End of ORBX XP11 "cross platform discounts"

[hypercide 97]

Here's an interesting one, and I'm sorry if I didn't see it anywhere else here.

https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/177106-orbx-change-of-policy-notice/

Is it that ORBX, with what seemed like their comfortably endless development roadmap, must now try to figure out the impact of MSFS2020 on what had, until recently, looked like unhindered growth in adding much-needed life to X-plane 11 default scenery?

How many of us X-plane 11 adopters have actually defaulted to this platform  because, well, we feel there isn't really that much choice, and we've been kinda hoping something better might come along? (Cos DTG FSW wasn't quite it.) And is ORBX sort of aware of that? Is the end of the discount ORBX's recognition that the X-plane 11 party might now have a best-before date?

The ORBX post speaks nobly of having "shouldered" the development costs, but oh shucks, where does that leave customer loyalty? Somewhere under the boot of projected profit margins, I guess. Because I'm probably not the only one of us beginning to think carefully about how much more money to invest in scenery for XP11,  with MSFS2020 and its apparent glories in the offing.

[mwilk 1,106]

You never know with ORBX. There was a time when John Venema said he would never develop products for X-Plane. He also said at one point that they would never have sales. Neither one of those things turned out to be true. The market has a funny way of changing your mind, so we'll see.

[olderndirt 2,295]

They've come up with something fairly brilliant - they'll redo TE Washington and all future TE products will be using ZL16 tiles with some ZL17 in detailed areas.  According to Mr Wob (a familiar name) the ZL16 will allow a large reduction in total size (GB) but has a sharp filter feature which will retain detail.  The elimination of the 40% crossover discount, which seemed too good to be true, was inevitable.  They're in business to make money and we, if we want to, can spend some or not.

Edited August 3, 2019 by olderndirt

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Microsoft's announcement of MSFS 2020 has had a chilling effect on all add-on developers. It remains to be seen whether that effect is either temporary or not. If a developer is making airports or aircraft, there's at least a chance that they will be able to continue to develop for the new sim. No one will know for sure until NDAs are signed, though. But many of ORBX's big sellers are its landclass and regions. Those will likely be replaced by the cloud-based scenery in MSFS. ORBX's airport offerings are for the most part small, boutique airports. Will they start developing more big airports like KSAN? We shall see.

[tonywob 4,769]

8 hours ago, olderndirt said:

They've come up with something fairly brilliant - they'll redo TE Washington and all future TE products will be using ZL16 tiles with some ZL17 in detailed areas.  According to Mr Wob (a familiar name) the ZL16 will allow a large reduction in total size (GB) but has a sharp filter feature which will retain detail.

Not quite true. Future TE products will likely offer two versions, SD (ZL16) and HD (ZL17) to cater for those people who don't have as much disk space. SD uses a quarter of the disk space and performs better on older hardware.

9 hours ago, hypercide said:

Is the end of the discount ORBX's recognition that the X-plane 11 party might now have a best-before date?

No, it's exactly as stated, due to the large volume of products being ported and the cost in doing so.

8 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Microsoft's announcement of MSFS 2020 has had a chilling effect on all add-on developers. It remains to be seen whether that effect is either temporary or not.

Perhaps, but it doesn't mean X-Plane will die, or iPacs and LM will stop making their sims. These sims will move on as well eventually (they have to), and Microsoft need third-parties as much as the third-parties need them. 

[hs118 707]

totally off topic and random comment. delete it if you will...

How market forces work to guide product development choices, lifecycles, and support seems to be mostly unknown to 99.99% of the user community. There is always some nefarious, customer punishing reason why developers do what they do. 

PS Just read another thread complaining about Orbx not taking Paypal. My comments apply to business practices as well. 

Edited August 3, 2019 by yurei

[fta2017 160]

As far as I know, Orbx was the only scenery (not aircraft) developer in the industry to offer cross-platform discounts. They weren’t obliged to do it, nor was there competitive pressure to do it. I think their thinking was they would subsidise the cost of tempting customers to try new sims. But XP users who don’t use other sims won’t be affected at all.

But which scenery/airport vendor has a huge catalog like Orbx with nearly 300 products? FlightBeam, FlyTampa, FSDT, DD - all have around 5-15 products in total each. So trying to port 300 products to XP11 is no small feat or investment.

Also from the pace of their ports it’s not a simple case of running fsx2xp and pressing a button. Most of the XP ported airports have a lot of enhancements and new library objects added, and the dreaded XP mesh problems must give them headaches as well.

