So it begins - Paid DLC apparently, starting off with those new premium upgrades

[Tyger]

You cannot compare compressing video to compressing data (to begin with lossy vs lossless make them two entirely different camps). There is a reason you can get a 4GB DVD to fit on a 700MB CDR but you will never see a 4GB DVD game zipped down to 700MB.

I am sorry but this is a case of you really shouldn't be talking because you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.

Hmmm whilst the previous poster could've been referring to compression eg. CDA-MP3, or DVD-DIVX etc, which as you say doesn't really exist for games, i've noticed that the results of zipping or RARing files can also vary greatly, sometimes only seems to reduce the overall size by about 10% but pretty sure i've also seen 50% or more, seems to depend on the content though.

 

[TK42OnE]

Your logic bottles my mind.

What part is the most bottling?

 

[Devedander]

Hmmm whilst the previous poster could've been referring to compression eg. CDA-MP3, or DVD-DIVX etc, which as you say doesn't really exist for games, i've noticed that the results of zipping or RARing files can also vary greatly, sometimes only seems to reduce the overall size by about 10% but pretty sure i've also seen 50% or more, seems to depend on the content though.

You can get some high compression ratios with data, but the problem is that it's got to be losless compression and video compression formats that get super high ratios are all lossy. That and you will usually find the BR rips at 5GB are much lower resolution than the original. Those two factors alone leave the comparison out in the cold.

Then you have the fact that game data is almost always as compressed as it can reasonably be on disc. Disc reads are slow and it's almost always faster to uncompress a small file than read a large file. So when you dump a game ISO it's the game data is pretty much already compressed and the filestructure almost assuredly already repoints deuplicate files to the same storage space.

In short, no, it's just not a valid comparison.

Go try it, rip any disc to an image, it will be the same size as the disc was. When I say 19GB image, that' show big the image file was for GT5 which say that the disc contained 19GB of data. Far short of the 25GB available and far short of the storage available with many more layers.

The argument of "disc was too small" is a worn one and fails the logic test behind "every PS3 has a hard drive and multidisc is hardly the end of the world" and was thoroughly debunked when the pirate copy hit the net.

To still be using it now is about on par with still arguing all standard cars have cockpits.

What part is the most bottling?

So you want them to charge for updates becuase if the updates were free but not the ones you wanted you would be frustrated....

So if you went to a restaraunt and all the food was free but you didn't like any of it, then they turned around and slapped a price on all the food, you would then be happier because while you still didn't like any of it now it costs something?

 

[Love4Heineken]

Who cars about the interior of the cars!? Answer that and you will understand why the underside of the car is worth modeling.

Modeling the underside of the cars is an important feature that needs to be addressed, as is modeling the inside wall of the cars tyres. Just because you don't seem them very often, doesn't mean that there is no point in making sure they look right. 👍

👍 💡 +1

Converting Standard Cars into Premium Cars is not a good course of action for GT5 DLC.
Nobody wants to see 35 Premium Mazda Miatas, 70 Premium Nissan Skylines, or the 500+ sub-100 hp economy cars that have absolutely no place on a racetrack.
DLC Tracks is far better proposition, provided that they don't consist of more sub-variants of the same track.

👍💡 +1, i couldn't agree more with the statement about all of the cars that have no business on a track.

 

[TK42OnE]

So you want them to charge for updates becuase if the updates were free but not the ones you wanted you would be frustrated....

So if you went to a restaraunt and all the food was free but you didn't like any of it, then they turned around and slapped a price on all the food, you would then be happier because while you still didn't like any of it now it costs something?

I guess i didnt explain it well enough.

I'd rather pay a reasonable rate for something I'd use then get something I would never use for free.

 

[Luminis]

I guess i didnt explain it well enough.

I'd rather pay a reasonable rate for something I'd use then get something I would never use for free.

Uhm... And why would paying for the standard --> premium conversion assure that you're actually getting something that you like?

If PD offered X cars for free or the same X cars for a prize, it's still the same cars, right?

And I highly doubt that they'll be able to make all 800 standard caars available as premiums any time soon, whether they do it for free or not.

 

[Devedander]

I guess i didnt explain it well enough.

I'd rather pay a reasonable rate for something I'd use then get something I would never use for free.

But what makes you think that free/paid would change what cars get the upgrade?

 

[stumpydino]

I don't want more cars, I want a better game. Surely adjusting the gameplay is more important and quicker to do, putting back in b spec fast forwarding and wheel changing etc. as opposed to creating a new car.

