"Pricing Announced for iRacing.com Simulation: Groundbreaking Software to be Available by Subscription"
"iRacing.com today announced pricing for its racing simulation, which will be available on a subscription basis starting in 2008. A one-year subscription to the service will cost $13 per month and includes all of the content necessary for a subscriber's first season of oval-track and road-racing. Shorter terms of six and three months are priced at $15 and $17 per month, respectively. A one-month trial subscription is available for $20."
I was expecting it to cost like $80 with the standard content and one year free updates. Then a subscription of $40 a year to get new updates after that. It was always going to be expensive, just look at the technology used to map the circuits, but its more than expensive...its crazy. This better be the most realistic and perfect racing simulator ever made, if it doesn't blow LFS' physics out of the water then nobody with any sense would buy it. Of course that leaves all the hardcore Rfactor, Netkar and GTR players, plenty of them to pay too much for iracing.
Its so insane its made me feel like installing GPL again so I am not at all tempted to buy the month trial.
"A one-year subscription to the service will cost $13 per month and includes all of the content necessary for a subscriber's first season of oval-track and road-racing."
So 1 year of racing on that sim will cost 156$ ?? is this a joke?
I think they got mad trying to capture the tracks with that laser scanner… I don’t expect the physics to be a lot better than LFS or nkp… but that is just speculating and it will stay that way if they don’t release any demo vertion.
Well :wave2: bye bye iRacing team... you are going to make a nice community for sure by forcing anyone to pay at least 13$ a month.
To be fair you can't judge by those small pictures, but here is a huge one. I think the comment about it looking exactly the same as Nascar 2003 is a fair one. Most of the GPL mods I am having to download again look twice as good.
"The list price, before credits or volume discounts, is $15 for cars and $15 to $25 per track. Licensing three or more pieces of additional content reduces the price by 10 percent, and six or more reduces it by 20 percent."
The Boycott is going to be self organized, as I don’t expect anyone to even pay the $20 for just testing it! I just sent them an email to tell them how surprised I was, and invite everyone to do the same (Contact @ iRacing.com).
For sure the price and sim quality of LFS is a tough comparison!
Their marketing plan is going to ruin this nice new simulator. Too bad!
Emmanuel
I suspect they're betting they'll get enough "if it's expensive, it has to be better!" idiots, just like audiophiles who swear by their $485 volume knobs.
If you have any knowledge of previous Papy sims, you'd know that they feel and play great, always.
As for car selection. I could complain that Nr2003 had big stupid/ugly stock cars, but they were fun to drive in that game! What's to say the driving experience will be worse in this game?
The ONLY downside I think is the payment plans they have. Doing annual payments for a simulation is obviously what they are expecting to get from customers after all their work. If they didn't just throw all these pricing plans on us right away at a higher rate, I think their customer base and buyer-interest would rise. However, if you think about their pricing, it isn't all that bad if you are a working individual with some income:
To pay for a whole year is quite pricey, so as a marketing scheme it's obvious why they are only thinking in terms of monthly payments. But it looks like they are putting you on a kind of 'contract' to pay that amount.
I would never pay $156 for a video game, even if I know I am a pretty serious simracer. I might pay $20 for a monthly trial, but I don't think it is very smart of them to be lacking a free demo. Hell, one car and one track will do just fine to get people motivated to buy.... but having people pay $20 to test and then if they want it for a year they pay $156??? equaling $176 for the game? Gimme a break.
I suggest you all wait a while until sales settle and comments are given. Perhaps they will lower pricing in the future. The longer you all DON'T go buy it, sales will be crap for them, and they'd surely want to lower the price.
All they need to do is release a free demo that limits you to 30 minutes, with one car on one track. But then people will find out their heavily modded Nascar 2003 is just as good and feels the same, just without the laser track shit.
I almost heard the collective sound of thousands of average joe sim racers removing www.iracing.com from their favourites folder. Sensible people won't spend $156 per year and maybe more on a computer game, the only people sad enough to do that sort of thing are kept out of sight in their homes playing World of Warcraft.
Crazy business model, but they've obviously done their research and believe there is a market at that price.
Some people may be willing to pay $156 for every year they play the game, plus paying for additional content. Quite how they expect to build a viable online community at that price I do not know. Their target appears to be the American market, and I don't think there will be much traction elsewhere.
On Wikipedia there is a good article comparing the different racing simulators, including Nascar 2003 and LFS. I'm sure we'll see whether there has been much improvement on Nascar 2003 once iracing has eventually launched and this article has been updated, rather paying $20 for the pleasure.
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