After one year in Beta, turbo training-gaming company Zwift has announced its transition to a paid-for subscription service, alongside the introduction of a ‘Workout Mode’; a first move into the structured training market by the fitness entertainment start-up.
The company notes that with its one year of significant investment in building the leading online cycling platform, Zwift has announced a subscription launch date of 29 October and non-contract monthly pricing of US$10 for all markets, except the UK, which will be priced at £8 per month.
Zwift’s structured training or Workout Mode will launch as a Beta product on or before 29 October and will focus on ‘gamifying the training experience’, a move by Zwift to make structured training more appealing to a wide range of cyclists.
In the year since Zwift launched, the community of riders pioneering this new form of indoor cycling have expressed a high level of interest in structured training. The first version of Workout Mode will provide a point of departure for users to train on Zwift and will offer workouts that are ‘highly social and inspiring’.
As a reward for their support, Zwift users who signed up and downloaded Zwift prior to October 2015 will be rewarded with Zwift virtual goods.
“In only a little over a year, the community of riders on Zwift has grown beyond what we thought possible. This winter it’s likely they’ll be riding a million miles a month on Zwift Island,” said co-
founder and CEO Eric Min.
“From the day we introduced Zwift last year we clearly signaled our intention to offer our game as a fee-based service. Our Beta community helped refine Zwift to the point where they felt it was worth paying for and the introduction of structured training brings us to the moment where I’m proud to say we have a huge contingent of riders willing to subscribe to Zwift.”
Introduced to the world in Beta in the autumn/fall of 2014, Zwift has grown to include riders from over 100 countries that have put in more than 300,000 rides covering over 4.5 million miles (7.2 million kilometres) or about 19 trips to the moon.
Zwift users have also burned over 315 million calories or 1.1 million slices of pizza in their first year of virtual riding. But more importantly, Zwift notes that it has made indoor cycling a truly social endeavour, with tens of thousands of users being able to ride together online and also analyse and share their ride data on fitness trackers such as Strava.
Built on a long-standing passion for the sport of cycling, Zwift is a company of dedicated cyclists that also happen to be experienced software and video game developers. Combining a passion for the cycling world, Zwift is ‘the first company to use massive multiplayer gaming technology to bring the outdoor cycling experience indoors.’
Athletes from around the globe can ride with each other in rich 3D generated worlds simply by connecting their existing devices (e.g. trainers, power meters, heart rate monitors, etc) wirelessly via open industry standard ANT+.
From friendly competition to casual group rides, Zwift is building a community of like-minded athletes united in the pursuit of a better indoor cycling experience.