 

[IceMan PJN]

PD/Sony will never make you PAY for standard to premium cars conversions, since those models are already in GT5. Mark my words.
I can't believe there are people seriously thinking about it....

I hope to God you're right.

Here's my thing about upgrading Standard cars to Premium. GT5 has 200 or so cars of current-gen quality and 800 or so cars of last-gen quality. 80% of the game's cars are just padding the numbers for a game that really only offers 200 or so cars of current-gen standards. That may still sound like an impressive figure, and indeed it is when you compare it to most current-gen racing games like Burnout Paradise, Project Gotham Racing 3, PGR4, et cetera that generally had fewer than 100 cars or perhaps only slightly above a hundred. However, those games aren't GT5's primary, direct competitor. GT5's real competition is Forza Motorsport 3, which came with over 400 current-gen cars on the day of release (I'm not counting paid DLC content that followed). GT5 only offers half as many cars as their most direct rival, and the folks at Turn 10 churned out these cars in far less time than what Polyphony had for GT5.

The game really needs more Premium cars at no cost to us, whether it's upgrading a bunch of the Standard cars at no cost to us or giving us a bunch of new Premium cars at no cost to us. Otherwise, we're just paying extra for the game to play catch-up with Forza.

People also claimed that PD/Kaz would never release an unfinished game

Let's face it, PD is just the same kind of money-hungry, heartless company as any other out there. I, for one, lost any kind of special appreciation I've had for them.

The business of businesses is to make money. It's true of all businesses on the planet.

This sort of sentiment is pretty common in gaming these days. I've seem similar complaints of many other major developers. Codemasters was pretty heavily flamed for the bugs in F1 2010 when the game was released, although thankfully they quickly addressed at least the bulk of those issues. Turn 10 was blasted for FM3 for at least a solid year and probably still. Patching games after release seems to be pretty standard these days, and it's also pretty standard to have DLC that you pay for, but both of these things are understandable in the current state of the industry.

Regarding patching games, current video games are exceedingly complex, which means an awful lot to potentially go wrong and a lot of potential for bugs to go overlooked. For this reason, releasing a perfect, bug-free game is virtually impossible and so patches are unfortunately understandable today. Regarding being money-hungry, the costs of making current-gen games is more expensive than at any point in the history of the industry and costs will only continue to rise. Based on the last figures I've seen some time back, something like four out of five video games fail to earn back what was spent making them in the first place, and not all of these failures are bad games. Charging for additional content just helps recover some of their losses.

 

[Jason_B]

DLC Tracks is far better proposition, provided that they don't consist of more sub-variants of the same track.

I completely agree, though I could see them adding 23 more turns to Cape Ring.

 

[Luminis]

The business of businesses is to make money. It's true of all businesses on the planet.

This sort of sentiment is pretty common in gaming these days. I've seem similar complaints of many other major developers. Codemasters was pretty heavily flamed for the bugs in F1 2010 when the game was released, although thankfully they quickly addressed at least the bulk of those issues. Turn 10 was blasted for FM3 for at least a solid year and probably still. Patching games after release seems to be pretty standard these days, and it's also pretty standard to have DLC that you pay for, but both of these things are understandable in the current state of the industry.

Regarding patching games, current video games are exceedingly complex, which means an awful lot to potentially go wrong and a lot of potential for bugs to go overlooked. For this reason, releasing a perfect, bug-free game is virtually impossible and so patches are unfortunately understandable today. Regarding being money-hungry, the costs of making current-gen games is more expensive than at any point in the history of the industry and costs will only continue to rise. Based on the last figures I've seen some time back, something like four out of five video games fail to earn back what was spent making them in the first place, and not all of these failures are bad games. Charging for additional content just helps recover some of their losses.

I actually agree with you on mostt of your points. Just a few things I want to point out:

First of, the patching. There's a difference between ironing out bugs and the like and adding content that should've been in the game. Content that was advertised on the back of the game's box. A huge difference in my opinion.
I don't mind patches that adress bugs or any other kind of flaw in the game, but actually 'finishing' a game via patches is just plain wrong to me.

Second, of course PD, like any other company, only cares about its revenue. Thing is, PD, and Kazunori in particular, seem to be held in very high regards around here, at least by some people. And those seem to act like PD and Kazunori are somehow above the low morale of the gaming industry. Which, in my opinion, they are not. That's why I mentioned it.

 

[Devedander]

The business of businesses is to make money. It's true of all businesses on the planet.

So is the business of being a con artist.

The point being there is a saying "A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet", don't think that just by giving a process a name it somehow becomes justifiable as "poop by any other name smells just as bad".

