The thing about early versions of GT (I played GT1 - 4) was they wouldn't have had the budget or seriousness to have to worry about real tracks iirc every track in GT1 was fictional. A "filler" was fine.
If we were talking about the PS1 titles... sure... but Polyphony was already making Sony screw-you money by the time GT2 shipped. The best-selling PS1 game of all time is GT1. GT2 is third. (Final Fantasy VII was 2nd). They had "real" cash from that point; GT2000 and onwards. 4 in particular was the first to feature Le Mans, the Nordschleife, various layouts of the Fuji Speedway, the Twin Ring Motegi, and so on. Heck, the simple fact they secured Laguna Seca as early as GT2 and came pretty close to having Spa-Francorchamps is telling of what PD was willing to do early on.
Games were not serious and nor were the prices or investment in things like wheels and rigs, so seriousness didn't matter.
Oh no, you're one of those "serious game" people. Were you actually believing
The Real Driving Simulator at face value, too? Is every other video game a toy in your eyes?
Sigh.
As early as GT1, Gran Turismo has been called a simulator. There was nothing like it on the platform, and PC equivalents were for an even smaller audience. Games weren't """"not serious"""" before, they were video games still and they still are video games today. What changed are definitions. We categorize, sometimes wrongly and arbitrarily, every racing game into neat boxes like "arcade" and "simulation" and "simcade", but these are monikers that don't mean much.
Games we refer to as racing simulators are old. Some of the sim racers considered the greatest of all time are ancient titles. Many Papyrus titles, in particular. Their problem is being confined to the PC, and requiring beefy configurations for their era. "Seriousness" has always depended on the player, not what the games were.
What Gran Turismo did, and still does, is give the general public a taste of realistic driving while still being accessible enough you can play it with nothing more than the latest console and a controller.
Now players can be expected be serious and spend £1,000s on a setup. A bit of reciprocation and respect would be nice.
Flat out, no. By and large, from the point of view of who the audience GT7 is marketing to, that is completely false. Besides the fact it's asinine to expect most of the playerbase on a PlayStation game to spend VR headset moolah, that's never what Gran Turismo was about.
Yes, the most serious drivers will spend the money on the rigs and equipment to drive better, but Gran Turismo 7 remains a game that is designed around the PS4 and PS5 controllers. Yes, these consoles have official wheel and pedal setups, and yes, there are official simracing rigs that run GT instead of a PC-based racer. But these things are for a tiny percentage of the actual player base.
This is still a mass-market. mass-audience, mass-appeal video game in a genre that doesn't draw Call of Duty audiences. GT, like Forza, in fact, needs every single thing it can to be as appealing to as many people as possible, because it's still a product that needs to make money.
If controller support had been an afterthought (i.e., as it is on many PC sims), GT7 wouldn't nearly be the accessible title that it is. It is those games that expect you to bring a wheel; any other input method, even if it works, will be very unpleasant until and unless you spend considerable time tweaking it to your liking.
Appealing to extreme hardcore racing nerds like you and I is not the point; it's just a small part of the strategy to draw as many players as possible.
Now they have a massive budget and team. With profits PD would seemingly rather horde instead of feed some of it back to the people that make their profits.
Gamer discovers video games are products that need to make a profit, just like everything else in the world we live in. Stay tuned, we'll see if they figure it out...
They want to host serious ESports but on daft unrealistic tracks with dodgy or irl dangerous sections with daft track limits, kerbs, run offs, trackside furniture etc. Regs make realism.
Everyone has evolved with the times except PD.
You're still going on with that... Yeah, I'm just going to defer to Famine's comment. Never check out the WRC scene if what you can find in GT7 runs you up the wall.
Or do, actually. Please do. Maybe you'll open your eyes eventually. Get your head out of the "regs" and the realism obsession for five seconds and you might realize this wasn't the point to begin with, especially in a video game that isn't making eSports its entire focus. GT Sport did that, but I already said my piece on GT Sport.
It'll never be perfect. There isn't a perfect racing game. The "everyone" you speak of either all showcase fictional tracks in their games, or have problems of their own. There isn't an El Dorado of realism and regulations.
There is one other that makes attempts at a very surface level with details that can easily be found on Wikipedia with minimal effort. This all despite that with each of my replies I have made attempts to steer things back on track.
.... Yes you've said that already, I'm not asking to be brainwashed further I'm asking for further insight, because the game development side of games interests me.
