between the release of GT4 and GT5:
Polyphony Digital: Tourist Trophy, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, GT PSP, GT5
Turn 10: Forza 1, Forza 2, Forza 3
Plus, I can hardly see how GT5P, being a WIP version of GT5. And GTPSP being a port of GT4.
Also, if you're going to reply to this by whining about the numbers of staff like in the post I'm quoting below, please try to think about the point I'm making first.
You had a point besides "they aren't at fault for not modelling more premium cars/putting more work into other features because they're a small team"?
And the right answer would be looking at the budget. It's been assumed that every year's worth of developing time cost roughly 10 mil. This time not only went into GT5, but also GT5P, GTPSP and various non game related projects.
I'll refer you to the points that were made about these games already.
GT5P being a WIP of GT5, GTPSP being just a port of GT4.
Well, it further strengthend the bond between PD and the car industry on a level seldom seen.
and what, exactly, did that bond do for us players? It's cool for PD, but did it anything to further the game?
You have to factor out the differences and see if you can come up with compareable figures. And I'd say PD hadn't been doing this bad over the past 5 years.
Not bad in what regard? Sales? They obviously didn't.
Did they meet their deadlines? Did they get the same high ratings as they did with their older products? Did they get ahead of the competition anywhere near as much as they did before?
That is if you think making a game like GT5 selling for roughly the same price as let's say Uncharted 2 is a good idea. Which it isn't. I got maybe 25 hours worth of gameplay out of Uncharted 2, and I enjoyed it very much. For the same kind of money, I got at least 250 hours out of GT5 and I'm far from done yet. GT5 has stopped me from buying other racing games (sorry to say I didn't pick up Shift 2 because EA pulled the plug) - in fact from buying other games alltogether.
You're mixing up the customer's side of the things with the company's side of things. Doesn't amtter how much time they're getting out of it, does it? What matters is the budget you spent on it...
As these kinds of numbers are never revealed to the public, one can only guess. But lack of manpower/mismanagement is not a valid counterpoint.
What numbers are you speaking of, exactly? The time one can spend with a game?
I know a fair lot of people who've gotten more time out of Uncharted 2's multiplayer than out of all of GT5. So I fail to see the relevance here.
As had Forza 3 with the rebound settings IIRC, the AWD glitch, the general glitch of cars bottoming out and not affecting handling (thus a pentalty was introduced). In that respect, GT 5 is near as makes no difference flawless.
You refer to that as gamebreaking glitches, while having different physics for online and offline, while not being able to save the different tunes you need is 'near as makes no difference to flawless'? That's a bit odd, isn't it?
So, again, if you know the trade, then you should bloody well know that throwing people at a problem solves, in the most cases, nothing.
And I'd assume that someone who knows management would know fairly well that the solution always depends on the problem. Not being able to handle a workload simply based on the amount of manhours is a problem that is perfectly well solved by increasing the amount of people working on the project.
Adding more people to the management team won't solve anything (in most cases), true. Deviding an easily devidable workload amongst more employees will usually speed up an unneccessary slow process.
I spent an awful amount of time gathering all the contractors I needed because skilled people being willing to work to your standards, time frame and demands are very hard to find. By the time you got all trades in, you can seriously think about taking them on board alltogether. If you do outsource, you'll probably find yourself in a position where in the end you spend alot of time and money just covering up.
That is why you properly analyse your situation continuously: To react in time to those conditions. The moment they realised it took them months in man hours should've been the moment for PD to start thinking about another way to handle the workload, instead of keeping it inhouse with the same amount of workers.
And that would have been more than enough time to find a proper contractor. If they haven't noticed that they're spending way too much time modelling the cars after, say, three and a half years, that option would've gone right out of the window, of course. But you'd have to ask yourself: What kind of manager would somethign like that go on for that long?
Outsourcing is not an easy venture. But you and others make it sound like you can find talent round every corner, willing to work for no money, are loyal to your company and deliver the desired product effortlessly.
Nobody is saying it's done effortlessy or for free, I think. Just that it saves you money and time if you're reacting to the situation at hand in time.
That's because FM3 is hardly another game than FM2 was. They haven't done anything new apart from adding content in the form of some cars and tracks. The basic engine is still largely the same as used in FM2. And yes, I'd like to mention that the 100% cockpits just don't cut the cake. They are sub par and not up to next gen standard. And even pulling that off gave T10 a very hard time.
