FM Vs GT - Discussion Thread (read the first post before you post)

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We won't know that until the actual game is released.

The difference won't be as big anymore, though.
The question with GT5 is, what do you take as reference? A nice bullshot showing a premium car on the track or a picture of premium and standard cars mixing it up on a track, with shadows flickering all across the cars and track?

I agree that GT5 has great car models and great lighting and loosk stunning in photo mode. But, on the track, it's not quite as good as some people usually make it seem.
 
FM vs GT,the discussion that summarizes the biggest problem for mods and thread relieve alike.

Lets see if it works this time around(well lets see if people can get serious enough)

So,lets start,FM vs GT:

>As a game
>As a simulator
>As sales(not relevant to me,but more relevant to fanboys)
>As fun value
>As grinding
>As Hype
>As a whole
>As "the ultimate racing game on consoles"

Too much to elaborate,too many claims that will follow and too many BS floating around,not to mention personal attacks and all.

In my opinion,I think that this thread doesn't make much sense,as it did when it was on GT5 section,one of its main problems thought its being located in the FM section instead of the general gaming section,with that said the democratic aspect of this thread is already compromised(put it here you get most FM inclination,put in GT5's section and it will have the same result),so why bother,maybe it will in fact not have point at all,due to its nature,but is good to see a place in which all the threads spamming can be finally canalized.

With that said,I think it will be quite fun to see all the people bragging about silly things(everyone does it,even I did that back at the day),which brings me to my final point that maybe can be summarize in a conclusion for further months ahead:

GT vs FM,differs from person to person,from each participant origin,background, preferences,gaming history and many other variables,that makes the general consensus an impossible goal,no matter which side is taken it will never stop,and it will not have a general consensus.
 
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This is another problem in having factual debate, people can find what they want to prove their point. I.e. 'this game is accurate because car x does this like real life' where another can say 'no it's not accurate because car x doesn't do that.' This is for any racing game. Unfortunately no game has got it 100% right so far so there are always things to point out as being right or wrong.

There was a big long interview with Dan Greenawalt in autosimsport magazine around the time of Forza 3's release where he mentioned something that stuck with me: it's one thing to simulate the car accurately, and it's another to simulate it to people's expectations. So if people expect your Veyron to have 1001HP, it doesn't matter if it actually produces 998HP in real life - people are going to hit you for it if you don't have it doing what "everyone knows" it should do.

Back when Shift was released there were some really weird arguments that were - paraphrasing very little here - seriously along the lines of "lamborghini's don't slide". Or "mercedes don't drift". And at some point that means that in that person's head, the way the car is typically driven, or promoted, or whatever, has overtaken basic facts of vehicle dynamics. So for instance, if you very rarely see professional FIA GT drivers countersteering or oversteering, according to this philosophy, that must mean that the car doesn't do that - not that the drivers are really, really good at driving and keep the car out of situations where it does so.

The other thing he mentioned is that there is a lot in reading people's intent - so regardless of what their input would actually do, if you can reasonably interpret what the driver was thinking, it should do what they wanted it to do, not what it would actually do (eg tapping to maximum steering lock possible 3 times in rapid succession should take someone smoothly around a corner, rather than totally unbalance the car). So if your game is really doing what someone's real input would do, and that doesn't match their expectations ("I'm a better driver than this" / "if the real car drove like that everyone would die"), again, you lose, because even if you're matching reality, you're not matching the mental image someone has of what should happen.

An interesting case here is Shift 2. Because Shift 2 was also released on PC, modders have been through all the files and know what the game does, and doesn't simulate properly. Even with all the evidence of what is being simulated well, I still see many arguments about the physics being terrible etc (misunderstanding steering lag/ffb issues for a bad physics engine). The devs only softened the tyre grip dropoff around 5% to assit pad users.

We don't have that luxury with Forza and GT, so it all remains in the realm of speculation and what we can test within the game, which can often be presented to back up any view, good or bad.

