Why AC is not a service?

The creators of iRacing clearly got it 6 years ago.
Sim racing is no longer the thing that you are doing disconnected. It's a type of genre, that is particularly well suited for online multiplayer.

In order to best support this, you have to turn your game into a continuously improved service.

I'm really sad, that the devs of AC have chosen to went down the traditional road. This will eventually mean, that upon completion, AC will be abandoned by their developers to work on future titles (to get money from somewhere). And because it's developed to be moddable, the sim racing community will take over to develop all kinds of low quality crappy content for it. Of course, they can't improve on the core engine, because only the AC devs could do that, so the sim will eventually fade away like many other titles before.

While this happens, iRacing will be bigger and better service each month that attracts more and more customers because they know the service is professional, and the content is continuously improved.

Clearly, the old model does not work anymore in the new era of simracing.

Why did you do this?

 

The simmarket is not big enough and people in general is not so keen in paying that large amount off
Money. I would love it though if kunos would do lets say" iracing light"

 

That depends.

I tried Iracing, the content wasn't for me, the business model wasn't for me. I left Iracing.

I love AC, I will stick with it if keeps improving and mp will not fail. I'm fine with the devs doing something else in the future, but I honestly think they will nurse their baby for quite some time.

 

Because service like Iracing costs a lot- monthly fees, pay per car/track... Many people have spent above 1000$ on Iracing and still have to continue paying to continue having access to the "service". This price alienates customers.

Plus, developing a service like Iracing would imply direct competition with Iracing for the already limited pool of highly spending customers (What is Iracing user base? 50 000?) and splitting some part of it. Traditional model appeals to broader user base and can generate as much/more income for the same continuous development as Iracing - see DCS and Rise of Flight flight sims who have traditional pricing models but continuously update their sims over many years.

 

i thought kunos had a very long plan to continuously update the game over five years or something super long like that. of course it would be mostly paid updates (for extra cars + tracks) but they seem to want to make it as cheap as they can.

right now iRacing only has 2000 players on which is a tiny amount compared to many other multiplayer games. the most I've ever seen is around the 3000 mark.

 

Not being a service does not mean KS will not support and continue to improve AC for a long time!

And strange enough, there are still a lot of racers who don't bother about MP, so paying a monthly fee wouldn't work for them.

 

You mean Kunos should continue focus only on this one for many years to come ?? Then i believe you should first suggest how they going to survive by doing so

 

See DCS and Rise of Flight, both same pricing models. Initially they sold their game and then continued making DLC for revenue and release free updates from that revenue.

 

The racing game market, especially towards sim racing, is not as saturated as for example shooters, you don't have to release another title every year to keep the players playing your brand.
I think AC will still be sold in 3 years, and not only shortly after release, and of course they can do DLCs. There are a lot of examples for games where continuing to improve a quality product payed out in the long term.

 

I dont know. I personally dont mind if Kunos start to focus on another project say "AC 2" half or one year after v1.0 is release. They definitely need to get $$$ from somewhere else, also i dont see the problem if Kunos let Modder take over the game after 1 year, or for what the game open for mod actually ?? And so far i dont dare to say those modded content must be crap.

By the way here is a question. Will you still buy AC if it actually cost USD600 consider it take at least x10 resource + time to make this game compare to other easy racing game which cost USD60 ??

So on one hand we want to have an "one & only super top quality product" but on the other hand we only willing to pay like it is a cheap thing but still feeling their goods & service are actually not good enough ?? Am sorry but that really sound greedy to me

 

I thought Kunos were intending to support AC for 5 years?

Service or not iRacing's content doesn't really excite me. Too many ovals, too many expensive but not graphically exciting cars...

 

Still, I would like to have a robust MP system, similar to iRacing. Focusing on a single car and on a track (each week) was something that I haven't experienced before. iRacing got me hooked into racing sims. I tried GTR2 and Race07 a long time ago and it didn't last. I had no "drive" to improve my driving skills and get to know the tracks.

On iRacing, on the other hand, each week there was a new challange. You participated in practice sessions throughout the week, according to your own personal schedule. Then, if you had the time, at the end of the week you could Qualify and then Race on that particular car/track combo. You had to earn points to be able to drive faster cars and you were placed among drivers simiar to your skill level.

I really like AC and I've dedicated a lot of my free time to it. More than that, I've cancelled my iRacing subscription because of it. But that doesn't mean that I don't want what iRacing has to offer. If we, the community (and especially the mod dev community) would have to work hard on making something semi-official then, I'm in. But it would be more logical for the AC devs to make the MP system to last for a long while.

Personally, I hate what rFactor MP model is. If you're not in a league then you can say goodbye to fair, "semi-professional" races. There are a few number of servers, with fewer people, driving like crazy and trying to win the race in the first turn. I have respect for many of the rFactor fans and for the rFactor Dev team, but that's not something I'm interested in.

I hope AC will age like wine -- the older the better. More content, more people, more fun and especially fair-play (when you were involved in an iRacing incident you were hurt...which lead to people being a bit more cautious when it comes to car maneuvers).

 

Because their market research showed them that only one in five sim racers cares to drive online. At max. You are not that huge a majority than you assume, Gabox. To be precise, you are a minority.

Also, last time I read about it, iR had around 23,000 customers only. Still wanting to claim their model the new standard?

 

Apparently iRacing has never turned a profit. If that continues something will have to change eventually.

 

this exactly. Just look at LFS. still going after 11 years

 

If every sim worked the same way as iracing (renting cars, tracks and yearly subscription ) i would not be sim racing..

 

I have no interest in iRacing, The cost puts me off and the strict online puts me off. I'm a casual gamer, I don't have time for leagues or getting ratings. I don't know what kind of multiplayer we'll have in AC, I may not even get the chance to use it all that often. So I have zero interest in paying a monthly fee for a service I might use 2 or 3 times a month.

 

Kunos wants to do his own idea and copying another product will fail always on a niche market.
For now we can only speculate what will come even we know some basics like dedicated Server, Serverbrowser..

 

I've been with iracing for the last 3 years, the service works well and you really can have great racing every day, at least in popular series like GT3. But the content isn't attractive enough for me anymore compared to AC so I won't extend my subscription when it runs out in couple of months. I also don't like what they have done with the Ruf, using the unchanged roadcar model for creating a GT3 car but that's another story.

But tbh, AC offers so much quality content, if it was a service like iRacing (which has cost me about $400 btw.) I couldn't pass on it. It's just too good and simracing is a hobby and a passion of mine.

 

More whining for Mulitplayer, in a backhanded sort of way. AC is working fine for me and it will in the future as more DLC is released over many years to come THAT IS THE BUSINESS MODEL! As for modded added content, you don't have to use it, but it will be offered free and by some very talented people as well as some not so - that's the luck of the draw, or checking out their rep. Better still how do you think Dev's become dev's? Do you think it might be by creating extra content, or some miracle and the knowledge is gained via the aether?

As for iRacing, tried a three month deal and played less than an hour as I hated everything about it, pricing, points system, pricing, FFB, pricing and never ever ever owning what you purchased, well unless you keep paying month in month out. AC has it spot on for me and I look forward to how it develops over the foreseeable future, DLC coming already, dev's that are passionate about their product and always there to offer help and support.

If you think iRacing is so good why did you come to AC (EARLY ACCESS)?