Two new tracks visited doesn't actually tell us what ISI is working on right now. Just to make a point - one of tracks in iRacing was released over 2 years after licensing was announced. You don't think they've spent two years on one track, right?
That is quite good for sales though. If we were not in beta, and not wanting to drive people from outside the rF community which already exists into rF2, we'd be announcing our licensing deals as well. The thing is, you get to market each car and each track multiple times when you do it. You might tease licensing, announce licensing, announce production, announce stages of production, announce testing, announce a release date, announce pre-orders (if you were selling each car and track, which we aren't), and finally you can release it, announcing that. In my opinion, that is why you see so many announcements of this type. Every hit from google, or person who says 'well, they're going to have X car, so I'll sign up/buy it now' is good for your business. I'd probably not want to milk it as much as my examples above, but you will start to see things like that once rF2 is at a place where someone from entirely outside the community will be able to pick it up and run with it. So you're not getting specific announcements at this point because, we're just not wanting to 'push' the product much yet. I'm trying to give you existing guys some info though, at least you know there is 'a track' being surveyed, rather than not knowing anything. Hopefully some of that post made sense. Reading it back it looks a bit of a mess. Tiring week... lol
It's tough to do the work while balancing. You obviously have a vehicle usually, but for every 1 mile of racetrack you might walk 2 or more before you move on. Actually my main issue this week is my knees... But I think that was from climbing grandstands (my thighs were on fire).
Your boss sent you away unprepared, here is some useful stuff for your next trip, which your boss should get for you: http://www.spysource.net/xGlassescamcorder.htm http://www.nuance.com/for-business/by-product/dragon/dragon-for-the-pc/index.htm + laptop and headset, laptop with extra battery can be at backpack. Sure, everything comes with a cost, but such tools are much more than just toys today, just look and talk, for details surely proper camera will be needed, but making notes and general looks etc. such 'gadgets help a lot. Of course pain is good too, that makes body stronger, I should be now superman if that would be true
you need some Roller Boots Tim, old Bauer style ones (4-wheels on each foot), perfect balance for the Camera and iPad or whatever, just be careful on those hills
There are 2 other sims that are always releasing media (especially 1 of them), announcements, and so forth, even though their sims are probably (1 for sure) 6-18 months away. I just hope all the people that hear about these sims have a chance to hear about rFactor 2 aswell. The problem is most people (except for the truley passionate ones like us "hardcore" sim racers), dont know the difference from a good sim to an outstanding sim. So therefore as long as a sims physics are pretty good, then the marketing (beautiful videos, pictures, ads, hype, etc) will do the rest and lure the customer to that sim, when they may not have any idea just how much better rFactor 2 is, ESPECIALLY in terms of physics. So I hope you guys start doing more, even if its just some more announcements. Look at iRacing for example. they have announcements for a new laser scanned track, with just the laser scan pics. Then a couple months later they will release a couple real ingame shots of the progress. Then a couple months later they will make another annuncemnt with more pictures saying its almost done. Then a week or 2 later another announcement for the actual release. Its like they are taking every opportunity to just get some info out to the public, just to build more followers, more interest and public knowledge of the product, and therefore more customers. I mean look at all the people (idiots) that choose to buy iRacing over all other sims JUST because of laser scanning, so clearly all iracing's laser scanning marketing and "getting the word out there" strategies clearly worked. People wont touch any other sim because they have this laser scanning stuff sooooo beat into their heads from all of the iracing videos, announcements, progress updates, article write ups, and general marketing stuff etc I hope ISI start doing that to start attracting more people. As console sims SLOWLY SLOWLY get more and more real, pretty soon Forza and Granturismo (and whatever else may be out there) will begin to actually be true hardcore sims, and therefore will actually start to be direct competitors to ISI (and a couple other hardcore sim companies). They have CRAZY HUGE budgets, huge teams of people, more people willing to play on consoles than on pc, etc etc. So I hope ISI start really pushing out marketing crap like the other sims do, I dont want ISI to get eaten up by these huge companies in the next lets say 5-12 years. (Dont say 12 years is so long from now, its been 6 already since rFactor 1 came out).
Tim should just answer: ISI we do it our way. just like all other companies. 1? for TIM ? will ISI look after us ppl that have already bought this product and get better looked after than the new ppl ?? not like iracing that only targets new members with the best deals and does not look after there existing members. had time to think about what i said i cant see anything ISI can give me that i don't already have for the game so i think my ? dose not need to be answered.
You will, but it's too early, as I said. I'm not sure what rFactor1 has to do with it. It's been quite a few years since Frontier: First Encounters, too, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to buy Elite IV. And you certainly can't run your business based on other businesses. You pay attention, sure, but going further would just harm your own product.