One thing seems obvious to me, GT5 struggles to simulate tyres/suspension, Forza 3 does a fairly decent job of tyres but also struggles with suspension. (Shift 2 does suspension really well, watch a replay going over bumps/curbs/jumps, it makes the others look instantly very basic)

It's a good system, but it has its weaknesses too. For cars where the suspension system is very specific (carterham, 997, etc ) it does a really good job. Some other cars and layouts, it's not so good and quite generic in places. It might not seem intuitive but at a certain point, when you add loads of parameters for data, it actually becomes quite hard to sensibly fill it out. So for example, if you have an engine which supports ~60 suspension setup parameters per wheel, and make it interact with a 6DOF suspension model, with every component having its own dimensions, 3d inertia and mass properties, that is actually a pretty scary amount of data to come up with for even one car, let alone a hundred (and not forgetting you then need several upgrade levels, and interact with loads of surface types under loads of conditions). So at a certain point you have to cull things down and simplify it so that you don't go mad, or, at the lowest level of fallout, end up with certain cars behaving radically differently with certain upgrades installed.
 
^ Would you say that the generic data is far enough away from reality to cause noticeable differences to the driver though?

If I was extremely rich, I'd do the following (there's a vid somewhere of it sort of being done in a black suv, can't find it though):

Buy a new car, lets say a VW Golf MK5.
Set up a remote control system in the car with a camera suspended in (or mounted to) the driver seat.
Sit in a building somewhere in the middle of a track with no windows, with a 50" screen showing footage from the car camera (ideally no latency anywhere, but...)
Try to drive the car around the track using a G27 or pad connected to the car inputs (again ideally without lag...), and do some crazy stuff too like trying to drift, slalom, donuts etc.
After driving for half an hour or so, connect the ps3/xbox and drive the same car at the same track in GT5/Forza3/Shift2/rfactor/whatever and compare.

I think that's the only way you could possibly compare to reality accurately, as you're removing the effects of g-forces etc from the real life test. You could even introduce artificial lag into the games to match the RL delays.
Repeat for an American muscle car, a supercar, a Caterham style car etc...

Now of course every little sublety of real life will never be simulated in game, but with a clean track, good tires and no wind/good temp etc, you should see something pretty close to reality.

I think that if you did all that and it showed one game in particular simulated the experience much better in all cases, people would still argue against that game somehow because their favourite game is better!

Anyone a multi-millionaire willing to give this a go? :P
 
That's already (sort of) done for a lot of games where there's nothing stopping you using a MoTeC rig on the car and a MoTeC exporter on your (ISI) game. So for example, when they were building GTR2, Blimey!/SimBin had access to a fair amount of the real team's own wind tunnel data, own telemetry, etc, and could reverse-match to make the game generally fit the same kind of output as the real cars were producing on the real tracks. It's actually a pretty decent method of doing it (as opposed to say single element tests of components) because you're getting the sum of everything on the car at once under real world conditions without having to really extrapolate much out of it - at least for that car running that setup under those conditions anyhow.

To get much better than that - and go into deep single element tests - there is quite a large potential for the system to become a lot more chaotic and unpredictable.

(ed) - the other thing is, generally speaking, they don't loose that much fidelity from going to generic parameters. I think Kaz himself mentioned something similar to this in an interview once, that the days where cars had radically different designs are (other than certain boutique cars) done, and there are really only so many unique characteristics that are going to separate two different 4 cylinder F/R sedans using double wishbone suspensions, etc, even up to a lot of sports cars these days.
 
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The difference won't be as big anymore, though.
The question with GT5 is, what do you take as reference? A nice bullshot showing a premium car on the track or a picture of premium and standard cars mixing it up on a track, with shadows flickering all across the cars and track?

I agree that GT5 has great car models and great lighting and loosk stunning in photo mode. But, on the track, it's not quite as good as some people usually make it seem.

Seeing the game in motion - despite the jagged edges and standard cars (which I have considered in my post; Forza has more consistent graphics), the game is still a beauty to look at.

And contrary to t.o.'s opinion, I find GT is the game which has a 'soul' as well, I guess that enhances the emotion as well.
 
