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.