[kevinfirth 1,396]

I think it probably reflects the fact that P3D only users have been reticent to move to dual XP use, so while it was a good try, it likely hasn't resulted in significant revenue for Orbx

[hs118 707]

41 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

I think it probably reflects the fact that P3D only users have been reticent to move to dual XP use, so while it was a good try, it likely hasn't resulted in significant revenue for Orbx

That's what I am thinking....FWIW

[JimmiG 244]

Of course we can only speculate about the reasons. My guess is that the conversions ended up requiring more work and time than they anticipated. It seems airports aren't coming out as fast as we would have thought ("hot on the heels" of PNW?). Maybe sales were also lower than expected due to the new MSFS announcement making people wait rather than going all in with XP11.

It's a bit unfortunate that they couldn't at least keep a 20-30% discount (40% was rather generous). For someone who's still 50/50 between XP11 and P3D, this makes it a bit harder to justify switching sims fully.

[dbw1 445]

I think as more P3d users become more informed about XP11 you see more of a migration. I've been here less than 4 months and I am still blown away by the quality of this sim, the add-ons both payware and freeware and the scenery that comes with the basic XP11 install. 6 months ago I would not have thought I'd be here but I got fed up messing with P3d to work right (P3dV4.4-4.5)...infact i think I spent more time trying to fix things than flying. Add-on aircraft such as the Toliss A319 are imho close enough to FSL that I am happy. The TBM900 is a work of art. The KingAir C90b that comes with XP11 is so good I was totally surprised...It is the first time I have seen the Pt6-21 modeled so well....like the real thing on a warm day it can be an under powered pig as N1, ITT, tq, when the oat is factored in is pretty much right on the money....I flew one from 2010-2016. The Garmin 1000 in the payware KingAir 350 is very, very accurate. X-aviation's Saab 340 is very good. We've got a great sim here.

I think you'll see a lot more ORBX products for XP11. The user base for this sim will grow. I will look at the new sim when it makes its appearance but right now I am totally happy with XP11 and what ORBX and others are doing with it.

[Reader 2,021]

7 hours ago, yurei said:

There is always some nefarious, customer punishing reason why developers do what they do.

PS Just read another thread complaining about Orbx not taking Paypal. My comments apply to business practices as well. 

There is an understanding in commercial transactions of software that the developer and vendor and the customer will expect the customer to pay the developer and vendor in return for a licence to use that product.

The resultant profit is then used to pay for the developers' time and the other resources needed to bring the product from the developer to the customer and even show a profit, to finance the development of new products.

This is the "nefarious, customer punishing reason why developers do what they do".

The reason why Orbx Direct does not use PayPal is very well documented and has nothing to do with an unwillingness to provide the best possible customer service.

Edited August 3, 2019 by Reader

[hs118 707]

11 minutes ago, Reader said:

There is an understanding in commercial transactions of software that the developer and vendor and the customer will expect the customer to pay the developer and vendor in return for a licence to use that product.

The resultant profit is then used to pay for the developers' time and the other resources needed to bring the product from the developer to the customer and even show a profit, to finance the development of new products.

This is the "nefarious, customer punishing reason why developers do what they do".

The reason why Orbx Direct does not use PayPal is very well documented and has nothing to do with an unwillingness to provide the best possible customer service.

my friend, i believe you mistook my sarcasm for sincerity. if not, let the record show we agree on this topic.

Edited August 3, 2019 by yurei

[ComSimPilot 623]

I believe this move to stop the cross-platform discount is a wrong one. I have 99% of their P3D sceneries and around 70% of their XP sceneries. The reason why I dont have all their XP sceneries, is because even at 40% off, I always feel annoyed paying for a port over. Now, I will for sure not pay for a 100% price for a P3D port scenery. When I buy a new scenery, I understand that the developer went into the process of visiting the place, acquiring pictures, making 3D models, adapting textures etc. Assuming that a lot of work was going in porting and adapting textures for XP from a P3D version, a 40% discount was understandable. When this developer asks me to pay the 100% of this cost which I have already paid for the P3D version is an unfair move and I won't be paying two times for the same development. Others may do, but in my case ORBX has lost a customer of P3D ported sceneries to XP and vise versa.

Edited August 3, 2019 by Daedalus

[BrettT 63]

The net effect for me is that with the 40% discount for crossover I was more likely to buy the xplane airport when it was first released.  Now I am more likely to wait for one of their typical sales which are typically in the 40-50% range.  If the sales stop happening then I already have 98% of the their P3D products so I have plenty to keep me busy for a long time 🙂