So why is there not much buzz....

[sid1977]

I downloaded this the other day but was surprised to see such a small community? I understand the game is in beta but would expected a little more. I've played a few hours using my G27 and i was impressed. Im not a sim nut so i wont begin to comment on its qualities as a sim but i sure had fun going for a few laps. I think the pricing is a little steep, 5 quid for a track seems a bit of a rip off to me. I could spend like 100 quid easily and still not have a complete race experience.

 

[Warren Dawes]

there is traction control in get real mode it would be unrealistic if there wasnt

Not for ALL of the cars in RRE.

 

[Jan Mikuž]

It's a bit unjust to critisize Simbin only. They appear to be only the developers of the software.
RaceRoom is a bigger scale project as i've noticed today at www.raceroom.com.
It's exactly as the guy from the first page assumes. The devs/publishers/owners are attempting to bring racing excitement and enjoyment to people of all ages/sex/skill/experience.

The owners/publishers obviously have big ambitions with the brand. And that's what it really is. It's a brand, a serious commercial product designed to make money and to appeal to as many people as possible, not just another racing game.
Must be an expensive business venture too.

 

[Mikko Lashay]

It's a bit unjust to critisize Simbin only. They appear to be only the developers of the software.
RaceRoom is a bigger scale project as i've noticed today at www.raceroom.com.
It's exactly as the guy from the first page assumes. The devs/publishers/owners are attempting to bring racing excitement and enjoyment to people of all ages/sex/skill/experience.

The owners/publishers obviously have big ambitions with the brand. And that's what it really is. It's a brand, a serious commercial product designed to make money and to appeal to as many people as possible, not just another racing game.
Must be an expensive business venture too.

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

It's a bit unjust to critisize Simbin only. They appear to be only the developers of the software.
RaceRoom is a bigger scale project as i've noticed today at www.raceroom.com.
It's exactly as the guy from the first page assumes. The devs/publishers/owners are attempting to bring racing excitement and enjoyment to people of all ages/sex/skill/experience.

The owners/publishers obviously have big ambitions with the brand. And that's what it really is. It's a brand, a serious commercial product designed to make money and to appeal to as many people as possible, not just another racing game.
Must be an expensive business venture too.

That is certainly true. And from their point of view it may be a good business decision.
At the same time, we don't have to like it and they wouldn't be the first company that tramples over the expectation of their core customer base to appeal to a wider audience.

I don't even have a problem with the change of course. What I would like to see, one day, is a company that while expanding their market gives their core base some consideration. Sure it is more expensive and maybe it doesn't make sense from an ROI point of view, but from a marketing standpoint I think it would make sense. Beside the increased sales (they have lost me as a customer until further notice) if they can include the m ore fanatical audience, by not alienating them they can count on word of mouth and street cred they are in the process of losing right now.
Should the product fail to appeal to that wider audience they would have a hard time retracing their steps and try to regroup by counting on the sale to our small, but faithful audience.

That's why I believe that a much better move on their part would have been to release a game based on the old GTR2, with better graphics and better sounds, keeping as much of the features as possible. Call it GTR3 and immediately start working on their new project while making money out of that release. Their new products would have had time to come out more refined and with the features that everyone expects of a racing game these days, not just hardcore simracers.

Most games are MP these days. Releasing a game tied with a major RL racing series with the promise that in 2014 their second issue will have multiplayer doesn't tell just me they are having serious issues with it,. It tells the same thing to any casual gamer as well.

Even from a casual gamer standpoint, the game is way too expensive for what it delivers. 1 car (physics) with 3 body shells, a few tracks, no MP, untested AI. No support race, no historical. Nothing more. Bare bones DTM with Push to pass (or DRS but we all know it's PTP).

I am simply unimpressed by Simbin these days. I wish them well, but I won't buy their products until I see a change of direction.

 

[Ernie]

1 car (physics) with 3 body shells...

AFAIK this is not true. It's 3 cars with different physics, even if the handling and performance is quite similar, but it is typical for this kind of silhouette car racing series.

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

AFAIK this is not true. It's 3 cars with different physics, even if the handling and performance is quite similar, but it is typical for this kind of silhouette car racing series.

If you say so I have no reason to doubt it. They feel exactly the same to me. Simbin has always been very good at making different car equivalent on track, so it is entirely possible.

 

[Jan Mikuž]

Another good post, Corrado.
I guess we'll have to wait for another couple of months until we can give an updated and more accurate judgement of the quality of the game. But, yeah, as of now it really does appear as though the publisher/owner/devs' main goal is to develop software that fits perfectly with the large scale RaceRoom concept, whatever that means. But they appear to be struggling to connect all the dots atm. In the end it's pretty simple: If the final product is a great game and the price is ok, the people will pay for it. If the gameplay and concept doesn't appeal to people and the game gets bad rep/publicity (like it's happening now) they probably won't so much.