Seeing the game in motion - despite the jagged edges and standard cars (which I have considered in my post; Forza has more consistent graphics), the game is still a beauty to look at.

And contrary to t.o.'s opinion, I find GT is the game which has a 'soul' as well, I guess that enhances the emotion as well.

Hey I gave the game a fair shot. I put it in a favorable position more so than I bet the vast majority of GT5 lovers gave FM3 a fair shot. I bought the game exactly one week before the official release and pretty much gave up on it around April or so. Had it hooked up to my Fanatec 911 Turbo S. With a homemade rig hooked up to the "good" TV. A 60" Pioneer Kuro Elite. I gave the game every chance in the world because I like racing games if they bring enjoyment. Right out the gate using the 6 speed shifter was horrendous. In FM3 it's smooth as butter but, just as in the cars I've driven in real life with manual transmission, but in GT5 is was just plain broken and almost ruined my shifter..... let me fast forward to the point.

A car is just a bunch of parts but when it's your car it's "more" than that. It's like your car has a "soul" in real life. It's like your car has a personality in real life. My 87 Civic SI had a "soul" to me back in the day. We could park where the big boys couldn't. lol. We could squeeze through little spaces getting past some traffic jams in NY when bigger cars had to wait. We could take turns like we were on rails and the folding seats in the back with all that hatchback space and tinted side windows was a real help when.... gonna keep that between me, the car and ... well you get it. ;) In Forza 3 for some reason my cars have some "soul" to them. Seems like they have this little something they do and others don't. In GT5 cars seem cold. Like a collection of parts that operate in some clinical environment that doesn't represent the real world. GT5 just lacked soul to me.

Then I turned around and played Race Pro. Right off the back I was thinking "Man what did I buy this for? Well it was only 12 bucks or so". Graphics were shot. Wasn't exactly the prettiest thing to look at. But once I got those cars on the track WHOA did the fun begin. It lacked ALOT and I couldn't even use my 6 speed with it which was a complete bummer but what was there was like gold. See I'll give almost any racing game a shot. I'm not coming into the game with an automatic hate. I have no loyalties to any of these companies. But if you do me right once you'll get the nod the next time around till you fail me. You fail me and then you're under the microscope for a good long while till you win me back over.
 
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Chill dude, I wasn't belittling your opinion by expressing my own. Everyone has different opinions based on different experiences, and all are equally valid.
 
Chill dude, I wasn't belittling your opinion by expressing my own. Everyone has different opinions based on different experiences, and all are equally valid.

Be easy guy, I'm not ranting, I'm just explaining. Didn't think you were belittling anything, just making it clearer where I'm coming from.
 
Just an FYI but it also depends on the region the car is sold to. Europe generally gets car models 1-2 years before North America does. Sometimes there are 1/2 year models too. My car is a 2005 Audi A4 USP and is the B6 gen, but in late 2005 the revamped B7 w/the big grill was released in North America. I think in EU, they had the B7 in 2004 already.

I guess you're right: http://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/JP/2005-bmw-prices.html

I read the list of cars before I bought GT5 and saw my car on it, so you can imagine my disappointment. Due to this alone, I consider it an error, a localization problem if you will; labeling it "2005 BMW 330i (J)" would have been courteous. These Japanese developers just don't care that most of their sales/customers come from NA, and that fact has annoyed me for over two decades. I had a similar run-in with GT1 and my old '92 Prelude Si 4WS, finding the car in-game to be very different from the one in my driveway (no sports package in a racing game? WTF), so this disappointment was familiar to me in many ways.

Back on topic.. I always buy these games hoping to replicate my real world driving experiences and thrills but all they ever do is provide vague similarities. They're always extremely enjoyable to me, but never once have I played a GT game and thought, "this is so realistic!" I admit to being impressed when I first drove the bumpy Amalfi Coast and bottomed-out in Forza 3; but after 6 career "years" of Forza, 3 GT titles, and a $500 wheel controller, I still can't honestly tell myself that driving in a game is anything at all like driving a car, or that there's an easy way to identify which of these games has a better core gameplay mechanic than the other.
 
