Time for GC2 and/or Skytrak update?

[Blaiser]

The GC2 is a fantastic product. Gives great ball data and is very reliable. Foresight has never needed to update the device because it is already so accurate and reliable.

However, in tech years the product is ancient. I believe it was released in 2010. If Foresight was going to release an updated version, what would you like to see improved? And when do you think this might happen?

My quick proposals are:

-No more flash
-Larger hitting area
-Alignment stick

These proposals are essentially just asking for a watered down version of the GC Quad.

SkyTrak is also a great little device. Believe it was released in 2014. Not as old as the GC2 but maybe enough time has passed that there will be a new version?

Would love to see a few improvements:

-Shot delay
-Larger hitting area
-Some sort of club data add-on.

I know, purely speculation. But it just seems inevitable that each company should be looking at releasing a new product sometime in the near future. Especially with the Mevo+ entering the market.

My big disclaimer is that maybe the market is still just too small for personal launch monitors, and each company is really making their money on the high end professional devices. So not much incentive to update their current offerings.

Thoughts?

[andygg1986]

I can't see Foresight coming out with a watered down quad. The data tolerances are tighter on the quad, but I think those features that you mention are the main reason most people spend the extra few thousand dollars over a GC2. I think a lot of people overestimate the size of a company like Foresight too. They are a big player in a small market, and probably only have a handful of hardware engineers. In San Diego, half a million dollars a year only gets you 3-4 engineers, which is a lot of GC2s and Quads to sell. They recoup their development costs because they can continue selling a product for years after the design is done. It's not like the cell phone market where you make money by getting repeat customers to buy the latest and greatest product.

Skytrak sells a lot of units, but they are able to keep their prices down by making hardware sacrifices. The delay is caused by offloading some of the image analysis to the PC. It is cheaper to do it that way than have FPGAs and processors in the device doing the processing. Their cameras also have a narrow field of view (small hitting area) which probably lets them use cheaper cameras. One alternative is the Mevo+ approach where you have radar which is easier to process with hardware than images so it reduces the delay, but the radar unit costs more than the cameras and also has its own set of limitations like needing more room to work. Skytrak might be able to sell enough club data add ons to make it worth their while, but you have to figure they would have to make the price less than the Skytrak itself and would also sell fewer club units than ball units. So it is hard to know if they can make a business case for it. They did do the Skypro integration a couple years ago as a cheap way to get some club data, but that didn't seem to catch on.

[Blaiser]

I mostly agree with your view.

I'm certain I don't know the supply chain or economies of scale within the industry. But, there is a general course that products will get better and cheaper over time.

To me, 10 years feels like an ample amount of time to get some better components for the same -- if not lower -- price points.

[andygg1986]

They may be building them cheaper, but there is no incentive to sell them cheaper unless their sales start declining. People are still paying $4k for an 8-9 year old GC2, so foresight isn’t going to start selling new ones for under $6k. Maybe Mevo+ and Uneekor (or some other product) will start pressuring them though. It’s just a somewhat unusual market situation because you have a relatively wealthy customer base with demand but not that many suppliers.