alanti: EDIT - Ya post vaporised Swen - oh hell or is that a lost ball?
LOL alanti! After the length of my rant I think it would be closer to a dozen lost balls - very funny. Truth is I went into edit to clarify my comments about the 7 million users, which you subsequently took care of very well (I only used that because it's one of WGT's main slogans, along with over 300 million rounds played). The next thing I knew was zap and no more, so whether it was me or not, and highly possible as to mea culpa, I do not know - but just adding to the irony of the threads that I have participated in lately - getting my just desserts from the all powerful perhaps? But, ever the masochist as to retribution here I go again ....
You took it further and back to the cheaters. We have both participated in those threads recently and the wtf thread that Creamer started actually about vemming is now gone as far as I can see. It turned a little ugly and specifically towards the cheating, which Creamer did not set out to do initially. For the rest of my thoughts on this I will move them to the Last of the hacking thread and I am sure that all readers of this thread will be waiting with bated breath for what I have to say in that one .... LOL! (Crap, just finished it and am exhausted).
You nailed it as to price point and maximum profit with all the usual demographic and psychological research (never disregard an individual's perverse desire to continually spend in the expectation that things will improve if they do so) and they are doing it very well. The real key is the durability and that has been extremely low even for the best available. If you can get away with that, you continue to do so. As you said, we all have a choice and that is always going to be there, but most people will try to keep pushing the higher end because that better round will be doable if they have that extra something from the more expensive ball ... forgetting of course that it is just more expensive to replace when their newly replaced ball immediately goes into the water, OB, or the deep weeds - sometimes due to the swing meter, or vemming. Unfortunately, no recourse but to load up another, or finish the game with standard balls (likely a great aid to the low score they were going to post). The VEM I would not mind if it applied to all, it doesn't but that argument is in the other thread about hacking. I would always want things to happen that are not 100% calculated, yes that is real life and just as in real life I have hit many shots I thought were "perfect", but alas were not and also hit a goodly number that I mentally went, "Crap!", well worse actually and they turned out fabulously well. Or, I messed one up badly and then hit an amazing recovery shot that should not have been possible and routine par! I do want that, but that is very hard to program and the level of vemming really needs to be looked at. If they are to allow people to cheat because of the revenue they generate for wgt, then they should have their own section of the game - cheaters here and non-cheaters here - 2 sections of reasonably fair play within each.
As to the balls though, as Apex pointed out as to costs. Yes, but .... If it were that simplistic, I'd buy in but on a comparative basis that does not necessarily hold. When I used to play Links, I bought my PC game and the equipment it came with. As they brought out more courses, I bought the expansion packs so that I could play them. My choice to do so, if I wanted more courses I had to pay (once though, not like TruGolf), but all the equipment was mine as were the practice facilities with putting green, driving range, etc. I could use those as often as I wanted to improve and without each shot reducing the life span of the ball I was using. Did I have all the equipment choices wgt offers, no I did not, but I also did not have to pay to get equipment and balls that are necessary to achieve the higher levels. You cannot be a legend in this game using starter clubs and balls. If there is someone who has achieved that using the same game engine that I am using and has done so legitimately, I would suggest that you would be one of the greatest gamer's of all time. Look forward to the long list of those that have ... and TL, well that would be indescribable as to ability!
So, 2 rounds of 65 at a cost of 0.97 without green fees, to use your math, versus unlimited rounds on Links without any ball costs, unlimited practice in specific practice environments, for a one-time cost total cost of $69.99 (1999 money admittedly, but my dollar was worth more then too), plus course expansion packs at say 3 courses per $24.99. Now, redo the math and see what is the relative/equivalent cost. And, since one of the biggest wgt user complaints is lack of courses - that cannot be considered to have been better than Links either as they had enough before gaming changed with technology that allowed internet speeds that rivaled PC gaming speeds. So, gaming moved on, but so did the cost of playing - the sheer amount of revenue that wgt is generating from ball purchases alone is staggering. I agree with Jimbog that we (read me) do not know what the earnings are, but to anyone with a minimum of business acumen it is huge.
The one other thing about this to me is relative to real golf. Depending upon where one lives, the cost and availability of playing golf obviously varies. But, as a scenario from someone that lives within distance of a fair number of courses let's say it costs me $70 CDN for a so-so course and I have to drive 30-40 min's each way and it takes almost 5 hours to play, plus obligatory pints after the round on the 19th. All told, about 6.5 - 7 hours, $90 excluding any "balls" (See what I did there? - sorry ....). Anyway, I could play probably 12 full rounds on wgt during the same time and eat dinner as well, walk the cat (possum, platypus, land shark, etc ) have even more beers while doing so since I don't have to drive and only pay approx. $12 for ball usage. Crap, that is a great deal! But, still doesn't cut it really to me, only 2 rounds a ball is not a real person's game - well, it is now I suppose because that is how things have become as to marketing and the general public go with it because they want to be cool and with it even now, although it seems to phasing out a bit. When I was a pretty good golfer and with my own ego flowing in my late teens to the point of playing Balata for about 3/4 years, I could still get several rounds, sometimes 4 or 5, out of one ball and that was shooting more than a 65 average (for 18 on a reasonable course) - it did not look pretty at the end with all the spiderweb cracks but if still basically round was quite usable, only I decided when it had run out of hits.
Happy golfing to all!