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I still can't honestly tell myself that driving in a game is anything at all like driving a car, or that there's an easy way to identify which of these games has a better core gameplay mechanic than the other.

Well, I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon, if at all. There's just so much going on when driving a real that no game can replicate...
This starts with the G-forces and ends with the fact that you probably don't have the exact same tyres available in the game that you have on your car.

All that those games can do is give a rough sketch of what driving such a car would be like, I think.
 
I still can't honestly tell myself that driving in a game is anything at all like driving a car, or that there's an easy way to identify which of these games has a better core gameplay mechanic than the other.

What we all need to remember is that in game, whichever one, we are always pushing the cars to the absolute limit of their accelerating, grip and braking performance. How often do you do that in the real world? The few times I have had 'difficult' moments in the real world behind the wheel of a car I think my racing game experiences have definitely helped me get the situation back under control.
 
I think we have all reached a point in this debate, were we are all starting to realize that the argument of GT vs FORZA base on objective criteria simply doesnt work.

We have seen over the years fans of both series trying to use GRAPHICS / PHYSICS / CONTENT, as yard sticks for overall superiority, the logic goes which ever game has the best (or most) of these qualities surely is the better game......but theres a problem with this argument !

Example:

Lets hypothetically say FM4 has "better" or more "photo realistic" graphics than GT5, would that really sway most GT fans over to the Forza franchise ??? (i seriously doubt it), imo it wouldnt really matter, given that both games are so close in terms of graphical quality it renders the argument mute.

Those fans that historically have touted GT graphical prowess over FM would simply move on to a different feature to argue there case, because thats not really why they prefer GT over FM!

The same is true for physics, if FM4's physics engine turns out to be slightly less realistic than GT5's, that wouldnt really sway the average forza fan over to GT would it !, again Forza fans would argue their case buy simply picking a different area were they know Forza has a objective advantage.

So it must be clear to most rational people by now, that the reason why we so passionately choose to side with one franchise over the other really comes down to "subjective experience", objective things like photo realisim or superior physics are not our primary reasons for choosing our preferred franchise.

THE REAL QUESTION:

So we need to shift the argument into an area that isnt so prone to our own subjective criteria, for that we really need to look at this the same way the two developers will be measuring their games against each other.

The only real way to do this is to ask which franchise has the best business model, or rather which franchise is not only in the better position presently but also for the future.

For me Turn 10 has the better approach than PD, we have seen Turn 10 consistently closing the gap in sales between the two franchises, every release Turn 10 gets stronger, the same cannot be said of PD.

PD imo is hampered by the ivory tower they work within, with seemingly very little care for the needs/wants of their consumers or the gaming community in general, PD are working towards KAZ's vision for the ultimate car game, and are hoping that the strengh of the end product will attract a large audience.

Turn 10 on the other hand seem to be very market sensitive, their vision is simple, become the dominant (or best selling) car game on the market, to that end they are far more open to attracting a far broader spectrum of gamers than PD, They are far more attentive to the needs and wants of their customers, whilst consistently trying to broaden the appeal of the franchise whilst maintaining the integrity of its simulation roots.

The Future imo looks better for Turn 10 than it does for PD, Turn 10 are clearly out to win this battle of the franchises, by delivering the goods, listening to their customers, and seeking out new ways to broaden the games appeal to a wider audience.

If turn 10 can maintain their sales growth, is not a question of "IF" forza beats GT, its a question of "when" will Forza beat the GT series.
 
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I know there is a replay of FM4 in on top gear test track. As well some photomode and game play pics, where is the GT5 comparison to those? It be awesome to see. Especially top gear and how physics react.
 
These Japanese developers just don't care that most of their sales/customers come from NA, and that fact has annoyed me for over two decades.

For the sake of accuracy, for PD that is no longer true.

GT's sales in Europe outstrip those of the USA, and has done since GT4, a title which sold as well in Japan as it did in the USA.

