777 to be as robust and full featured as they have accomplished for the 737. When you hear what we have done with 737 you’ll be excited about what is coming for 777!

Looking forward to hearing the updated sounds on the 777. It’s already more than adequate so I am curious to see how well this manages to come across and how it compares to some of the recently released soundpack by Boris Audio Works.

The full announcement is available from PMDG here on their forums.