First of all, I am happy to pay more for a better product so this isn’t about money.
But after doing two different video routes today over about 100 minutes I am not sure that my Zwift experience is any more engaging or addicting. Don’t get me wrong, the video is good quality and Zwift did a good job of inserting me into that recorded world.
But after 5-10 minutes of taking in the scenery, I was just back to focusing on my conversations with others, watching my #s and looking at the climbs/descent graph. The video just faded into the background and was forgotten.
I am sure Zwift is betting heavily on this to attract and retain more cyclists but I cannot help but think that this investment should have been spent somewhere else. Better in-game social tools, better UI, more exciting gamification. Zwift has so much to learn from social media apps and video games to make a stickier experience and it is genuinely curious that Zwift instead leans-into…pre-recorded, looping video?
Time will tell, I could be the odd man out here, but if I were a betting man this is going to put Zwift into the red.
I think it makes sense to leverage the existing Zwift infrastructure to introduce a new virtual riding experience aimed at growing their revenue.
I just worry that this means the development focus will now be on Zwift Plus while legacy Zwift will be effectively frozen in terms of new worlds and significant route expansions.
My first ride in Zwift was around 2017, but it took me until 2019 to warm up to the cartoonish graphics and start using it as my main indoor platform.
I enjoy that Zwift consistently works, and I don’t think I’ve ever lost a workout due to platform instability. HOWEVER, Zwift has a serious habit of launching new features with a massive amount of noise, pitching them as a “complete new era” for indoor cycling, only to let them silently fade into oblivion.
They consistently pivot to the next shiny project before fully refining what they just built. At the end of the day, Zwift+ looks like a stealth strategy to sooner or later justify hitting us with a massive 50% subscription price hike from $20 to $30. Before you even realize it, we’ll all be paying 30 bucks a month… Or why do you think they got rid of potential competition?
I imagine they are seeking more revenue and to compete with the challengers, because that’s the purpose of a business. But you could also look at the new tier as a way to avoid raising prices on the core product now in order to get that revenue. If you like the core product, nothing has been taken away and the price hasn’t changed.
That’s exactly it. When I see the number of current active users on Zwift and TrainingPeaks Virtual, as I use both, the numbers are often comparable or higher on TrainingPeaks Virtual. Zwift needs to distinguish itself to prove why they are a notch above the other options, especially when the competition can already come in at a lower price point, or even free. Case in point, I pay right around $100/year for TrainingPeaks Premium with the annual Black Friday special, and it allows some significant features Zwift still has gaps - like the ability to load and simulate your own real life routes with their GPXPLORE features. Things like this should be built into Zwift/Zwift Plus. Find out what the competition is doing, and implement it differently and better to prove value and increase revenue.
I was somewhat skeptical after seeing so many videos of Rouvy with their avatars looking so out of place in the videos. Zwift did an amazing job of integrating into the environment. They can do better of course, but I am impressed by how well this came out as a first release.
Now, was it a good investment? I guess I don’t know how much effort these take to make, and maintain. They currently don’t have a lot of routes, and will need to add a lot more to stop people from getting bored with the same routes, but once they have a critical mass of routes that aspect won’t be so important. So I guess it somewhat depends on how much footage they already have, how much actual effort they had to put in to get it, and how much it incentivizes new people to join the platform or pay for plus.
I have so far really enjoyed my video route rides, they are super bright, and scenic. Do I personally think it’s worth the $10/mo additional price? Not sure, the subscription to me is already pretty expensive, and I would be a bit wary of fracturing the base of users from a route perspective - how many people will want to do events on these video routes and get the orange road? If it waters down the events and social aspect then it might not have been the right thing. AI training on the other hand (if it were actually good - still TBD here), would keep everyone on all the same routes, and able to socialize etc… So that doesn’t fracture the user base on routes etc.
Anyhow, we won’t know if this is the right model because we don’t have the numbers.
This.
If Zwift wanted to change the game, they easily could have stacked 2 360 cameras on a car, along with sound recorders and more forward facing cameras.
That would allow for 3D recreation of the world and ability to have our normal game camera and not the RouvyCam, active HDRI lighting from the scene instead of simple light settings (which it’s worth remembering Zwift did a wonderful update in the last year with multi point lighting), and actual sounds.
But no… none of that.
Marketing fooled us with a rider on a video going the other direction; something we can’t do (well… we can, every time… but they’ll never wave back).
Folks that are excited are equally as happy with Rouvy, and that’s fine. But us Zwifters are used to seeing people go the other way, and take turns, and the world be explored.
That sheep that jumps in front of you on Femenia? Will be there tomorrow, will be there in 10 years… assuming you can see it if other riders aren’t blocking your entire view.
Zwift chased a solution that already exists and didn’t improve it despite having the pockets and capabilities.
That to me is what’s properly disappointing and I think might bore people over time unless they feed the system or use gimmies (bonus xp, drops, kits unlocks etc.)
The crowd of people that seem to like video riding and probably would enjoy Rouvy seem to be happy, but it just feels like Zwift is attempting to remake the wheel, not improve it. Either way, they’ll have the numbers and never share it.
Yeah, I somewhat hoped that would have been done, but there’s probably a pretty big hit to performance or resolution when you have to download a larger field of view. I know the other cameras do a lot of optimizations, but at the end of the day it is more pixels that have to be rendered for the opportunity to possibly look in a different direction at any point.
Today the mbps requirement is 50mbps, that would probably have to go up if they had 360 views at any point - or the resolution would have to go down, or you would need to buffer more of the video up front etc.
