First Products Announced at Orbx

[honanhal 1,420]

35 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

You make an airport/airfield, a tiny one to begin with if you are able to, or a scenery and you come back to report. You'll have an altogether different opinion on how to set a price.  I never sold anything but did some freeware though. It demands a great amount of work. And I used free tools (nothing to pay to Adobe etc.).

I know how hard it is for people to wrap their head around this concept — and it’s even harder if you’re personally invested in a project — but: how hard it was to build an airport/how much time you’ve spent/how much money you’ve spent should be completely irrelevant in how you set your product price if you’re doing it right. The only question should be: “at what price point will I maximize my return?”

Anything else is a textbook example of the sunk-cost fallacy.

(Dominique, by the way, I’m not trying to single you out here — I’ve seen a lot of this argument on these boards!)

James

[Wewk584 137]

These are just p3d airports they already had made ported over. (without 1000's of lines of code to re-write that plane developers have to deal with).. Considering how many they will sell, I think the pricing is great.  

 

 

 

[bernd1151 5,820]

For those of us, who are unhappy with how London is represented in MSFS, there's good news around the corner:

Next to London City Airport, ORBX will soon launch a London city scenery for just US$7.99

https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/198113-first-products-announced-for-microsoft-flight-simulator/#

 

Edited August 9, 2020 by bernd1151

[Dominique_K 10,133]

30 minutes ago, honanhal said:

I know how hard it is for people to wrap their head around this concept — and it’s even harder if you’re personally invested in a project — but: how hard it was to build an airport/how much time you’ve spent/how much money you’ve spent should be completely irrelevant in how you set your product price if you’re doing it right. The only question should be: “at what price point will I maximize my return?”

Anything else is a textbook example of the sunk-cost fallacy.

(Dominique, by the way, I’m not trying to single you out here — I’ve seen a lot of this argument on these boards!)

James

Don't worry, James.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by "if you’re doing it right".    To maximize the RoI  the "you" should diminish the content of his/her product  to be able to fix prices that satisfy consumers demanding cheap products ?  Do I unvoluntarily caricature your point ? 

Flight simulation has been built as a market and a hobby by outgrowing  freeware first then production products that were cheap because the content was average . It is my hope that the trend will continue. Better products even with higher prices. 

   

[PilotPete99 915]

This is great news! No regrets for any Orbx product I have purchased.
 

Cheers, Pete

[bonchie 2,305]

This is why Orbx is the most successful addon developer. They understand business and pricing. They get that a customer who buys 5 things at $20 a pop is more valuable than a customer who buys one $50 addon. Over time, the production costs become more and more negligible because a higher volume of sales always wins in the end. Orbx always thinks long term.

I think the sheer volume of the new marketplace is gonna force other developers to follow Orbx’s lead and lower prices.

PMDG may learn the hard way that $139 isn’t gonna maximize their profit. But they are such a special case that maybe not.

Edited August 9, 2020 by bonchie

[ludekbrno 302]

6 hours ago, cepact said:

A nicely handcrafted city will still be superior to photogrammetry

I think not, it isn't possible to make every all buildings in the whole city with exact shapes and textures, as only photogrammetry can do. Sure, there is a photogrammetry limitation for extra low flying on buildings roof level or lower, but if your fly normally (about 100ft or more above buildings), the photogrammetric city will allways look much more realistic, than hand made scenery. If you see some MSFS videos above Venice, Barcelona or other photogrammetry city, you will see, that isn't possible comparable scenery to make by hand.

Edited August 9, 2020 by ludekbrno

[bernd1151 5,820]

Sorry, gents, I just realized that Dominique has already opened a thread covering this topic, my apologies. Maybe this one can be deleted by the moderators.

[Farlis 2,277]

3 hours ago, cepact said:

A nicely handcrafted city will still be superior to photogrammetry

Definately not. You simply can't handcraft every single house the way it is in reality. Only photogrammetry can achieve that.

[Nate1 163]

So entirely thrilled. Looks amazing and at a sensible price which makes it clear that they understand scaling with regard to the new user base - I didn't expect in my wildest dreams they'd have this sorted from the outset. Made my day.

[honanhal 1,420]

51 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

I am not sure I understand what you mean by "if you’re doing it right".    To maximize the RoI  the "you" should diminish the content of his/her product  to be able to fix prices that satisfy consumers demanding cheap products ?  Do I unvoluntarily caricature your point ? 

Point is that you have the consumers/market that you have. You can’t magically get the market you want (for you, one that is willing to pay increasingly higher prices) by setting your price differently. Setting a higher price doesn’t somehow make more potential customers willing to pay that higher price. You just reduce your number of customers and, possibly, your net return.

I understand the concern that lower prices correlate with lower development costs, but they actually don’t have to. That’s the genuine magic of pricing software! You can sometimes make more money by charging less, without any regard at all for your costs.

James

[Dominique_K 10,133]

9 minutes ago, bonchie said:

This is why Orbx is the most successful addon developer. They understand business and pricing. They get that a customer who buys 5 things at $20 a pop is more valuable than a customer who buys one $50 addon. Over time, the production costs become more and more negligible because a higher volume of sales always wins in the end. Orbx always thinks long term.

I think the sheer volume of the new marketplace is gonna force other developers to follow Orbx’s lead and lower prices.

PMDG may learn the hard way that $139 isn’t gonna maximize their profit. But they are such a special case that maybe not.

As I said elsewhere, Venema has smartly built a business where a very large and diversified catalog allows him to sell relatively cheap. A mass market of sort.And to distribute a lot of good freebies. It is harder to have his pricing policy with a very small catalog like PMDG has with a product every two years.

Also, I find funny to see that Orbx is presented here as an example by some when it is regularly and outrageously attacked on the P3D forum for it supposedly high prices. 

[honanhal 1,420]

27 minutes ago, bonchie said:

PMDG may learn the hard way that $139 isn’t gonna maximize their profit. But they are such a special case that maybe not.

PMDG aren’t going to go out of business. But there’s a whole range of outcomes between “overwhelmingly dominant in the marketplace” and “filing for bankruptcy.” I think PMDG is making a significant mistake with their pricing here, and they’ll be losing out on a lot of potential revenue as well as brand recognition with a whole new cohort of simmers/customers. But we’ll see. A lot depends on what their peer competitors do.

If they all make the same mistake, maybe none of those developers will suffer. Just the customers...

James

[HiFlyer 9,343]

9 minutes ago, Farlis said:

Definately not. You simply can't handcraft every single house the way it is in reality. Only photogrammetry can achieve that.

Google Earth and Bing style photogrammetry certainly does have limits. On the gripping hand, I have seen other examples of photogrammetry where you might as well be there live.

The state of the art is advancing pretty quickly!

 

Edited August 9, 2020 by HiFlyer

[Farlis 2,277]

3 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

Google Earth and Bing style photogrammetry certainly does have limits. On the other hand, I have seen other examples of photogrammetry where you might as well be there live.

The state of the art is advancing pretty quickly!

 

That is just insanity. I don't want to know how much storage space you need for a high-res capture like that.