Is it the business of business? Is it the business of ripping people off? Where does that line exist? It's been more and more gray over the years to the point if you took "business" as it exists now back 100 years and showed it to your average joe I think more often than not he would correctly identify it as a scam. Of course with the benefit of not having years of brainwashing to guide him down the slippery slope of being screwed and liking it all the way to defending the guy screwing him.

Charging for additional content just helps recover some of their losses.

GT5 was not one of those games...

Production cost was probably fully recouped by the time GT5P was done being sold and GTPSP was just icing on the cake.

PD isn't even a dev house that makes other games and thus needs to soak up losses elsewhere with profits here....

 

[blaaah]

I said i wouldn't pay for anything unless it was GT6. But i forgot i would pay for a GT full track creator and editor with full design from scratch functions including scenery etc. But i would want it on a Blu-ray and i would pay full retail price for it as a standalone package.

 

[willstuart]

I don't mind paying for new cars.

Not paying for Standard to Prem

 

[analog]

Just a thought about Standard to Premium upgrades, it would mean in some cases (Veyron for example) the game would need a new section added to the dealerships as well, as some cars might be from brands not yet featured there.
Wouldn't it therefore be more logical to do this with a general (and therefore free) update?
Or is this also possible to do by specific customer DLC (guess it might be)?
Should we have to pay for upgrading cars already in the game? If you'd asked me I would say no initially although to me they would be essentially new cars as I barely touch those Standard cars save for a few exceptions or use them for B-spec only.
I love interior view, and to be honest I would reluctantly pay for Premium upgrades if it meant more cars I would actually use instead of the zombie-cars they are now but only when I'm "forced" to.
There are also plenty who don't care about or use interior view so it might not be as profitable to offer them as paid DLC if a large portion of gamers are satisfied with the Standard versions as they are.
If they want to charge for DLC, I'll suggest offering non-essential extras like paint-chips, pre-designed liveries, racing-suits or new visual upgrades like bodykits, wheels, etc.
Something which is optional and nice to have for some but doesn't affect the core of the game for all but then I guess I'm naive unfortunately.

 

[Destinkeys]

I wouldn't mind seeing Standard to Premium paid for DLC, as long as it was on a one car at a time basis. I wouldn't mind paying 99¢ for a Premium version of maybe my favorite Standard car, $10 for a selection of 15, or the like. But I am NOT going to pay any lump sum for a selection that I don't get to choose. Knowing Kaz, I'll get five Premium Skylines for every five other cars!

But, until GT5 has AT LEAST the same number of events as GT4, or an online system at LEAST as advanced as GT4, or 5p, or gear ratios individually adjustable, as GT4 had, or the myriad other things that were left out (while I still payed the same or more), I will be expecting FREE patches that address these issues. Even the events, as easy as they must be to think of, should NOT be paid DLC. If GT5 had the same number as it's previous full incarnations (5p does not count, it wasn't a full price game) then sure, extra content, extra money. But until GT5 has at LEAST the content of GT4 (and I don't mean cars and tracks), they should not have the gall to ask us to PAY for what used to be provided for free.

BTW, anyone that bought this game before they had done ANY internet research, let alone surf the forum that is #1 on any Google GT5 search, has only themselves to blame when they find out how few Premium cars were in the game. Personally, I didn't give a damn whether they are Premium or Standard. I use Bumper cam 99% of the time, anyway. As long as they HANDLE right (pretty much they ALL suck sound-wise, at least compared to Shift), I'm cool with it. Maybe I don't 'get' the whole GT ethos (sure seems like a boatload of people that like to LOOK at their cars rather than drive them!), but the willingness by so many to forgive moronic omissions from basic gameplay content, even compared to their precious GT4, makes the whole issue of paid for DLC so moot, it's unbelievable.

You are honestly willing to pay for DLC, before the basic game is improved to be ONLY as good as its' predecessor?

A fool and his money....

 

[sukerkin]

:applause: Well said, good sir.

 

[Peter]

GT6 will be out in 2012 anyway ,no long wait. And with some added stuff now to GT5, new patches that will add new features and such, we'll last until then.

 

[WolfRacer543]

Hmmm whilst the previous poster could've been referring to compression eg. CDA-MP3, or DVD-DIVX etc, which as you say doesn't really exist for games, i've noticed that the results of zipping or RARing files can also vary greatly, sometimes only seems to reduce the overall size by about 10% but pretty sure i've also seen 50% or more, seems to depend on the content though.