I don’t think these are the same as Rouvy as the rouvy avatars look so much worse than the Zwift integration, I don’t think I could stare at those robotic rouvy avatars day in and out, but the Zwift ones are done pretty well.
I’d guess it’s less than standard in-game roads. I expect a lot of it can be auto-generated from the GPS track of the video (albeit cleaned up). Just follow the track and make a road 2m wide on each side. Go in and tweak it if necessary to bend it around obstacles, or raise it for speed bumps, but relatively little effort compared to making something from scratch.
I presume what they’ve done is create a standard Zwift track (i.e. what we all normally ride along and is used by the Climb Portal) and then just don’t render anything for it (unless video runs out). But the physics etc. all “just work” because as far as the engine’s concerned we’re riding along a normal road.
Sure, some effort went into the video playback, but I expect all the tooling’s in place to make these simple. At least as simple as any Climb Portal road, since there’s no time spent texturing, adding environment elements such as trees etc.
I agree with lots of the comments above, I just don’t know if this is going to attract new cyclists or make Zwift “sticky”.
Ultimately, my post was coming from the perspective that Zwift has limited money to invest into the product for today and tomorrow and it seems the direction is confused and doesn’t make me confident to its future.
Video implementation that is “me too”, table stakes, is not differentiating from others. If you’re going to do it, go all-in: not a stagnant POV of limited roads that will never be able to accommodate large group rides or present a massive online population of riders going in all directions.
What is the Zwift population that doesn’t already have (and pay for) coaching from Garmin, Apple, Strava, etc?
No AI. It is astonishing that Zwift product management has missed the boat here. Where are AI bots riding out in the wild to taunt us to chase them? Hundreds of opportunities to better engage riders with AI, none implemented as far as I can tell.
Investment into next-generation of core riding engine. Put your stake into the ground on the rendered world or the video world, not both. Now they have to build, QA, and support both.
Again, the social tools have not been touched at all. We have an incredibly simple chat window. Where are rider hover-overs that show social media profiles (etc), group ride polling, built-in audio chat (or even video?). Surely Zwift developers have used apps like Instagram and know what makes people scroll endlessly for hours?
People have repeatedly said they absolutely do not want that. They don’t want better or more realistic graphics, but it’s a critical emergency when they don’t have bike shadows.
Sometimes the current less than realistic graphics don’t go all that well in certain worlds, even on a powerful computer.
Capturing them in 360º could have been interesting and a real differentiating point, but this also massively increases the video size and places burdens on streaming (and may overwhelm the connections for some people).
Just having real world routes on on Zwift doesn’t mean you or others have to use them instead of going to them in real life.
On the flip side, a lot of people can’t afford to go pack a bike up and fly 20 hours to explore real world routes. And it may be logistically impossible for various reasons such as work, family, etc. So having a virtual version of them is convenient for many people in that situation.
If I’m going over to Europe with a bike, that costs a huge amount of money (many, many thousands of dollars in airline tickets, then accommodation, etc). Not everyone can do that.
You might be fortunate you can just jump on a cross-border train or a local flight for an hour or two and explore where you want, but not everyone has that luxury.
I’ve completed a few of the new routes and I honestly don’t have any complaints with the quality of the video or the rider experience. I’ve upgraded my membership for now but I would hope to see routes added on a regular basis or else I’ll probably revert back from Zwift+ because the current library is fairly limited.
I also hope Zwift will continue to develop and invest in its core worlds rather than neglecting them in favour of Zwift+ features. Yes I’m enjoying the new video experience but ultimately my preference is for the main Zwift worlds and community-based riding.
The biggest problem I see is the repetitive nature of video. They are short, always the same weather, time of day, time of year, same cars, same same same, etc etc. Everything is identical every time you loop around again. It 100% reminded me of learning to drive a car in HS with a video on the front of the room (I’m 56). Literally the same experience you get riding with a youtube video. Feels like a downgrade, its really disappointing, and for me, not worth the extra cash.
What a lost opportunity to improve the original product! From my perspective, that is where they should have raised the bar, investing in better graphics, more realism, engagement. Of course, if they did that, they couldn’t make it a “plus” subscription… as someone mentioned, the enshittificashion of Zwift has begun.
There are some Zwift generated vehicles and other graphics on the roads. In the future Zwift may be able to expand that to differing clouds, weather and vehicles.
I tried Zwift Plus today since we have a one-week free trial.
The video looks nice, and the augmented reality is actually pretty well done. Video quality is good, although it’s not quite true 4K (tested on a Mac Mini with all settings maxed out, connected to a 55" 4K TV).
But I think the biggest problem with Zwift Plus is that the world feels empty. I rode for an hour and only one person passed me. I didn’t pass anyone. The climb leaderboard showed me in 3rd place out of 3 riders!
Even though everyone has access to the free trial right now, and you’d expect people to be curious enough to give it a try, the video worlds still feel empty and boring.
Another thing I don’t like is that you can’t change your viewpoint. That makes the experience a little less engaging compared to riding the regular Zwift routes.
I’m also not sure who the coaching feature is really aimed at or how useful it is for most riders.
Overall, it’s hard to justify paying extra to ride alone on empty roads. On my video route, there were more cars than bikes!
Unless more people switch to Zwift Plus and start riding the video routes, I’ll stick with the regular Zwift experience. It’s simply much more engaging.
At the end of the day, I think the key to Zwift isn’t the graphics or the video quality. It’s the other riders. That’s what makes Zwift fun, and that’s why I keep coming back.
Yeah, empty rides could become an issue, and certainly given the upgrade price there will be far fewer riders especially from countries where the cost is onerous in local currency.