No they weren't.
It was made clear that the sounds may not ever make it into GT6.
It was made clear that GT6 will contain online community features, B Spec, course creator, and so on.
They can not update the sounds without violating any of their own promises. The same cannot be said of the other "promised" features.
Sort of. It wasn't actually made clear it might not be in the game at all if it missed launch, unlike, say, the course maker (around the time of the 1000 x 1000 debate). All we got was that it might be possible to update the game if sounds didn't make it day one. Which is one of those annoying state-the-obvious things. But that's what people want; wastes of breath, wastes of effort, wastes of energy (damn you entropy!).
Because it's courteous.
When you step on someone foot, do you apologise? Or do you assume that they know that it was a mistake, that you're sorry and just move on?
Stating the obvious is sometimes important, especially in relationships, which is where this started.
Actually, the whole relationship thing was a stab at absurdism intended to bring comic relief. I am not in a relationship with PD, not one of any gravity at least - to insist otherwise is to deny what games are, again. My point is with expectations, and the one thing that expectations do in any real human relationship is change, accommodate; either that or they break the relationship - communication is worthless if it's not acted upon, however subtly.
The supposed lack of communication doesn't bother me, because the game speaks for itself - if it's not saying what you want it to, that's fine, don't buy it. But you said communication (which includes listening and understanding, crucially) is important, and at that point, why would you hang around knowing it's not for you? What's at stake, compared with a "real" relationship?
Communication is more than just spoken and written words, or the rote-learned, empty apologies recited more out of fear than any real sense of remorse. "Communication" does not even require the intention of the producer, it only requires that someone is paying attention - that's how monkeys know when other monkeys are hiding food from them (which you'll notice we humans are also remarkably good at).
What makes you think it's Sony's responsibility? It's PD's game, they manage the marketing, they manage the information, unless you've got information otherwise.
I don't see Sony getting on Naughty Dog's back for anything, why should they be responsible for PD's cock ups?
No, Sony does - go check their official forums for proof. Where is PD's official channel? The website and game servers are nothing to do with PD, either - check the credits (outsourcing! Prayers: answered! Sanctimony: success!).
Sony pays the bills at the end of the day, so it's only logical that the impetus would come from them, regardless of where the PR office actually is. Maybe they prefer to let game development take its course, rather than play things (too) heavy-handedly. Sounds like a recipe for risk taking, which is a recipe for fun games. Again, you knew the gamble.
Decent sounds and a reasonable course maker would be enough for me too, and the other stuff would be a bonus.
Ultimately, it's about PD giving a ****.
You seem happy enough with what you've got, and if the other stuff comes then that's cool. You're not the sort of consumer that announcements would be targeted at.
The course maker and the AI update, and the likely physics tweaks that'll come with it all (and possibly a tuning overhaul, but don't hold your breath), plus the improved online stuff, even B-Spec (AI update) are all things I look forward to, and have done since I started playing video games with cars in them. So yes, these announcements are for me.
I am far from "happy" with "what I've got", I'm human. But I also have many of the same frustrations as any other long-time GT player. Again, the game speaks for itself.
Me, I happened to get a cheap deal early on and knew I was going to get the game eventually for GT Academy. I knew more or less that I wouldn't be satisfied with the game as it was at released, but there was fairly good evidence that it was being updated quite frequently, both in what PD was saying their plans were at release and in that the first four patches were pushed out with decent regularity.
But post 1.04 they've gone stone quiet. Maybe I'm the only one, but I was happy enough knowing that they were working on pushing the game forward even though it currently doesn't even really live up to the final patch edition of GT5 feature-wise. But the lack of even a word saying "we're still working on it, don't worry" is not promising. This is not a company that is thinking about it's customers.
So you actually fear their having stopped work altogether? Interesting. It'd take a bit more for that to hit home with me, I think - unless that's what the price cut was about (ooh, you know it's true!). There's supposed to be a track this month. That's most likely a course creator preset, which they said we'd get before the actual tool itself. If so, things are progressing in order, just not at the pace initially hoped for, perhaps. A month is hardly long enough to start declaring vapourware, though, really, is it?
Ultimately, I don't trust PD to follow through even on what they've said they would. They've done it before. I'm not the only one, and it'd be nice if PD was in touch enough to be aware that there are people thinking this. The people like you are always going to be there for them. The way they increase their sales and fanbase is by pulling in people like me who are on the fence. They're not really trying, they're just relying on the strength of their name and the big numbers on the box.
You don't have to trust anything they say or do, and anything they say or do won't change that. That's why it's entirely arbitrary in my mind what banal nonsense they feed us to keep us hooked on the line. I'd rather swim off for a bit if I want to (which surely doesn't make me "people like you", unless you just mean "patient" or "easily distracted"), and don't see the harm in coming back for another bite if things get tasty again.
Surely if they're "trying" to draw
people like you into the game, they'll do so once they actually know for sure what they have at their disposal? You know, rather than make false promises (can't win). PD sure rely on that cachet to give them the freedom to make the game according to their own ideas, which to be frank has never ever been different, and nowhere have they said "we're making the game people want to play". You get the odd concession, like damage, which of course wasn't up to people's expectations, because they want it to be like other games (PD tend to attack things from a fresh perspective, which is more work, but worth it in the long run - sounds will be the exemplar on that front; it does cripple them for the relative short term, sadly).
Your mistake is possibly in assuming that your tastes are at all representative of the target audience, beyond the "gravity well" of the "name" - if not, of course they're "not trying", just the same as SOE "aren't trying" to make a game for CoD players with Planetside 2 (lot of parallels to be drawn there, released incomplete, ran poorly, updates "promised", came later than anticipated, little communication until stuff was done), or that BF4 isn't for BF2 players, even, much as that
still pains them.
