I remembered there was something... http://www.bondguide.de/topnews/eil...finanzierungsbaustein-in-der-zeichnungsphase/ http://www.bondguide.de/topnews/unv...faltung-aus-realem-und-virtuellem-motorsport/ When this news was released this summer, i almost expected something happening that would or could affect the business circles of Raceroom. That it would come in this format, I did not expect, however. I would be careful with this company by Lauda. The investor in me sees red lights blinking on his early warning receiver. Something just does not feel good. If possible, I will stick with Raceroom as it is now, and keep on playing it. But I will not embark on another, new title again featuring this business model.
I think this thread is missing some music. by the way, someone should start passing the tin foil hats.
That's what I'm thinking. Who better to take this game out of beta and finish things up? We've all been asking for a lot of stuff. Maybe the publishers are finally realizing the market they are missing. Most of the reviews I have read about this game, have said they were suprised at the lack of certian basic content. Sector 3 is busy with the whole DTM track consoles at the live races, and keeping up with all of that. So it's time to bring in some more help.
Didn't know that...Makes me wonder even more why they haven't found and understood this page then, where you can easily see that since this year LI is based and registered in Darmstadt, Germany. Personally I wouldn't worry too much about the outcome of all this. It's still way too early to talk about the actual consequences of what's going on behind the scenes, as it looks they are still seeking for investors atm, very early stage. But however this will pan out, I'm pretty sure they won't make the mistakes some are speculating about, like neglecting the people who backed their endeavours in the past few years. There's a reason they revived SimBin after all...Let's just hope the people with the money know what they can - and more importantly what they shouldn't expect when buying into that heritage.
Didn't think it would be long until the business model was mentioned! Fancy this chap runs on Linux! No it's not a dig, I too use a Linux based security PC post Router, all yer eggs in one basket and all that!
Seeing as we're on the internet I'm just going to say right now that this post is in jest. Ahem... Stop announcing new content companies and give us more features already!
Then why on earth release the news in the first place? The press-release is so vague as to be non-sensical. Read through it, and all it really says is that a new game-company will open named Simbin who may or may not produce a sim-racing product at some point. Er......Okay, I suppose. "For more information go to www.simbin.com" Do that, and you get a contact E-mail at Sector3. So does this mean S3 and SB are two subsidiaries of KW or RaceRoom or whoever owns the lot? Does S3 have the licenses, or does the larger corporate control them and as such can use them at SB as well? What exactly does "in collaboration with Sector3" mean? Sharing of personnel? Licenses? What? And since we're repeatedly told that S3 is a small dev-team, what resources are going to go into this from S3? If we assume SB is to do console-versions of S3 products, does this mean a move to Unreal for R3E? If so, will this be an additional IP, or a rebuild of the original one? And if it's a new IP, what does this mean for R3E, and the always-online restrictions? I mean, if you can't tell us details because of investors, licenses or whatever corporate stuff is going on in the background, that's absolutely fine. I can respect that. But if you can't tell us, FFS don't tell us anything. All you're doing is inviting a bunch of questions that you can't answer yet. Sheeesh...... (Btw, none of this is aimed at you, Christian. It just happened to be your post at the bottom end )
From what I see, at this moment, we are in some serious X-Files shituation so for now let's just wait and see what follow! And to quote some foxy dude, all I say is "I want to believe". I want to believe that something great will happen!
Just me guessing, but as the PRC article kinda proves, when companies are being registered someone will notice (sooner or later ^^) and questions will arise. So in order to avoid too many speculations the least thing to do in such a scenario (SimBin transforming into Sector3, then re-establishing SimBin alongside S3) is to do what they did, spread the word before somebody else does and conspiracy theories flourish. But all those deals take a lot of time to be worked out, that's just how it is with this sort of business ventures. Just think about Simon Lundell's Tiny Feet Studios and the GT Legends sequel. The studio was established in 2014 and the plan to revive GT Legends was announced a year ago. Since then nothing much has been heard of them, but that doesn't mean they aren't still working on making it happen. All those other questions? Not saying nobody in charge could answer them, but it wouldn't surprise me if there weren't definitive, clear-cut answers to many of those at this point in time.
