Maybe I'm wrong here, but I don't see that Simracing games are incredibly low priced (apart from LFS). They all cost around 45 - 50€ when they are new, which is the same as for any other game.
At least the price is not the reason from my view. In my circle of friends I'm more or less the only one who enjoys racing games for more than 2 hours. I even think that +80% are more interested in shooters or strategy games or mmporg (or however it's spelled) than in racing games.
The reasons that there not so many sims out there is the fact the market is simply not anywhere as big as the shooters market.
What iRacing is trying now is putting a sim in the price category of WOW or similar, hoping that the smaller group of simracers are willing to pay which still has to be proven.
So, I hope for a free demo (soon ) and then we can start discussing if it's really worth the money they want for it.
And to add another thing:
I'm not willing to buy any game where I don't have the possibility the test it before, no matter what everyone else is saying.
But the development costs of making a sim properly are much higher than normal games which is what he means. Laser scanning tracks, tyre testing, measuring suspension join positions etc. etc.
I bet that all controversy and scepticism would be blown away if iRacing would offer a free trial (like WoW does, for example). Personally I'm with three_jump on this one, no free trial means no money from my side, no matter how many people praise it.
True. But I was referring to the price vs entertainment value. Sorry for not specify that. Compare a typical shooter and LFS. Since 2002 I enjoyed maybe 50 times more hours with LFS than with any shooter I've ever played, for the same price.
Someone already made this comparison, but check how much costs a movie ticket, or a meal, or a pretty much everything else with the cost of simracing software.
Thanks for clearing that up. From that point LFS is very cheap (playing since 2003), but iRacing still has to prove me that it's actually worth the money (100€ per year) simply for having access to the game and comparing that to the 65€ I pay for my mobile per year.
I dunno about you, but I personally prefer my real life (how crappy it might be, but thats another story) over sitting in front of my desk and playing a game.
In the end it's a matter on how you spend your own money
And it's not like you don't just have to pay for the subscription.... I think new content in WOW is for free (not playing it, so please correct me here if I'm wrong)
I don't understand the mindset of not allowing a free demo: Single Player, 1 car, 1 track. Just to see and feel it. If it really is that great, why try and sucker people blindly in with a ~$150 commitment?
I believe a lot of us are getting just a bad uninviting feeling from the whole project.
Indeed, it's like they're intentionally alienating the entire cruising community, the entire drifting community, and the entire wrecker community. How dare they make a racing sim without those people in mind?
That's not to say if you don't buy iracing you're in one of the above-mentioned groups. I don't know if I'll buy it. I'm going to wait for some reviews before I decide.
One point is that if people pay the $20 for a minimal subscription; they have a month to decide if they "get it" or not. And, they'll probably play it that whole time instead of trying it once and leaving it because they think "it's too hard", afterall, they'll have paid for it and want to get their money's worth and will have more exposure time to get used to playing a sim and not an arcade game. Don't forget, LFS isn't big this side of the pond so a sim might come as a shock to many who may be inclined to try iRacing
WoW has regular free content releases, but the major content releases (expansion packs) are not free by any stretch - but they only come out every 1.5-2 years, whereas updated and new content on a lesser scale is released every few months. WoW also has double or more the development team size, so I'm not sure if it's that much cheaper to develop in the end or not, as well as a massive (albeit poorly paid, but still overhead) support staff. The capital outlay for iRacing is obviously far greater with their fancy tire testing shit and whatnot but the ongoing costs and staff overhead for developing WoW probably evens that out. So, iRacing is probably not that expensive for what you get considering that it won't have 10 million people playing it.
So as an exaggerated example: mass murder is not that bad, many dictators did the same first after all...
What you and especially BBT implied was that anyone not accepting to buy a new game every 2-3 months while not even getting one in the first place is a cheapskate... I'm sorry if I don't like to swallow that uncommented...
10 million people don't have a problem doing that for WoW, there is no offline portion to it whatsoever. iRacing is a much more complex product in terms of development, so one could argue that it's a better value - but I'm not talking about the subjective experience. The point is: it's just NOT that expensive in the grand scheme of things.
We're pretty spoiled here, or at least were when things were happening. LFS is a minimalist attitude. 2-3 people that really, at the end of the day, just need us to make sure they don't have to punch a timeclock for Mr. Big every morning. Sorry, but that's the truth, LFS is a business as well. iRacing has forked out lots of money to make something amazing, and if it's as good as everyone playing it (that I know) says then it's worth what they charge.
edit: and I'm not saying anyone's a cheapskate. I'm saying in the general gaming market it's not expensive - in general. It's very simple, and although they are very different products, it's plain and simple: if it's not too much for 10 million WoW players it is NOT too much for anyone who really wants to be involved in iRacing.
