iRacing Costs

Personally, I think it's too expensive as it is and they need more payment
plans. I don't mind paying for the content but i think the monthly sub is
too high, especially if you don't get much time a month to race.

A pay-as-you-race scheme would capture a whole swath of new people, imo.

Any thoughts?

"David Fisher's Left Testicle" <dfg.myass@aol> wrote in message
...
> Personally, I think it's too expensive as it is and they need more payment
> plans. I don't mind paying for the content but i think the monthly sub is
> too high, especially if you don't get much time a month to race.
>
> A pay-as-you-race scheme would capture a whole swath of new people, imo.
>
> Any thoughts?

A yearly subscription with the $60 credit, plus the current $25 bonus seems
fair to me. I think the car and track prices could be a bit lower, but even
there they offer discounts.

Schooner,

Dave knows why they cant do "pay as you race" because the structure of the
sim and the community/continuity wont really allow it.



Just know, that if/when you buy an account there is several things that have
to be done, some is done automated, most is or might not be. and to make
money they have to charge money or else close the doors. Look at it as
easily as you can, if I have 20 bucks in costs for signup and allowing the
downloads from the server and you race only once, how much do I charge you
to race once? now if I assume you will race for more than one month, I can
recoup the money over 3 months of charges, this makes good sense. Sure
there is no guarantee that you will race more than once in 3 months, but the
odds are somewhat higher and I cover my costs.

2 fine examples: Call the cable company, see how much (if you aren't a
subscriber already that is) it would cost to be hooked up just to watch one
TV show this evening? You think it will be 5 bucks? You're crazy!

Look at the supermarket, does the 6 oz (half size) pop can cost half what
the 12 oz can cost? No, but the 2 liter is cheaper in almost every time you
buy one than the 24 oz is... Single serving/ just like trial sizes of
anything else, would HAVE to be exorbitantly priced just because of the
overhead.

dfg.myass@aol (David Fisher's Left Testicle) wrote:

> Personally, I think it's too expensive as it is and they need more
> payment plans.

If we could buy just the content we want, and race it when and in whatever
combination we want, with whoever we want, I would happily pay the existing costs.
Heck, I might even pay more!

What still hurts is paying good money to be forced into combinations I'd prefer not
to race on/in. (Well, obviously nobody's forcing anyone, but you know what I mean).
Often I join races I don't really want to just because I'd prefer to race with a
full(er) field in a race which splits rather than a half empty field in one which
doesn't.

If iRacing was about half the cost I'd buy everything, sign up forever and just get
on with it even with the restrictions and frustrations. The trick is justifying
that 100% extra cost beyond what I'm comfortable paying for this kind of hobby,
racing against random names.

Comparing the cost to real world hobbies & activities is fine. But the real
comparison will always be with products which are most similar... that's the way
real world hobbies work too.

At the moment iRacing seems just about (ish!) justifiable to me because it feels
like such a more satisfying driving experience than the other sims I have. But I
don't expect that situation to stay static. I'm not so attached to online racing
against strangers that I won't be lured away by an offline sim which can give me
the same driving kick.

Andrew McP

> If we could buy just the content we want, and race it when and in whatever
> combination we want, with whoever we want,

That's called rFactor or GTR.

> I'm not so attached to online racing against strangers

If what you want is online racing, then Live For Speed is probably the
best bet, as they still reach a peak of 1000 players online at a time.
The tracks are fantasy tracks, and only a few of the cars
resemble real cars, but you're not stuck with the boring Soltice
for months while waiting to advance to the next level.

After this many years of racing, the realism factor has gone beyond
the point of no return as what the various game makers consider
"realistic". The SRF's lift throttle oversteer seems exaggerated.
The Legend's power induces oversteer also exaggerated. The Radical
is fun, but how much time and money do you spend with the boring
cars until you can use the Radical?

On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:44 +0100 (BST), Andrew MacPherson wrote:

> If we could buy just the content we want, and race it when and in
> whatever combination we want, with whoever we want, I would happily
> pay the existing costs.

That's one of my major gripes with the service: You don't actually
"own" anything, but license it for the duration of your
membership. Once you cancel the subscription, you're left empty handed
and short of a few hundred bob.

With most off-the-self titles you can still sell the box on ebay or to
a mate and never look back, not so with iR. What if the service tanks
or goes under? Same thing, your S.O.L.

In comparison to iR, I'd happily have shelled out $100 or more for a
one time purchase of rFactor. I feel a bit guilty for all the joy I've
gotten out of this title for a mere 30 Euros or so.

With rF2 on the horizon, I'd be prepared to pay them a lot more if I
only get to properly "own" what I've purchased which isn't the case
with iR.

I know all the content is there again once you resubscribe to their
service, but for instance you cannot legally sell your "Radical" or
"Lime Rock" license to another iRacer if you find you hate the drive
after you've forked out the cash.