When putting together hear-say and some bits of media rumours and what I have read about it here and there, this is what I end up with as a speculative but reasoable explanation for what is going on. Lauda'S company has had a title in development for long, and the same company some time ago agreed to cooperate with some financial investment company. That cooperation aims at making coins with offering and promoting esports, and selling stocks. Already then the Raceroom logo and some written lines on their webpage were used to hint that one was in contact with Raceroom, cooperating with it in any form, refering to its online connectivity. A centre of gravity for their activity is Asia, another one is Europe and North America. The first has bigger growth potential, the second is currently still the bigger interest market. It was written that Sector3 "helped" in rebuilding SimBin. I have a hard time to believe that this just stops, if the original news indeed describes a true reality: that Sector3 has helped in recreating SimBin. Lauda'S never-born but maybe all the time worked-on racing software is meant to target online e-racing, uses the business model and maybe also the infrastructure from Raceroom or takes it as a model to learn from and to base on, and that maybe Raceroom is meant to be led into and melt with this new thing, resulting in something like raceroom 2.0 with new graphics engine, but getting sold as something like GTR3 or World of Speed, using the infrastructure or at least basing on the infrastructure established by Raceroom. I do not take it as granted that Sector3 themselves know for sure what their masters indeed are up to in the end. S3 is the developer - not the management. And Lauda may play his own game. When he meddles with SimBin and Raceroom Entertainment, he may end up seeing Raceroom as unwanted competition to his economic endavour. Happy endings are not ruled out. Sky falling is not ruled out either. I prefer to expect somethign bad, but prepare for something even worse, and then be left with the chance to get pleasantly surprised - hopefully. I want offline playability for Raceroom. To me this is the priority feature now. I spent to much money than if I want to believe in just words that all will be good.
I don't know, offline availability is not my no.1 concern. I'm an old-fashioned gamer and sometimes I like to play in single player mode against AI in all types of games, but even if R3E will be maintained after the new title's release, I think it's pretty obvious that the community will shift to the new platform eventually and many of the core online features will become useless or shut down completely. And without a good community your investment will quickly lose it's value, even if you will still be able to play against the AI. And with the current business model that would be pretty unfair to current players. iRacing for example is frickin' expensive, but at least it's a reliable and continuously developed service in return.
Doesn't really seem to be working, does it? Not quite a fair comparison though. TinyFeet is a brand-new start-up and (AFAIK) doesn't have any effect on other companies or games. In this case we're talking about a brand name that disappeared a year ago to make way for S3. And now they're suddenly being resurrected by the same guys who 'killed' them in the first place, with no real explanation as to why or for what purpose. Add to that the fact that the only S3 release is a game that not only a fair number of people have invested a substantial amount of money in, it is online only. So from a consumer stand-point, if the addition of SimBin means a move to consoles, that will leave us kinda screwed. It's like if iRacing suddenly reported they're starting up a new company, and intend to support it for 'cross-platform' purposes. You would have an insurrection on your hands in the iRacing forums. It's all very well to state that these things take time, and so on. But it shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone, that some of us are a little worried as to what this means for R3E. And if there is no information coming, people will fill in the blanks as well they can. That's just human nature.
I don't know, the number of tin foil hats seems to be manageable, not sure if it'd be the same if they hadn't made any announcement and the news would have occurred on, let's say PRC only. I picked TF as an example just cause it's a racing sim dev, mainly to point out that things tend to take a long time, maybe even more so in this sub-genre due to having to deal with all sorts of companies and licensing agreements. That's one of the things I've learned from many little talks with the devs, almost everything that's got to do with licensing other companies assets takes a tedious amount of time. I can understand the psychology of such a situation and I'm sure the devs/publishers can as well. But I can also understand that they can't/won't make any substantial statements until every contract has been sealed. The blank filling is sth they couldn't avoid even if they tried. Every announcement would raise more questions, just as every statement about the development progress in RR does. In the end my evaluation of the situation is mostly based on my experience with the people I'm in contact with here at S3. And so far that has been positive throughout, also in the sense that they aren't trying to screw anybody. That's why I'm not seeing the glass as half empty in this situation. F.e. the mentioned cross plattform support doesn't neccessarily mean a move to consoles, it could (and the way I interpret it does) mean a release across all available plattforms, including PC. I know I could be wrong, just as everybody could at the moment, it's a guessing game. I just don't think it's fair towards the people here to always assume the worst, because from my pov there was nothing in the past few years that would suggest that they are going to forget about or deny you guys in the future.
