> Gaming is a hobby, sim racing is a hobby. Semantically you are correct
> since iRacing is obviously not the hobby itself but one example of it.
> Still, as a statement it is as meaningless as saying that Gibson Les
> Paul is just another guitar, not a hobby.

Better stated would be that iRacing is no more of a hobby than any
other racing game, so why should it cost 10 times as much as other
racing games (use my 3 year iRacing rental and fee estimate)?

Part of the issue is that it's a big budget game with a very small
target audience. EA spends that kind of money on each NFS game that
it releases every year, but with sales ranging from 5 million to
9 million per game, the cost per game sold (or rented in the case
of iRacing) is relatively low. 5 million copies sold versus 8,000
active iRacing members is part of the reason I'm asking about the
number of active iRacing members.

Even with the current expensive pricing scheme my guestimate is
that iRacing needs about 30,000 to 40,000 active members in order
to have a postive cash flow. It appears that this isn't going to
happen, so I'm staying with my original estimate that iRacing will
change signifcantly within 3 years of it's release date. The special
offers they are making now are examples of small changes.