GTPlanet is the largest and best source forum for the GT series
Well yes, we know. But where's the proof they listen to us in particular, today? All the elements seen since March tell us the exact opposite. They heard about the
general complaints (very low rewards, very few events) because they're worldwide complaints. Not GTPlanet's complaints in particular.
Plus speaking about players, how many japanese users have you seen around here? I counted two.
I would even make a wager that 98% of the players on all of the versions of GT have an account and follow threads here on GTPlanet.
98%...I highly doubt that.
This would be their main target of users.
Think about trophies and percentages of players who obtained them. This was discussed not long ago. It should tell you roughly who is playing GT7 right now, or who remains, compared to the big sales numbers.
The thousands of players on the leaderboards are the "elite". Think about the younger audience and the casuals.
Target of users isn't just who plays GT7 at an elite level. Target of users is also, and mainly, who will buys the game. When you build a target for your product you have to take into consideration many factors and that includes even basic things such as age, sex, interests.
And in GT7's case they're mainly casuals. Not us. We are the elite....the few. The casuals don't ask the same things we ask. They don't have the same feedback we have.
Plus you also have to take into consideration the willingness of PD to deliver what the fans want.
The main goal for Sony and PD is to sell the game, the loyalty part for GT7 comes second, or even third. This isn't a business like Amazon's where loyalty and user retention is essential to survive and grow. Here Sony has to sell the product once every 4 or 5 years. There are plenty of occasions to acquire new customers using marketing strategies.
So the support isn't a priority. In other words, they don't care much about our take, as long as we bought the game. They already made their profits. And it is even more noticeable when you think Sony and PD don't have direct contact with their GT audience. They do have their social media channels, but the posts made are always very generic and there's no engagement with the userbase (by engagement I mean their replies to our own replies). And the channels are not even handled by PD...no...they're handled by Sony, you know, those who DON'T make Gran Turismo. Polphony Digital do. Kaz has his own twitter account and his only posting about GT consists of monthly silhouette images and a few characters in japanese. Where-is-the-communication? Here it's unidirectional (Sony->fans / Kaz->fans), not bidirectional (PD->fans->PD->fans / Kaz->fans->Kaz->fans).
A good example of good bidirectional communication comes from the direct competitors of Polyphony Digital and Sony. (I think it's pretty clear who they are and what franchise I'm talking about). I've seen it for years on their official forum and facebook for example. They fixed issues the game had, they keep working WITH the fanbase to make a better game.
What is PD doing here? I don't think I have to reminds anybody about the actual state of this game even after 8.5 months.
I'm still baffled by the content of this letter, dated March 18th 2022:
I wanted to explain what happened in this update.Immediately before the release of Update 1.07, we discovered an issue where the game would not start properly in some cases on product versions for the PS4™ and PS5™.This was a rare issue that was not seen during tests on the development hardware...
www.gran-turismo.com
All of this brings me back to my first question: where's the proof they listen to us in particular?