I can't see this thing being anything other than a joint-development opportunity. PC gaming is held back by "next gen" (aka 4 years old PC tech) consoles already, so if Simbin are going to focus on the consoles, and S3 are continuing with R3E, and with the online content unlocks style that R3E has been done in, maybe it's simply a case that they will share gfx engine, that side of things, and the R3E content we all have will just "unlock"...? Coz I can't see why R3E couldn't go on for a very long time. Maybe a rename in unison with a joint release of a console Simbin title perhaps, but to those already 'bought in'... R3E 2.0 On the other hand, it's good to dream about that hybrid R3E+rf2+iracing+NFS monstrosity (NFS for the customisation options. Who doesn't enjoy picking their own wheels and bodykit?) Tbh, it doesn't feel like there's enough people in the world interested in the genre to support all these different racers each year or two, especially when you check steam stats for player numbers. In some ways I'd rather all these different devs all got together and made that dream hybrid-sim together. Imagine an mmorpg style persistent world, but for serious racers and street racers, cross-platform (including Linux!) Instead of a peak of 1800 players over the past 2 weeks... 20,000! World of Carcraft ......and then the little boy woke up and realised he was a grown man. Now if only I could get good enough to motivate myself to play
For players like me, 99% and more SP only, it is a decisive factor. And I would still claim that the majority of players still are SP-exclusive players. There was often quoted a market survey that Kunos did before they started on AC, and which showed them that less than 20% of players having bought a race sim that was both SP and MP capable, ever cared to go online even just once. Later forum debates showed that meanwhile, while AC grew, this value has grown to I think around 40% for AC. Assuming that it is not that much different with RR as well, I think the claim that the (whole) "community" necessarily would move to a new title or would abandon Raceroom if it is no MP-supportive anymore, is not legitimate. Some would move, some not. Me personally currently have no interest to start a new race title journey at all. Raceroom, Assetto and Dirt serve my needs in that regard, I do not ask for anything more. Nascar 2003 I have played for over ten years. GTR2 for many years as well.
I'm curious about it and i wish them all the best. But actually "SimBin" is just a revived company name. We only know that SimBin will focus on "creating cross-platform racing titles for current and next-gen platforms". Hopefully we see some more info & stuff from SimBin in a very near future. But for now it's just a press release, which is currently creating more questions than answers.
Just for the record, I don't think anyone is intentionally out to screw any of us. I don't have that much tin-foil. But...... I'm also aware that there have been some 'odd' decisions in the past, due to the fact that the developers aren't necessarily calling the shots since they don't control the purse-strings. So yes, cross-platform could include PC as well, and the experiments with the UE4 engine might have been a precursor to that. In which case, I promise to be properly ecstatic when that news is released. In the meantime, I'm going to stay apprehensive until we know something for certain.
Christian, just to make this clear. My scepticism is not directed against Sector3. But Sector3 is "only" the developer. The big business decisions are made by Raceroom Entertainment, and it is at this level where I would expect the announced business contracts are being made. Sector3 has earned themselves my strong sympathy and appreciation, I really like what they are doing and you will not hear me saying any foul words against them. But business and management - are business and management, and that is Raceroom Entertainment's role to fill. And I do not think that Raceroom Entertainment has found a way to bypass or avoid the needs deriving from economic facts, or would endlessly resist changes to its way of doing business if it thinks it can earn more coins that way. Because this still is a market economy. And business still is business. In other words: its about money. And that must not be the bad thing that left leaning people always make it sound as. Telling that by experience.
I don't know if my facts or my interpretation of the situation is correct, so I'm pretty confused with this announcement. I don't want to be a tinfoil hat conspiracy guy on this, but I have some concern. I am a SP-only player. I've never really 'needed' the title to be available offline, but now I see that as important in case the support for R3E shifts or goes away, as I'll be frustrated with the content I've purchased and time spent on the title. IIRC, when Sector3 was formed/split off/whatever, wasn't it presented as the little group that would fix the mess that Simbin created and save what could be a good game? Wasn't a lot of people frustrated with Simbin's decisions and direction for the title? Wasn't it Sector3's efforts that gave us so forum interaction, dev streams, and many updates each month? New content, fixing old content, improving GUI, added features, etc. Now that they've sort of righted the ship, Simbin is back in a vague way and this is a good thing? I don't get it. This has a weird feeling like we all cheered a single mother for leaving an abusive husband and raising the child on their own...and now that the kid is doing well in sports its okay for the abusive dad to come back in the picture? I'm sure that is a stretch analogy that will surely be disproven as more facts emerge, but until then, I'm confused and concerned.
While in this current situation I'm more of a "glass half full" feeling, I do hear exactly what your saying and that is why I clicked agree. But I choose to believe in Simbin on this one and I trust that in the end we will be happy