PCars, 4 months in...half price RRP...

Doubt i'll preorder pcars2 since they drop prices this fast.

If they really, really work hard adding multiplayer features, fixing bugs and adding custom Championship to offline Racing i might bite off.

But man in this game is a problem to fill a 16 drivers room in organized Series, normal online is ridiculously bad due to no host kick and in-room chat... No crashers filter for online etc etc

 

This is something which bears repeating. Looking on the pCARS 2 forums, development is really on the underlying engine right now (particularly getting the loose surface physics and ground deformation technology up and running). Vehicle and track artists are clearly working elsewhere.

I assume the plan remains to push through a bunch more pCARS 1 DLC content while at the same time tweaking the game and getting the remaining bugs sorted. Reducing price now is probably both a reaction to Forza 6 (on Xbox at least) and a general requirement to continue selling copies as a non-AAA-marketed niche game. Seems fair to me.

 

Just wondering, am i the only one that feels SMS is slowly pulling out a Gran Turismo?

Loose surface? Come on! They should have focused even more on what they did good already to make it perfect...

I.e. i would have been an even happier customer if the game was called "Project GT3 Cars" and had all the gt3 cars you can imagine plus a good deal of extra tracks (meaningful ones not OVAL or RUAPUNAs )

 

*edit* not getting into a pointless argument about MY customers

 

Forza5 was bundled. 1 million Xbone sold means 1million Forza5. Pcars is not one of those titles that can be bundled with a console. COD, GT etc such games do. As far as sales of Pcars and price drop. It is normal for any game. I think the numbers are fine mainly due to PS4

 

Forza was bundled?

 

Citation required.

 

pCARS2 in 2yrs max 3yrs, pCARS in 1 year all the fluff and puff will be gone and people will have moved on, and worry is that head of studio will sink SMS/ WMD just like SIMBIN...we shall see but the industry is watching for sure, one thing all consumer will enjoy is all studios are putting more effort and great for consoles, more console race game in the future. quality not so sure with pCARS generally speaking, instead of keeping the direction they announced initially they are off and going by market demand...as they say, BS walks $$$ talks!!!

 

People move on from all games that just the way it works. At this time, with a plethora of racing games recently released and in the pipe, it's going to be hard for any game to maintain a big audience for more than a few months. I see ongoing DLC and support for PCars more as a goodwill gesture, designed to keep the hardcore fanbase intrigued and excited for PCars2. The casuals, which make up most of the players IMO, will move on to what is new and shiny after a few months. That goes with any game really.

 

Has it really been that fast? The game has been out a full 5 months. Many games have a price cut before that. I'd rather have a full 5 months of playtime than having to wait 5 months so you dont need to pay full price.

 

Well at first and still now is not mature enough to be always pleasantly playable due to some bugs/missing features... Sure as of now there's no alternatives on ps4, but when PCars2 will hit there's going to be around assetto corsa, gt7 and might end up one near the other...

Also, there were many way to pay less for it even after 2-3 weeks, like half price from people running away from bugs.... >_> In any case not blaming them it was my first and probably last preorder ever

 

AC is planned to release on consoles in 2016. PC2 will release in 2017 if SMS makes their planned schedule (which I doubt will happen). I don't expect GT7 to launch in 2016 either (but who knows). Unless some other sims pop in straight out of nowhere, PC1 is the only choice on PS4 for quite some time still (at least until AC hits). And I don't expect AC's launch to be without problems either, given the past.

 

Are you kidding me. Everyone know all big games are bundled with the console. A quick search in google:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/6/5478004/microsoft-xbox-one-forza-5-bundle

 

I got it back this week for £7. Happy enough to pay that although I'd be stretched if I was going to pay anymore.

 

Nope, not kidding. I asked for a reason.

See the date on this article? http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-02-18-ms-forza-5-fastest-selling-racing-game-in-xbox-history

Now look at the date on your article: http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/6/5478004/microsoft-xbox-one-forza-5-bundle

In other words, there was no Forza/XBone bundle until after Forza 5 had already sold 1.3 million copies a month earlier. Attributing the sales of Forza 5 to bundling as you did, without clarifying when the bundling began, is misleading.

The way your post was worded to imply that all XBones came with a Forza game is also incorrect (1 million Xbone sold means 1million Forza5) because the Forza bundle was not the only bundle available. I count at least 12 separate bundles so it's not likely that Forza being bundled really encouraged anyone to buy the game that would not have bought it and the console anyway, given that there are a wide range of options to choose from.

 

Officially. The game was bundled with nearly every single Xbox One package to start with as a downloadable title.

 

PCars was already 50% off during the earlier Steam Sale in the middle of summer. Also, remember, as a title builds DLC, the base price routinely drops. You may pay $20-$25 for the game itself, but when you pick it up, there may be $40-$50 worth of DLC.

As DLC releases, I'm sure there is some consideration paid to the total price of the game. While $50 is fine for a normal game (and I think PCars has plenty of content in its base form), as DLC stacks up - customers will start looking at the "all in" price.