That's raw sales numbers as well, not aligned for % of potential market share (or in plan English a lot more people live in the US than in Japan).

If you account for that in very broad terms, total sales look roughly like this:

North America (roughly) 350 million people / 21.7 million GT games sold = 1 copy per 16 people.

Europe (roughly) 700 million / 30.2 million GT games sold = 1 copy per 23 people

Japan (roughly) 127 million / 10.3 million GT games sold = 1 copy per 12 people

Source - http://www.polyphony.co.jp/english/list.html


So from a total sales perceptive Europe is the main market and from a penetration point of view Japan is the best market (in terms of PD). Which is quite clear from the manner in which they have traditionally marketed.


The difference won't be as big anymore, though.
The question with GT5 is, what do you take as reference? A nice bullshot showing a premium car on the track or a picture of premium and standard cars mixing it up on a track, with shadows flickering all across the cars and track?

I agree that GT5 has great car models and great lighting and loosk stunning in photo mode. But, on the track, it's not quite as good as some people usually make it seem.
Moderate the language used please as I'm quite certain had anyone used the same term in regard to a FM4 image you would have been quick to challenge them.

The first post in this thread states this needs to be a mature discussion, deliberately inflammatory language of this nature doesn't help promote that at all.



Regards

Scaff
 
Scaff, I don't think he mean BS as in bull**** but rather bullshots as in faked images to make the buying public think they are getting a better looking game when they aren't. Personally... photomodes are modes in game and with FM3, T10 stated the images they had from the game were not bullshots, not post processed outside the game, and were of the quality you get in the game. That is true... what they don't tell you is that photomode images are at a higher detail than in game racing.

Some people still call those photomode images straight from the game as bullshots but I personally don't. A bullshot to me is an in game image that is then edited outside the game. My FM3 and GT5 images are taken directly from the game and its features, not processed/edited outside the game.
 
Scaff, I don't think he mean BS as in bull**** but rather bullshots as in faked images to make the buying public think they are getting a better looking game when they aren't. Personally... photomodes are modes in game and with FM3, T10 stated the images they had from the game were not bullshots, not post processed outside the game, and were of the quality you get in the game. That is true... what they don't tell you is that photomode images are at a higher detail than in game racing.

Some people still call those photomode images straight from the game as bullshots but I personally don't. A bullshot to me is an in game image that is then edited outside the game. My FM3 and GT5 images are taken directly from the game and its features, not processed/edited outside the game.

I know full well that he said bullshot (as the alternative would have been dealt with by the swear filter), and as a term 'bullshot', when used, almost without exception results in a nice big argument.

The point is a valid one, with the differing vehicles in GT5 what do you use for a comparison. However it does not need to be dressed up in a term that is almost certain to get peoples backs up.

The guidelines for posting in this thread are quite clear and the staff intend to make sure they are followed. This is a valid discussion topic, but its also one with huge potential to get very, very messy. Those who take the thread in that direction, either by accident or design will get reminded of that. Those who then continue to fail to follow the guidelines will find a GT Planet holiday on the cards. That applies equally to the term being used in regard to GT or FM.


What a disappointment GT5 (compared to past GT titles) must be to PD. The longer they take to come out with a game the less it sells. I hope they see those numbers and realize something needs to change.
You are aware that GT5 has been on sale for less that a year and as such does not have the length of sale all the other titles have? In comparison GT4's sales figures are for a six year period.

Over five million sales of a single racing title for its entire lifespan is rare, let alone in less than a year.



Scaff
 
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Moderate the language used please as I'm quite certain had anyone used the same term in regard to a FM4 image you would have been quick to challenge them.

The first post in this thread states this needs to be a mature discussion, deliberately inflammatory language of this nature doesn't help promote that at all.



Regards

Scaff

My bad, it wasn't exactly my intention to use an offensive word, I didn't think it was considered as such - I'll watch out for it from now on.