It's not just about the game, though. Obviously they intend to monetise this product in many different ways(as apparent on raceroom.com), not just through software (R3E) sales. Quality racing game/sim is a vital if not crucial part of their concept, though.
I wonder if their concept can succeed on a mediocre/bad racing game and if they would be ok with that...

 

[Ernie]

Even if there was a small patch 3 days ago, but referring to informations or new Dev-Blog or Q&A part3 it seems like Simbin is still on Christmas holidays?

 

[Boby Kim]

Apart from releasing patches to iron out the last wrinkles, im afraid the game is done, finished. The portal is complete, maybe some cars and tracks still to come. Everybody is able to compete in the leaderboards...that's it folks. Time trials...how exiting!

 

[Andi Goodwin]

Apart from releasing patches to iron out the last wrinkles, im afraid the game is done, finished. The portal is complete, maybe some cars and tracks still to come. Everybody is able to compete in the leaderboards...that's it folks. Time trials...how exiting!

i hate to disagree with you but its far from done

Andi

 

[RaceNut]

SimBin stated that work on RRRE features would resume after the Holidays so it is quite early in that regard. Obviously, they were focused on DTM in recent months.

 

[Jay Ekkel]

very far from done

 

[Boby Kim]

very far from done

That is exactly what i hoped to hear! Simbin is alive right?

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

to me it looks like someone figured the sim-crew are just a far too small audience, whereas the racing fans are a much larger audience. they overlap, sure, but the hugely larger bit is the racing fan audience.
it should work fine next season:
- guy goes to watch a dtm weekend, say in zandvoort, runs into a simbin stall, maybe even a raceroom tent with 24 raceseats and dtm2014 installed. guy thinks: cool!, buys the game, installs it, grabs his kid's game controller and starts playing. guy is happy.
- Or this way: group of friends watch dtm race, advertisement tells 'em they can download the game, easy to learn but real atmosphere, they download, plug in their game controllers and have a great night.
- Or this: kid plays games via steam, scrolls through the free to play, stumbles across race room, downloads, plays with keyboard, loves it, is presented with dtm banner, asks dad to please please buy, gets what he wants spends happy hours playing with his keyboard.
i bet there is way more money in these chaps than in the couple of thousand chaps who play racing sims. simbin just went where the money was, i'd do the same. look at how rf2 is struggling to deliver a finished product after two years ...

 

[David Wright]

There are way more than a couple of thousand sim racers. iRacing which only offers on-line racing has 45,000 members and sims which offer AI such as GTR2 and NR2003 sold in the low hundreds of thousands. Even GPL sold 200,000 copies.

 

[JayJayRaceinho]

....agree, there is way more money in those "racing-fan-chaps", but they tend to race road-cars and less GTR&DTM Cars. Those people like to play forza,gt and upcoming pcars more. It will be hard to get those casual-racers to play GTR&DTM Cars.....so they should concentrate more on a "SIM"-R3E and/or license more road cars.

 

[Peter]

I'm happy if they concentrate on a Get real ''PRO'' mode and skip the road cars.
Have already more than enough of that in AC and others.

 

[Keith_G]

Since there isn't a Raceroom Racing Experience outlet anywhere near me (only 1 in the USA, I think) can anyone tell me what software (game) they use at those. Is R3E meant to be a home version of that same game? It would seem that this game would be what they use if it is part of the larger RaceRoom enterprise. Do they race against each other in that game or do they only do hotlaps and have a leader board? I think they have leader boards on the website but not sure if they are linked worldwide or not.
So, if they can race against each other in these retail centers, if they can, why is it so difficult to implement single races or MP in this game? Just asking, not looking to start a bash SimBin campaign.

 

[Jay Ekkel]

Right now most RaceRoom Centres are using the ""old"" software based on Race07 technologies.

A few locations, as far as I know (not 100% sure) our mobile units, the Raceroom test centre in our Studio and the one in Germany and the Nurburgring location have the ability to run the new ""EvO"" software which is based on the current R3E tech. On those locations and events you can race against each other. But there is a world of difference between doing a local (LAN) race and an actual MP (over the net) race.

Ofcourse the software in our studio is more advanced then what you can use in the event, but its only a matter of time before we can slowly start rolling out an MP experience to the public

 

[Keith_G]

Thanks Jay, I appreciate the answer. I assume the centers and the PC game will be similar in the future but not sure if that is the way it works. If so, at least they have good reason to keep developing the product and that is good for all of us.