All the best,

Uwe

"hoover" > wrote in message
...
> On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:44 +0100 (BST), Andrew MacPherson wrote:
>
>> If we could buy just the content we want, and race it when and in
>> whatever combination we want, with whoever we want, I would happily
>> pay the existing costs.
>
> That's one of my major gripes with the service: You don't actually
> "own" anything, but license it for the duration of your
> membership. Once you cancel the subscription, you're left empty handed
> and short of a few hundred bob.
>
> With most off-the-self titles you can still sell the box on ebay or to
> a mate and never look back, not so with iR. What if the service tanks
> or goes under? Same thing, your S.O.L.
>
> In comparison to iR, I'd happily have shelled out $100 or more for a
> one time purchase of rFactor. I feel a bit guilty for all the joy I've
> gotten out of this title for a mere 30 Euros or so.
>
> With rF2 on the horizon, I'd be prepared to pay them a lot more if I
> only get to properly "own" what I've purchased which isn't the case
> with iR.
>
> I know all the content is there again once you resubscribe to their
> service, but for instance you cannot legally sell your "Radical" or
> "Lime Rock" license to another iRacer if you find you hate the drive
> after you've forked out the cash.
>
> All the best,
>
> Uwe
>

I think you should be able to practice off-line with stuff you have paid for
after you've left.

hoover wrote:

> In comparison to iR, I'd happily have shelled out $100 or more for a
> one time purchase of rFactor. I feel a bit guilty for all the joy I've
> gotten out of this title for a mere 30 Euros or so.

Funny enough that is why I support the iRacing model. I would have
gladly paid ISI for major updates to rFactor. Even more so I felt denied
the opportunity to pay Papyrus for developments to GPL due to what I saw
as constraints by publishers and eventual marketing decision that
Papyrus didn't fit into their strategy.

Watching these products fail to develop due to the publishing model
limiting funding has been a source of frustration to me. With the one
exception of NR2003 sim racing titles have had little or no resale
value, they just become obsolete titles to the majority.

Having a major developer without the constraints of a publisher with the
initial funding to aim big is massive for sim racing in my view. I hope
it can break the mould of sim racing distribution and we can look
forward to an accelerated development path which we can invest in rather
than the relatively poor overall gain we have made this decade.

Cheers
Tony

"Tony R" > wrote in message
...
> hoover wrote:
>
>> In comparison to iR, I'd happily have shelled out $100 or more for a
>> one time purchase of rFactor. I feel a bit guilty for all the joy I've
>> gotten out of this title for a mere 30 Euros or so.
>
> Funny enough that is why I support the iRacing model. I would have gladly
> paid ISI for major updates to rFactor. Even more so I felt denied the
> opportunity to pay Papyrus for developments to GPL due to what I saw as
> constraints by publishers and eventual marketing decision that Papyrus
> didn't fit into their strategy.
>
> Watching these products fail to develop due to the publishing model
> limiting funding has been a source of frustration to me. With the one
> exception of NR2003 sim racing titles have had little or no resale value,
> they just become obsolete titles to the majority.
>
> Having a major developer without the constraints of a publisher with the
> initial funding to aim big is massive for sim racing in my view. I hope it
> can break the mould of sim racing distribution and we can look forward to
> an accelerated development path which we can invest in rather than the
> relatively poor overall gain we have made this decade.
>
> Cheers
> Tony
>


> forward to an accelerated development path...<

Well, yeah. But what have we seen so far? Basically, one, so far, ****ed up
opportunity, imo.

> With the one exception of NR2003 sim racing titles have had little
> or no resale value, they just become obsolete titles to the majority.

EA's F1 Challenge 99-02 is still selling for over $40 at Ebay, even
though rFactor has good F1 mods for it now.

Part of NR2003's current high price is due to the ignorance of the
buyers that think they need a new cd-key in order to race online, not
realizing that since the servers have been shut down, these cd-keys
are now useless. If a player still has their original cd, they
can use the tech support key RAB2-RAB2-RAB2-RAB2-8869 to install
their game.

The other part is that NR2003 wasn't superceded by a future game,
unless you count the NR2005 mod which First stopped at every web
site except for

http://thepiratebay.org

which was out of the legal grasp of First.

In addition, since EA had bought the rights to Nascar, retailers weren't
supposed to be selling NR2003 anymore, yet First made no effort to stop
these retailers.

If it hadn't been for First trying to elminate the distribution of the
NR2005 mod, I and many other would have never heard of the pirate bay.
I doubt that the NR2005 mod would have had any impact on iRacing. I
doubt that there would still be resentment about First in the sim
community.

> Having a major developer without the constraints of a publisher with the initial funding to aim big is massive for sim
> racing in my view.

Except that the target audience is so small that the cost per player is
going to be quite high.

Having the assists, add-ons, and open play have helped rFactor and the
GTR series to sell fairly large numbers of their games, while giving
hard core sim fans something to enjoy (assists off).

>initial funding

The initial funding for iRacing is about what EA spends on each NFS
game. The high volumes justify the big budgets, and the cost per
player is low.

EA will just slap "NFS" on their first shot with a sim-oriented racer,
(the development team includes 25 ex-GTR employees), "NFS Shift", and
it will sell in the millions. It will probably have fantasy cars and
lots of assists to keep the casual players happy, but the core physics
engine is claimed to be very realistic, and aimed at the serious
hard core simmers. EA has the budget, people, and access to the data
to make a realistic sim, but only time will tell if NFS Shift ends
up as realistic as it claims it will be.

The point here isthat a hard core standalone sim isn't going to sell
well, but if it's included as an option as part of a more casual game
it will, and the cost per player will be low. As an end-user, I
know which pricing model I prefer (the lower cost one if anyone
has trouble guessing).