What a disappointment GT5 (compared to past GT titles) must be to PD. The longer they take to come out with a game the less it sells. I hope they see those numbers and realize something needs to change.
I think this has a lot to do with how well the hardware sold as well. The PS2 did have a bigger market share than the PS3 does, if I'm not mistaken.
What's more suprising to me is how close the sales between GT5: Prologue and GT5 are. Especially after seeing that the difference was much more extrem with GT4: Prologue and GT4.
I'm quite suprised that the 'demo' sold almost as well as the full game.
 
I see what you mean scaff, and agree. I guess if you show an image of a GT5 car you'd have to state it's a premium, and include a similar (if possible) standard image as well and then compare those. I never liked the idea of disparity. If a car is in a game, then every feature should work with it. Just my 2 cents. I've even stated this with the whole FM4 autovista mode. I'm fine if what JC says is 2-3 lines compared to say a Ferrari 250 GTO and it having a full paragraph of text but when they won't include every car in this mode. ugh... My stance on bullshots is if it's taken directly from the game, photo mode or not, but NOT edited outside the game than it's not a bullshot.

I also think that most (not all) standard GT5 cars are blown out of proportion in terms of quality of models but damn do the premiums look gorgeous. Some standards do make you go :yuck: but many still look great. And I think Forza's cars are modeled very well already. It's the lighting that was off and seems to have been redone for FM4.


On another note with this vs thread... Forza 3 got a bit of flack for changing models in game races compared to photomodes. I think GT5 does similar. I will post my images later to show what I mean and I wasn't looking for this (was a surprise to me) but essentially my E92 M3 with BBS LM-R wheels... as a BBS fanboy I tend to take up close images of the wheels. Those who have me on my PSN list would see my GT image since GT5's launch was a closeup of a BBS RS wheel. The bolts in the LM-R was a surprise to me though. In race replay it's a simple 2D texture on the wheel's face but in photo travel mode the bolts are actually modeled. You won't notice it unless you zoom in a bit but it seems some model swaps, just like Forza, is happening.
 
What a disappointment GT5 (compared to past GT titles) must be to PD. The longer they take to come out with a game the less it sells. I hope they see those numbers and realize something needs to change.

To be fair, GT5 hasn't been on the market for not even a year yet. GT in the past had legs to continue selling. It's a different case today as GT does now have a competitor and the reviews were good but not great. I don't think GT5 will be a 10+mil seller but it could very well come close to it.
 
You are aware that GT5 has been on sale for less that a year and as such does not have the length of sale all the other titles have? In comparison GT4's sales figures are for a six year period.

Over five million sales of a single racing title for its entire lifespan is rare, let alone in less than a year.

Scaff

Im aware but im also aware that most of the games sales usually come in the first 6 months. With the critics being so harsh (and rightfully so) this games sales will decline allot faster than the other titles IMO. Although I could be wrong.
 
While I think Gt5 has a lot better physics than Fm3 it seem it will be a totally different story with Fm4. I'm with ISR I hate the ffb sudden drop off and that was because of fm3 poor tire physics.
I'm so glad to hear about FM4 improved AI. While Fm3 AI were faster than Gt5 on hard it wasn't much better.
I think it possible that GT5 sales may improved Forza 4 sales over Fm3. As other developers have mention before they are not totally against competition as often one game success can increase another game's sales.

p.s I also agree ISR video head tracking works against you in racing games more than helps you. After the novelty wears off more likely you won't use it. Head tracking is best for flight sims.
IRL if I turn my head to 3 o'clock my brain still knows my car (and steering wheel) is still heading at 12 o'clock. But with head tracking if I turn my head (not my eyes) to 1 o'clock the camera view at 3 o'clock but now my car is moving not at 12 but at 10 o'clock relative to the wheel. This totally screws up my sense of direction.
 
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p.s I also agree ISR video head tracking works against you in racing games more than helps you. After the novelty wears off more likely you won't use it. Head tracking is best for flight sims.
IRL if I turn my head to 3 o'clock my brain still knows my car (and steering wheel) is still heading at 12 o'clock. But with head tracking if I turn my head (not my eyes) to 1 o'clock the camera view at 3 o'clock but now my car is moving not at 12 but at 10 o'clock relative to the wheel. This totally screws up my sense of direction.

