Reflections and opinions on the management of Polyphony Digital with the Motorsport Series.

[BrunusCL82]

I would like to propose the following discussion on the subject of Gran Turismo and the motosports series.

I wonder why PD-Sony doesn't strike full deals with the three major Japanese leagues: Super GT (GT 500 and GT300), TCR Japan Touring Car Series and Super Formula (Main and Lights).

The question does not demand a simple answer - "Because not! Because Kaz don't want to"

Given the evident national affinity between these brands and PD, bearing in mind that the GT franchise is perhaps the greatest instrument for disseminating Japanese automotive culture around the world, it is very curious why PD has not yet managed to obtain a complete license for these series for the GT games.

I mean a complete deal in the sense that PD could have access to all the cars and tracks on the current calendar in these series, as well as access to legendary cars from the past, just as Assetto Corsa has with GT Challenge, Motorsport Games has with the WEC, Turn 10 has with IMSA, anyway.

Needless to say, this would be of great commercial importance for the worldwide spread of Japanese motorsport. Needless to say, fans of the GT franchise would be delighted with the many cars and tracks available to the Japanese series.

After all, without PD maybe we wouldn't be curious about what happens in Super GT and Super Formula.

I don't know if this is a matter of Kaz's personal taste, who, eventually, wants his work to have its own identity, without ties to other brands and, therefore, "spiritually" lose its moral value by serving as an instrument of marketing to other businesses.

I don't know if this is simply a budget issue. That is, PD-Sony has never been able or considers it commercially irrelevant to close full deals with the three Japanese motorsport series.

Importantly, every day we see competing Gran Turismo games striking full and exclusive deals with American and European motorsport series. And that could be preventing GT games from getting immediate access to more modern race cars.

In this line, it is likely that one of these competing games may, in the future, close exclusive agreements with Super GT and Super Formula, and the GT franchise will also be without access to Japanese racing cars.

By the way, in particular, it is very curious that SUGO, TOKACHI and OKAYAMA and other circuits never appeared in Gran Turismo.

 

[Achika_Kuonji]

Super GT had a official arcade racing game Sega World Drivers Championship. SWDC had 2017-2018 GT500 and GT300 cars. It may be a problem.

 

[RobertHammer]

Everything is about licences and money , in ideal world GT would have everything but that's only a dream unfortunately :/

 

[Kriptical]

these exclusivity deals need to go the way of the dodo.

I want to watch a race on youtube or peacock/espn+ then hope into gt7 with psvr2 and have a go in a car I've seen on a track which I've just seen it on. Motorsports need to realize that half the reason I watch them is because psvr2 and gt7 have got me hooked again. Without gt7(psvr2), imsa, wec, indy, f1(f2,f3) would soon be forgotten. The motorsports guys need to realize that its a symbiotic relationship and given how old the ICE engine is that its a bit of a gift to them.

 

[Dave A]

Everything is about licences and money , in ideal world GT would have everything but that's only a dream unfortunately :/

Licensing, money, resources and vision. From what I can tell, PD tend to secure pretty long term licensing deals, which is why the same cars appear for so many successive games (some may miss a game every now and then). That's a big financial investment, and it probably limits the number of new licenses they can structure for each new game.

You also dont know if these licenses are available or not.

Then you have resources, even if you can afford these licenses, do you have the resources to make use of it, to build all the car and track models etc. If not, how many can you develop? And does that reflect enough value from that license?

And that ties into vision. You have to consider if making use of licenses like these would take away other planned content, and will including it deflect the game away from what you intended it to be. Does it break your vision for the game?

You have to combine those factors and likely many more before you decide to spalsh a load of money on a new license. Some licenses can come cheap. As an extreme example, I know TVR used to allow some developers to include their cars for free, as it gave them advertising and a presence in markets they couldn't normally reach (USA, for example). But they're an outlier, not the norm.

With regards to GT7, the game clearly isn't intended to be a Super GT game, while inclusion of more of those cars would be nice, it would likely pull significant content away from other areas of the game. There no magic way to just add new content for free, even a fictitious car or track costs a lot of time, money and resources to create, and that doesn't (usually) require any licensing.