For a one off $85 fee, or $44 with $12 a year for continued access.
In the words of John Mcenroe "You cant be serious"
I am always amused at the quibbling about prices of any sim or game on PC because other than Iracing they all cost peanuts.
I say this for two main reasons.
1) Console titles and annual renewal/subscription mode.
Before Rfactor I raced Codies F1 on Xbox. The title cost about £50 and EVERY year you had to buy a new one. They were not always better and often not as good but the whole community saw it as their duty to race the latest one. Then you had to pay £40.00 for xbox live.
So that's £90.00 per annum. To drive one type of car on 18-19 tracks.
You can lump Pcars into the same "annual renewal / subscription" mode as before the ink has dried on 30,000,000 revenue for Pcars 1, they are putting their hands out for crowd funding for Pcars 2. (I won't ask what they have done with all their own funds).
2) Hardware/peripheral costs.
My rig consists of
PC £500
27" 2ms PC Monitor £180.00
Fanatec CSW V2 wheel/F1 rim £680
Pedals £80.00
Total £1440.
and there are people with double that investment.
I would say that each year I'll find some hardware to spend £200 more on
So the price is chicken feed.
Despite the fact that by most authoritative and
independent commentators opinions the RF2 sim is the most technically accurate and complete engine with the best physics, FFB, AI and car setup parameters available and real road and the tyre model (to name a few). Despite all this ISI have a philosophy of doing it all at a very reasonable price. That's why certain things don't happen overnight or in a rush. That would take a bigger team and more costs and mean higher prices or paid DLC instead of free DLC.
To me it seems they have a philosophy of "do you want it fast or do you want it right"
From time to time someone will pipe up with comments about graphics. I love the graphics. I think they are great. Drive a car at late afternoon at Sao Paulo and see what I mean. You can have your overdone "Disneyland" graphics I want it real. I want to end a session bathed in sweat and euphoric about a race.
So with a
one off investment of
£54.40 (yep the equivalent of one year of codies F1 not including XBL ) I have probably 5-7 years of RF2.
I did it 3 years ago and have saved £300 in Codies and XBL. Right now the console players are all having to buy new consoles too.
Access to approx 46 tracks and maybe 35 cars (that's over 1500 combinations).
That's just for now. Every few months a stunning new mod comes out. It seems that modding for RF2 is much more technical than RF1 so it seem far only the best and bravest do it to date.
The results from those that have dared can be outstanding.
The core is superb, the content more than enough so long as you don't want to hot lap a different car every night for a year (you have Forza for that).
As I enter my 4th year of ownership the annual costs of the sim are down to £14.00.
edit#2 and every new car or track that appears (about 10+ annually) is totally free.
Summary:
My hardware costs £1440.00
My annual sim costs £14.00
So its cheap and certainly one of the best and IMO
The best.
Knowing what I know now about RF2 I would have been happy to pay much more.
Edit: The simple reason that they went to the higher one off or annual model (of the crushing amount of $1 per month) is that otherwise free loading thieves would steal their work and they want to ensure their revenues.