Thats why we need a workable VR goggles/glasses solution, so far they havent got the tech to the point were it doesnt have any major drawbacks.

Depth of field, weight, ergonomics, cost, user friendliness, all these things need to be worked out before we can "visually" become fully immersed within the games environment.

it will come but not on the current generation of console.
 
Im aware but im also aware that most of the games sales usually come in the first 6 months.
They do indeed, and so far GT5 has managed extremely good sales for its first 6 months. Now it is difficult to compare with past GT titles as it got a worldwide release with will have increased them and a lower install base in the PS3 (in comparison to the PS2). What is certain is that every GT title to date has had 'legs' and that pretty much regardless of review scores.


With the critics being so harsh (and rightfully so) this games sales will decline allot faster than the other titles IMO.
Critics have not, on balance been harsher than the last full release (metacritic 89% for GT4 and 84% for GT5) and have been better than the Prologue releases (GT4P - 70% and GT5P - 80%), which managed to rack up 6.6 million sales over the life of the products.

Take GT5:P as an example, its more of a niche product than a full release, it got poorer reviews than GT5, yet of the 4.1 million sales, 50% of them occurred after week 40.

Source - http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/sales/6972/gran-turismo-5-prologue/

If (and it is an if) GT5 were to follow that trend, then it still has plenty of 'legs' particularly as it will almost certainly gain from a 'budget' re-release at a later date, something the Prologue titles never did.

GT4 gained 40% of its sales after week 40, so the trend actually favours GT sales over the longer term, particularly as GT5 has not yet hit week 40.

No one knows exactly how well GT5 will sell, but the current sales data and comparisons to past trends show that review scores are not a major factor, that sales are not comparability worse and that long terms sales can achieve between 40 to 50% of the week 40 sales level.


Although I could be wrong.
We all could be, but I personally would always err on the side of caution when talking about speculative info such as this.


Scaff
 
Take GT5:P as an example, its more of a niche product than a full release, it got poorer reviews than GT5, yet of the 4.1 million sales, 50% of them occurred after week 40.

Source - http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/sales/6972/gran-turismo-5-prologue/
Actually 5.2 million, vgchartz sales are not updated.

http://www.polyphony.co.jp/english/list.html

They got wrong even when the game had nearly 4 million sold:
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/5687/look-at-those-legs-game-of-the-day-gran-turismo-5-prologue/
https://www.gtplanet.net/gt5-prologue-sells-nearly-4-million-copies/
 

That's the one, thanks :)

I believe the reason GT5:P sales picked up after week 40 is because a) people still believed GT5 wasn't far away and wanted a taste of it and b) GT5 was still so far away that people wanted something GT to play in the meantime.

It's different now, Forza is now fully established with another release soon, Shift 2, while it has problems to sort out (particularly input lag), once sorted is a very good game and a bit underrated, and there are rumours of a new PGR game too. Couple all that with the fact that even though the reviews evened out to a fairly high score, there were a lot more 'average' reviews for GT5 than previous GTs, and the community sentiment was also clearly lower.

But, for a lot of people, they are perfectly happy with GT4 with better physics and graphics, which for a large part GT5 is to me, and if PD had released something like Shift 2 instead they'd have just as many complaints from the fans.

They're in a tough situation because what they provide is what they've always aimed for and marketed, which is the same thing at heart but better and with more of it, where the Forza series has marketed itself as an evolving, innovating and growing experience, always pushing for new things.

The way I see it, unfortunately for PD they have now pushed out the same forumla just one too many times, and the next iteration really needs that big innovation hit and change of direction, because a lot of people now don't have it on their 'pick up at day one' list and GT6 needs to sell itself again.

I could play GT4 again and the only thing I'm really missing is a bit of rain and night racing, I think the track roster was better in GT4 and 3 too personally. I find it a bit sad that this is how I see things now, I used to love the GT series.
 
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