Personally, I'm suggesting that anyone expecting to buy a professionally made racing simulation and expecting it to be brilliant in every way like iRacing should be is deluded. If they were selling to hundreds of thousands, yes, that would be feasible.
I don't think they're trying to sell to people who would be completely satisfied with LFS in its current state.
EDIT: Just think, tyre physics is a very unexplored teritory. The physics is unwritten, at least it's not something that you can just research online and code up because *no-one* really knows, and the people that do keep their cards close to their chest. iRacing is the first publically available computer simulation to base its physics on genuine tyre tests that they conducted.
I'll prolly give it a spin for a month for £10, but if it doesn't rock I'll cut my losses. I think I'm probably in the majority there. But it will have to REALLY rock, if I'm going to continue investing.
We presume that the company has done the market research and determined that the pricing model they've decided on will not stifle the community. It seems reasonable to assume that, anyway. However, we also know that Sony spent far more on PS3 market research than iRacing has spent on everything put together, and compared with that market research the PS3 has positively crashed and burned, specifically because of the pricing model - product capabilities and quality being completely sidelined. So all we can do is HOPE that iRacing hasn't done a Sony.
None of us know, and regardless of any leaked opinions during the beta period, nobody WILL know if iRacing will survive its pricing model until the product is released and the uptake becomes measureable. Everything is a wish and a promise until that point.
I don't mind the cost at all - I just don't like the idea of paying for a service. I don't lease my cars - I don't want to lease a game If iRacing goes bankrupt in 4 years I still want to be able to play the game offline without resorting to a pirated/cracked version.
I wouldn't mind paying to race online as long as my initial purchase allowed me to play the game offline with all the content (even if I cancel my online subscription).
How do you know? The last time something was "the sim to end all other sims", it was flaw over flaw, and the dev abandoning ship was no help either... For all we know, it too could be just another marketing gag... To be brutally honest, I wasn't impressed by NR in the slightest, I found the older GPL did a better job of mimicing reality...
In addition, the message iRacing's pricing delivers is bad either way: One, if it is a success, it shows that people will gladly pay any amount of money for not even owning something completely unnecessary (to living) if it's just "in" enough... The company can do whatever they want, and nobody would have any means to appease to that...
Or two, it sinks faster than the Titanic, which will tell every investor on the whole planet to stay clear from racing sims...
for me the near final nail in the coffin was the announcement that they expect the game to work on a invitation basis for the first few months after the release ie basically like gmail started
theyre deperately trying to make the game expensive and exclusive enough that it appeals to a crowd who have their heads so far up their arse to smell their own farts before they see daylight that the last thing i want to do is race with them
Yeah, comparing the iRacing team to Kunos makes a lot of sense. Afterall, why not put unprecedented amounts of investment into a racing sim. Better yet, spend that money on car/track model accuracy and proprietary tire testing to fool everyone... because we all know that the general public is just dying for the best racing simulation ever made! Yeah, it's all a "marketing gag", good call Kaemmer is a proven scoundrel anyway!
(almost broke my sarcasm generator)
Why don't you get this? A business model like theirs is NOT new and I don't hear any other subscription community bitching about it. For a cutting edge product that far surpasses (oh right, "if it does") anything else for a NICHE MARKET (as in it does NOT cater to the masses, where those same masses ALREADY accept this same business model for other "games"), it's not at ALL unreasonable to approach it this way.
What the hell is the matter with building a community before the launch? Anyone that cares enough about it will be able to get an invite anyway, then when it's "fully" released there will already be a thriving community. Yeah, that sucks.
A) It's NOT freaking expensive, as shown by MMORPGORSORS people, period.
B) It doesn't cater to the masses, nor is it supposed to, and it's better that way IMO. CH4 for the win (although not all human fart has that in it from my understanding).
LOL, I'm just like that. I could be full of shit anyway, we'll find out soon enough. But if I was full of shit I should know by now anyway according to Shot
edit: and if I am dead wrong, then I'll be the first guy here enjoying my feet with a side of salt and BBQ sauce.
Why don't you get there are people who don't like paying for something they have absolutely no power over? Like I said, you are a paying slave to their will, and I'm not sure I want to be that for a company known for sueing others who thought make something more/different of their software...
) and then we can start discussing if it's really worth the money they want for it. 
Kaemmer is a proven scoundrel anyway!