But GT5's 800 cars with no cockpits at all is fine? GT5 lacking gameplay features that have been standard on the last generation (like saving at the end of a race or saving tunes) is fine?
I'm curious to see how they improved all this with FM4, but as I take it if you want night racing and/or weather, only SHift2 and GT5 will do. It's "easy" to release a game every two years if you don't maintain the current version (having been FM2) and just tidy up the things you should have done right in the first place. And I can't see they made a mobile version either.
They also didn't release 'glorified demos' or 'ported games'.
Also, I've said this countless times before, if people are not willing to acknowledge that FM4, for example, is adding quite some new features, that's something I can't do anything about. Aside from calling it false, of course.
As I said above, outsourcing is not the cheapest nor fastest way under any circumstance. You have to prove it that it can be done, by hard cold numers, and even then the fighting begins concerning the numbers.
Now watch and learn, because I have a very good, maybe the ultimate example, of outsourcing gone wrong: Smart, the car company. Mercedes Benz thought it a good idea to outsource 100% of all manufacturing. Let the supliers do their bit, coble the car together in a shed, and all Smart Inc. does it do the sales and bills the customer. They blew this big time, because either cables didn't fit because they were a bit too short (well, the suplier had to make some money too, didn't he?) or the parts were not the right colour or number because communication broke down or failed.
And I can give you the perfect counterexample.
Our callcenter has more customer data available to call the customers than they could properly handle in time. Much like PD had too much workload for their timeframe to be kept. Hence, we started outsourcing to get things done in time - and it's working perfecty fine.
Finding the contractors took aboutfive or six motnhs, esatblishing all the security measures needed when working with sensible data took another two.
Again, nobody's saying that outsourcing works under all circumstances and solves every problem. The problem PD had with modelling more premium cars, though, could have been solved if they decided to outsource as they noticed the amount of workload.
I have some personal experience with this and I have to say, outsourcing is one tricky business and nothing done in a heartbeat when you are in a hurry. Unless of course you don't give a damn about the results.
I don't know your time frames, but given how much time PD had on their hands, they would have had plenty of time to take care of the outsourcing - again, if they were wise enough to constantly analyse their workload, their deadlines and their progress.
If they didn't do that, well, that's no better, is it?
Missing the time frame is indeed a thing to blame on PD. Along with some bad communication and strange marketing.
Among other things, yes.
But then again it is visible that PD is still working (hard) on GT5, and I for one am very happy being able to play GT5 since last christmas. There's new content been added and PD does still work on the (graphics) engine and it shows. Maybe GT5 doesn't looking as stunning in HD than GT4 did in SD, sure, but whereas FM3 was just a sequel of sorts, GT5 is infact covering new ground.
Given the gap between GT4 and GT5, they've had a lot of new ground to cover just to close the gap to the competition.
Also, there are still features missing that have been printed on the back of the (I know, that point has been made countless times, but still).
They did bite more than they could chew, but when it works (night racing on Le Sarthe/Nordschleife, sunrises after it stopped raining, the classic Jag, Alfa and Ferrari racers) it bloody well blows everything on consoles out of the water. Being able to run 1000 cars with the new physics engine is more than enough to keep me happy.
And when it doesn't work (when driving one of the 80% of standard cars, when you're on a track that doesn't support weather or time change - the mayority of tracks doesn't, by the way, when the graphics are again tearing or dropping frames, when shadows flicker or smoke and rain pixelate your car, when the physics change between online and offline, when you can't save within a championship, when you realize the customization is more than just limited, when the standard cars don't have acces to a feature you want to use, when trying to actually play through the single palyer career), it is blown out of the water itself.
That is what I've been criticising about GT5 so much: It's schizophrenic. it goes from 'cream of the crop' to 'rock-bottom last' in a splitsecond.
Don't get me wrong, I positively
loved GT5 when it worked. Coming out of a rainy night on the 'Ring, driving into a sunny dawn was great. However, thise experiences were few and far between. And that 'between' put me off - big time.
Though, I have to say, the PS3 and (thus?) GT5 is lagging in online features and ease of use.
As far as online features go, I think it is to be expected... MS gathered a lot of experience and expertise with XBL and Windows Live. Still, being very, well, basic in that regard is just another flaw, yeah.
This is a stupid comparison. Well let's see which one would have sold more, if they cost the same.
The Corolla, because Ferrari would've gone bankrupt halfway through.