Is there any way I can donate my Orbs? 

I'm glad somebody finally made a post about this.  I took advantage of their first week "double points" promotion when it got released, but unfortunately I owned a lot of what was on offer.  What I find ridiculous is how fast they changed what they charge for the products.  What used to be 150-250 orbs went up to 500 orbs now.  At first this loyalty program looked very attractive, but now I don't even care to look at the Orbs store anymore.

Where exactly is the Orbs Store? I could not find anything at ORBx Central.

49 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

Where exactly is the Orbs Store?

Orbs Store - Orbx (orbxdirect.com)

On 2/3/2023 at 5:35 PM, 1st fltsimguy said:

What's and Orb...🤣!

The official currency of the Kingdom of Furyondy.  

ROTFLMAO.... Orbx is now offering an exclusive "Orbx Cap" (very limited availability / as worn by their staff) only 450 Orbs.... 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Orbx is joke. I try and buy everything from Contrail or Flightsim.to or Simmarket.

23 minutes ago, B777ER said:

Orbx is joke. I try and buy everything from Contrail or Flightsim.to or Simmarket.

Well, they certainly weren't in the past and still a lot of good content is available through them.
Simmarket is the joke in my book, they sell a lot of garbage as well as good stuff. My main issue with them is the lack of a decent update manager, like Contrail, Inibuilds, Orbx and Aerosoft have.

Personally speaking, with FSX and P3D, Orbx was a very big deal. Their airports, regions and global enhancements transformed the world outside the cockpit windows. Asobo's scenery has since pulled the rug from under them, but as said above, there are still some very good enhancements for MSFS available, particularly Australian cities. They might be somewhat diminished, but they're certainly not a joke.

 

OrbX went downhill fast when they started selling all the low-quality add-ons for MSFS.  I don't know why they started accepting all these amateur looking aftermarket products to begin with.  They used to be one of the best (if not the best) during FSX/P3D days, but lately its been a big disappointment.

I suspect that the last years were not specially easy for Orbx, financially speaking.

They had built their success on teenagers and young adults making small airports in the FSX and  P3D eras. These guys moved to their lives and are gone.Then came the MSFS earthquake which made their know-how for regional and global products irrelevant. 

They do have new regional products which are not bad, I am pretty satisfied with the Asia Mesh, Dubai and Panama, but they seem slow to find new talents and the idea for new products. They are now more of a pure distributor and a subcontractor for MS than a publisher/developer or so it seems.

The Orbs program is a way to push the sales of the FSX, P3D and XP products they don't sell much anymore. Why should they discount MSFS products ? It wouldn't make sense. Orbs is the virtual discount bin of yore where you rarely found what you really wanted 😉. 

On 2/5/2023 at 7:21 AM, St Mawgan said:

Is there any way I can donate my Orbs? 

You mean like to a children's hospital?

33 minutes ago, David Mills said:

You mean like to a children's hospital?

Or the World Wide Fund for Disadvantaged Simmers 😇

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

I suspect that the last years were not specially easy for Orbx, financially speaking.

Not sure I agree here.

A lot of supposition on my part. However, I think that up until very recently, Orbx were probably doing as well as they ever have, if not better.
It's far cheaper for them to lay-off/not renew the contracts of staff and freelance developers, relying on a much-reduced headcount. Then comes the benefit of all the sweet, sweet commission charged to the third-party developers selling through Orbxdirect/Central.

In the short-term it's a highly profitable way of operating. (What we have seen from Orbx between MSFS' release and now, IMO).
In the mid- to long-term though, it's a terrible business model. There are fewer 'home-grown products' developed overall, the quality also suffers due to getting them to the marketplace ASAP, prices go up to compensate for the lower sales volume, customers (retail and corporate) are less likely to buy, third-party developers start to withdraw their products/promote other less expensive sales channels, and not to mention add-on market saturation, all of which becomes a vicious circle of reducing revenues.
 

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

The Orbs program is a way to push the sales of the FSX, P3D and XP products they don't sell much anymore

If that were truly the case, they would not make these available for free redemption through Orbs and would not periodically inflate the number of Orbs required to 'purchase' them.
To me, it looks like Orbx don't know what to do with their FSX/P3D product catalogue, which as far as they are concerned is practically obsolete.
 

They also don't seem to know what to do with regards to their MSFS development. Asobo has released WUs whose content is squarely camped on Orbx's usual product lines.
Other developers can produce quicker than they can, some better, a lot are worse, but all of them reduce the number of potential sales for any potential Orbx product. (I don't see Orbx's upcoming ENGM selling nearly as well as Aerosoft's upcoming version, no mattter if Orbx release first).

Are there sufficient subs to Volanta to help it break even, or is that another cost item?

Finally, there's no thought given to product tie-ins. None of their city sceneries should have been released until they developed their own/a third-party developer released good quality versions of MPTO, OMDB, VABB, YBCS and YMML to complement them. Those city sceneries that had a complementary airport product, e.g. Adelaide, Auckland, Sydney, were released far in advance of these airports coming to market, so excited purchases of simultaneous releases were missed. No wonder sales for these city sceneries has been described as less strong than expected.

 

P.S. Looking at Orbx's previous two years' financial statements, between June 2020 and June 2022, revenue is up nearly 30%, cash up by nearly 2.5x.
Having worked in financial services, the losses recorded on the Statement of profit or loss and OCI are typical of when a Private Equity Fund is extracting value from the investment portfolio company, which is what Orbx currently is.
It is part of Bombora Investment Management Partners' "Special Investments Growth Fund".
You can read the latest quarterly report (with Orbx listed on page 6) here:
https://www.bomboragroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Dec-22-Quarterly-Report-for-Unitholders-1.pdf
 

Edited February 7, 20233 yr by F737MAX

33 minutes ago, F737MAX said:

Not sure I agree here.
 

I had a look on their site at Orbx Direct>About>Investors>AGM FY22> annual report page 8 Profit and loss.  I am not familiar with Australian accounting but the statement for 21 and 22 don't look too good to me.

 813a9f44-orbx-limited-consolidated-financial-report-fy22-final.pdf (orbxdirect.com)

I agree that the company gives the feeling not to have a clear vision of where it goes. The old hands are gone and the knowledge of the market by the new executive team may be on the light side. But again, MSFS shook the ground under the feet of all the players (see Simmarket catalogue...)

And that selling city sceneries without the airports made indeed little sense except to keep the casflow coming.

Edited February 7, 20233 yr by Dominique_K