I told my brother to put it on his wishlist and wait till it hits $25 on Steam to pick it up.

I'm one of the fortunate ones whose game runs fine on my PC with minimal issues (occasional bug, very occasional crash). Race with a handful of other guys, everything is pretty smooth and playable. I'm hugely skeptical about PCars2 and don't think that rally-cross was a good choice (while I enjoy PCars I think they could make it brilliant with a second game if they concentrated on polishing what they've started).

Forza 5 and GT7 will annihilate PCars on console sales eventually, I think this is unavoidable. The mass appeal is far too strong on those titles. I don't think A/C will do that well (severe lack of content despite solid sim stuff). PCars was smart to release before anyone else on the new consoles. They made plenty of money.

I'd have much rather seen them dedicate a good 2-3 years to flushing out PCars1 rather than move on, but it is what it is. I also believe patch 3.0 is the game they probably wanted to release, but after so many delays they simply had to pick a date and release it --- and I do think it was released before it should have been.

 

pCARS 2 will have the loose surface physics in addition to all that pCARS 1 has. That's an enabler for additional disciplines like rallycross, not a plan for dropping the tarmac racing (there are some misunderstandings on the net over pC2 being a rally centered title - this is not the case). As for polishing what was started, that's pretty much what's happening right now, and all of the good stuff goes into pC2 as well.

 

I would have gladly dished out for a Pcars ->Pcars2 DLC, but paying again 70 EUROS to go through the same... uhmmmmm

 

My issue is that PCars could spend their entire development on honing what they've begun. I don't think it's solid enough yet to bother going into rally-cross side action. I think that's a stupid decision.

I would love a rally game produced in the same vein as PCars, I'd just vastly prefer picking one idea and perfecting it. I'd be stoked to be proven wrong, and for PCars2 to nail it all...I just doubt it heavily.

 

When you say it wont do that well what do you consider sales wise as not that well? Imo if they can hit 750k-1 million on consoles that would be an amazing success for a hardcore sim. Until PCars hardcore sims from my understanding were lucky to sell 300k.

 

Success is relative. Compared to the big titles, sales of Project CARS is small in comparison. But compared to the usual PC-only sim title, sales are huge (4-5 times at least). AC can do well too, as long as they play their cards right. The average console sim racer has very different requirements than the average PC racer, especially in terms of expectation with regards to the out of the box experience (can't get away with a bone-dry experience and no easy way to setup a wheel). Competition is great for us as players, I expect the lines between hardcore and being accessible to blur even further.

 

A/C is a good game, but it's very very low on content. People were already bemoaning PCars (which by comparison has a heap of content). You won't see any modding on A/C for consoles I'd assume - one of the main thing people promote about the PC version.

Couple that with the fact that A/C and PCars share a load of available cars (they were almost identical for a while), and I don't think A/C is going to have much to offer console racers. I think a lot of folks will pick it up on sale, but it's content is just very shallow compared to the others.

You're going to have fewer people on consoles with dedicate sim set-ups looking for the excellent physics of A/C. I think they'd be smart if they launch A/C at a super restrained price, maybe $24.95 or something. I'm sure they'll sell enough for it to be a worthwhile venture into the console markets, just think it'll be at the bottom of the heap sales-wise when compared to the juggernauts Forza/GT and the middle ground PCars.

Just personal opinion of course.

 

Discounting the price off the bat is a bad move. It pretty much tells the marketplace, "Not much here so we discounted it to make you happy with this lesser game". And you can't raise the price later. Start off at $59.95 and get the early adopters, then discount later as SMS is doing, as the DLC rolls in. Content wise I'm pretty sure I read or deduced somewhere that AC will launch with 100 cars or thereabouts, not a bad effort for a pure sim.

As was mentioned, comparing sales of AC or PCars to Forza or GT is a moot point. It's a pure sim, not a racing game, targeted to a smaller audience looking for a more in depth experience. It'll sell far less, it'll be expected to sell far less, and it'll be a raging financial success at 1 million units. Personally I don't care what the sales are, just that the game is fun and engaging, bugs are limited, the simulation aspect is accurate and it's very close to or complete on release day.

 

Due to this being a GT site first and foremost i get the feeling if a game does not sell 4 - 8 million it's not considered a success by some

 

I can confirm this being a member of the WMD2 club now. Forum has only just started the brainstorming phase on what will be done for PCARS2, so it's a long way off indeed.

Getting close to GT6's sales even, (yes i know more platforms). Yet for a dev with a tiny budget and one that focuses on the simulation aspect of motor racing those numbers are very good indeed.

 

Totally agree. I'm on X1 and I'm very happy with how pCARS performs in 3.0 form

 

Incidentally for anyone on the fence about buying here's a really good review pointing out both good and bad.

http://www.teamvvv.com/en/news/comments/Project-CARS-Review

 

There is no way I could have waited! I love this game and have had so many amazing races.