As long as you spend $40 or more each year on content (two tracks + a car, or thereabouts) it's as good as "real money". Or if you don't buy any content at all, you can spend the credit towards next year's membership.
This is awesome, just in time for my Fanatec! I'll definitely be subbing when it gets here. Participation rewards are an awesome idea. Attendance will go through the roof I'm sure.
That is not exactly true if you count the possible companisation for taking part in official racing of max $40. And the content is also cheaper so that credit is more value.
So basically you get the credit if you participate.
It is still not a cheap experience compared to nkpro/LFS
and it's an "in your pocket" price reduction. $3 dollars is not really here or there and you'll save more than that the first time you buy a car or track with the new lower prices. im actually very tempted by the 2 year subscription price, sure it may go down in price again but its currently not much more than a 12 month one was last month and once it's bought you'll soon forget about the cost and the only costs will be for content
That's irrelevant. They announced the credit for participation a while ago, before these reductions were even thought about. so it would have been $156 -$60 credit -$40 participation credit = $56. Now it's $99 - $40 participation credit = $ 59
It's nothing more than superb marketing, making the entry fees look a third cheaper than it was.
Obviously i was being a little unfair saying it was more expensive as the cheaper content would have got you more content for your credit, but it's not the huge saving on a years subs they are making it out to be, that's a fact
All good though. If it gets more people through the doors that's all that matters. It can only be good for the service .
It was really just terrible marketing in the first place. They made the subscriptions look more expensive than they needed to be, which isn't exactly the smartest thing to do considering your sim is ALREADY priced higher than everything else out there. The new pricing model is what they should have used from the beginning.
I can't help but laugh when I see people on the iRacing forum talking about how great of a deal the old way was with the "free iRacing credits" they were getting. I guess they don't realize they were just loaning iRacing money. Then when you point that out to them, you get called out for whining. Actually, any time you ever say anything negative over there you're a whiner, even if all you're doing is stating the facts.
The latter is certainly a good thing but to get those 40$ I'd be forced to play regularly and planning my gaming/simracing choices 2 years in advance.
It's still too rigid a structure IMO. As for content, I'm still largely uninterested in their mostly american car lineup.
Yep but they're updating their product at a much higher rate than the competition, so it seems reasonable that they charge more.
Problem is they charge a lot more and with a braindamaged pricing structure, especially in relation with the actual prices. I mean a subscription+extras model may make sense if the extras are cheap compared to the subscription, or viceversa - but they are pricing them too close IMO.
One of the iRacing guys posted the Week 13 schedule today, and said the Corvette would be racing at Mosport and the Indy Car will be at Indy "when the build comes out" during Week 13 so we'll be able to drive them some time next week.