Just a quick thought, and I'm not even sure what direction my mind would take on this at present....
A Perfect Golf simulator pass currently costs the princely sum of $0.80 per day.
Trackman's acquisition of Perfect Parallel is most likely chiefly in two strategic directions:
1. To improve the overall offering of simulator play on real-course environments. However, a question has to be asked if the real-course environments which Trackman as owners of Perfect Parallel would look at would include user-created environments, what with liscensing, course-owners intellectual property, JNPG-designers intellectual property and the use of such environments, of quality ranging from superb to just good, within their own product.
2. To gain greater exposure and branding within golf broadcast, where the swing data an modelling which PP provides to broadcasters would be branded by Trackman, and where their own resources can dramatically improve the scope and depth of what is a major part of Perfect Parallel's established business.
A consumer game product is most likely not a strategic acquisition which drove the purchase, but of course has been hand-in-hand with the development of the game side of the product, alongside its use for simulation. You always have to bear in mind that not far behind the original previews of the game when still in development, we saw it in action within a simulation environment.
Based on the as yet unconfirmed assumption that users of other simulator products would continue to be able to use any future version of Perfect Golf that may come about, it may make sense for the new owners to continue the option to play the game using the established input methods, but actually charge the same rate as it is costing the game's simulator players at present.
With that in mind, and as I have said in opening this post, without really having weighed up how I feel about that as a future pricing structure, the question for me is presently:
Am I willing to pay possibly as much as 80 cents a day to continue to gain my golfing enjoyment in the manner in which I presently play, whilst also supporting the business model of the game's developers / owners, and most likely put it on a much firmer footing whilst continuing the access to the product outside of the simulator cohort?
I don't think that Trackman plans to charge 200$ per year to play on PC or console. If they are thinking that way .... they would be stupid. Only a few console or PC players will pay that. Return of invest (programming) simply won't be there. The big money comes with larger numbers of sales + microtransactions. For instance DLC (courses, clothes, balls, clubs, animations).
) of an EA Sports product, it may make more sense to them to not have a multi-directional marketing plan and enter a gaming environment, instead running the game as a division of their main product offering.
