RGT Is No More

General Discussion
21

you are assuming the people that try the other platforms don’t come back.

Zwift has the volume of users - you can ride pretty much anytime you want and there will be thousands of users also riding. if someone tries one of the others currently they will be pretty much empty so they might not think much to it and return to zwift.

you are also ignoring how many new users zwift gets. if 5 people leave but 10 join then the overall trajectory is still upwards.

not saying it can’t happen, just saying I don’t see it happening any time soon.

ps - facebook are still the biggest social media platform.

22

So was MySpace…

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23

let me reassure you then that things here were exactly the same 5 years ago haha.

i will even make the bold statement that zwift are actually paying much more attention to the community than they used to, but they will have to pay me a lot of money to actually defend that position

welcome to the people from RGT and if any of you do not want your free 12 months of membership, sell me your code for half retail. hit me up. might as well float that one out there

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24

I don’t believe you get my point.

Today Zwift is far far far superior.
That doesn’t mean they will be in the future

They developed/ innovated very much from the period when the indoor cycling started. They are real pioneers But by todays standards they lost the pace, because of the “old” platform they have.

IE mywoosh, indievelo are still young and agile, they are able to innovate on a far bigger pace then currently Zwift is able. Especially mywoosh with their unlimited funds. They both only lack users. (It is not about where their platform stands today, but how quick they are able to implement changes. Zwift acknowledge this, hence why the monthly updates)

And it is not about who has the biggest userbase, it is about when the competition gains a critical mass, and they are growing steadily. When the critical mass has been reached it could all go way quicker then someone could have foreseen.

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25

Yup. This forum is a strange place. The same people that spend hours of their week complaining about all the problems with the platform, and the same ones that refuse to try anything else and defend Zwift to the hilt when someone else has addressed on of their pressing needs.

26

whoa james brother. you’re never gonna catch me complaining in public. making fun, sure. i’ve always liked zwift, that’s why i pay for it

27

Blockquote

You have also different consumers, you’re called a laggard, a very brand loyal person. Zwift should value that.

I’m an early to late majority, I will probably follow when there is a critical mass settled.

Currently the innovators are looking into the new platforms

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28

Wasn’t talking about you!

I think this says it all.

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29

oh, aye. can’t speak for anyone else. but even though i’ve yet to do it myself, i recommend anyone interested in other platforms do at least check them out. there are a lot of them now, and it’s nice to know that there are always other options even if there is one less now than there used to be in RGT

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30

As much as I appreciate they were trying to draw people into trying WahooRGT and perhaps even subscribing to them instead of other platforms, it seemed like business suicide to offer their whole platform for free during the early years of the covid pandemic.

To a lesser extent, I thought they were overly generous with what was available for non-subscribers, once unlimited free covid access ceased.

Shame to see it going though, I was a beta tester from the early years around 2018, just like the Virtugo app that started up around the same time but ceased before the pandemic.

31

This. At some point they’re going to bottom out onboarding new users and how they react when membership revenues start to decline is what may do them in regardless of the number of users they have.

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32

My impression is that Zwift are already focusing on what non-users, potential users, might want from the game, more than what the existing core of dedicated cyclists focused on winter training want. Their choices may not always be winners, but that’s what they are trying to develop. They’re trying to identify the users they want to acquire and make the game into what those people want. This generally runs counter to my own preferences but I understand the reasoning behind most of their product decisions. Personally I wish they could acquire more people who share my values, but those people already know about Zwift and have probably tried it.

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33

My impression is that Zwift are already focusing on what non-users, potential users, might want from the game, more than what the existing core of dedicated cyclists focused on winter training want.

If Zwift, and more specifically the investors who dumped in 1/2 billion in funding, wants to be “Fortnite for Fitness”, or at least Peloton-ish, then everyone on the platform right now is an early adopter. And we all know what happens to early adopters. Right? Right?!?!?!

What to do with your early adopters is always a fun product marketing dilemma. This where I was going to say something dad-jokey about heads rolling instead of wheels but I’m not going to do that. Heh.

34

Depends on the time of the year. I did lots of RGT races with more than 50 riders eg the Wahoo/LeCol series earlier this year. The problem with club organized races was RGT didn’t put them on the main portal if they didn’t have 20 or more entrants, so it ended up being a chicken/egg situation (which could be added to steering as a shoot yourself in the foot reason).

35

Guess it depends on who you follow. I see zero MyWhoosh or RGT, almost no Rouvy or anything else. TrainerRoad sometimes.

I see more Peloton than any actual competitors to Zwift.

36

https://www.fondo.cc/ looks interesting though. Magic roads on steroids?

Using AI could be exactly the sort of disruptive and innovative move someone needs to make to lure people away from Zwift.

Judging by the teasers at least, people certainly aren’t going to be saying the graphics don’t look good enough.

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37

I guess I didn’t know which races or series was actually populated with real people. I’d join a race with 10 bots and me, which wasn’t really worth my time. I never figured out how to predict where people were going to be. I didn’t love the platform for a bunch of other reasons

38

i’m not sure I see this as a direct competitor to zwift - a large part of zwift is riding with others, even if you solo ride (which i always do) there are always other riders about.

stuff like this where you create your own routes will always only be for you or a small group if you are able to share it.

I think both can exist together as they offer very different options which will appeal to different types of riders.

39

I don’t think I’ve seen anything that suggests the idea isn’t that you can ride with others, and I don’t think “Magic Roads” is their focus. One of the founders said on Facebook:

It could theoretically be used exactly like Magic Roads, but our approach will probably be different, where the community will suggest new routes and those routes will be rotated weekly – at least initially. We want to give people a chance to ride, train and compete together in the same world.

The video above is more describing how they can procedurally build roads from a combination of Open Street Maps data and machine learning/AI to - I would guess - rapidly produce new roads.

The teaser does show groups of riders:

Of course, any new platform will be a relatively sparsely populated place at first. It was the same with Zwift. I have screenshots from 2015 showing me riding with 30 people on the Watopia loop - which actually meant I only had blue ghosts for company most of the time.

I totally agree on the “riding with others” point though, and I’ve oft cited that as a reason I never stuck long with RoadGrandTours, Rouvy or anything. To my mind, none of the alternatives I’ve tried offered me a compelling reason to use them more than the occasional novelty.

But if something like Fondo could offer that new experience, they they might eventually make inroads. At least to the extent they can survive long term, even if they have 5% of the market and Zwift has 80%.

Two of the things some people diss Zwift for are its graphical style, and the slow rollout of new roads. Both of those might be aspects Fondo competes well on. Maybe they won’t care about racing, and focus on the immersive experience. There are plenty of people who’d be fine with that.

I also agree there’s room in the market for different products offering different things; but I also think they’re all competitors to Zwift, albeit maybe in different ways. IndieVelo might focus on the racing/physics experience more so, Fondo on the “photorealistic” immersive scenery etc.

Anyway, it’s vapourware as far as we know so far. Looks cool though, and the sort of thing I’d be trying to do if I had the skills, time and inclination. :smiley:

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40

This is exactly what I’m talking about. Excellent!

This is the kind of thing (and graphics) we need in Zwift instead of the IMO ugly cartoon style look we have now. Technology is advanced enough not to need that cartoon style…

Any real world route could be spun up - Imagine the robopacer groups could be on a different route daily.

All the major French HC category climbs could exist and be linked up with the correct roads between them.