It just depends how efficient was the original file format. I've had a data file which was 4 million data points, and each data point was 7 variables, so 28 million pieces of data. The file was supplied in ASCII format, and was 250mb. Zip the file and it dropped to under 100mb, because of how inefficient the file format was. Then I opened the file in a couple of other programs and saved it as a Tecplot file and a MATLAB file and that dropped the file size to around 150mb unzipped, because its a more efficient format even though it contained the same data.

 

[blaaah]

GT6 will be out in 2012 anyway ,no long wait. And with some added stuff now to GT5, new patches that will add new features and such, we'll last until then.

And when PS4 is out, which i predict will be backwards compatible, it should allow GT6 to be played in full 1920x1080 60fps with all the super maximum anti-aliasing features and v-sync. Which would be nice, to keep the wait for GT7 manageable.

 

[Devedander]

It just depends how efficient was the original file format. I've had a data file which was 4 million data points, and each data point was 7 variables, so 28 million pieces of data. The file was supplied in ASCII format, and was 250mb. Zip the file and it dropped to under 100mb, because of how inefficient the file format was. Then I opened the file in a couple of other programs and saved it as a Tecplot file and a MATLAB file and that dropped the file size to around 150mb unzipped, because its a more efficient format even though it contained the same data.

This assumes a completely uncompressed starting point. The situation at hand is an image of a game disc.

In the case of a professionally mastered disc, the file structure has already been highly optimized and compressed where possible (as I stated before - for faster loading) and space savers like repointing to the same location for identical files has already been implimented.

A disc image will almost infalibly be the same size as the actual disc when done. That is why even RARed downloads of program discs tend to be the same size as the unpacked versions (for those who don't know, large files are often RARed into small pieces so that if you encounter a bad download it will hopefully only affect one pieces and you only download that 50MB chunk again instead of having a 700+MB file that is shot because somewhere a few bytes go screwed up).

Try it... grab any professionally made disc you have, rip an image of it, it will be the full size of the disc, then RAR the image, it will not shrink by much if at all (and will sometimes grow).

 

[Peter]

About the standards to be upgraded ,the only ones I see that will are those cars that are new to the series, but are standard, so the Bugatti Veyron, and Audi R8 LMS get upgraded. Ford GT LM Spec II probably. Can't think of any others, although I'd like to see the Lancia Stratos road and rally car to be premium-ized as well.

 

[Akira AC]

And when PS4 is out, which i predict will be backwards compatible, it should allow GT6 to be played in full 1920x1080 60fps with all the super maximum anti-aliasing features and v-sync. Which would be nice, to keep the wait for GT7 manageable.

Nonsense,Sony plans are to maintain PS3 platform until 2014,they will not waste millions on development when games market is most profitable than ever,we will see some hardware updates like the ones on segas one decade ago,and GT6 will be on PS3 because is less complicated and more profitable,the whole rush for GT5 is just to let two GT games over the same platform,and we already know that GT games bad or not bad sells by millions(like 63 mill by now).

 

[blaaah]

Nonsense,Sony plans are to maintain PS3 platform until 2014,they will not waste millions on development when games market is most profitable than ever,we will see some hardware updates like the ones on segas one decade ago,and GT6 will be on PS3 because is less complicated and more profitable,the whole rush for GT5 is just to let two GT games over the same platform,and we already know that GT games bad or not bad sells by millions(like 63 mill by now).

What i said doesn't conflict with what you said. So what is the nonsense?
But i doubt Sony will update the PS3 to make it better performance, that is completely against their business model since they made the PS1. Further to that it makes no sense and would be suicidal, hence why Sega messed up and killed themselves.

 

[trk29]

What i said doesn't conflict with what you said. So what is the nonsense?
But i doubt Sony will update the PS3 to make it better performance, that is completely against their business model since they made the PS1. Further to that it makes no sense and would be suicidal, hence why Sega messed up and killed themselves.

They already updated the PS3 and PS2. The PS3 PS2 Slim?
It uses less power and is cooler so how is that against the business model?

 

[Devedander]

Nonsense,Sony plans are to maintain PS3 platform until 2014,they will not waste millions on development when games market is most profitable than ever,we will see some hardware updates like the ones on segas one decade ago,and GT6 will be on PS3 because is less complicated and more profitable,the whole rush for GT5 is just to let two GT games over the same platform,and we already know that GT games bad or not bad sells by millions(like 63 mill by now).

Well unless you expect them to have no overlap between generations, PS3 until 2014 means PS4 somewhere aroudn 2012-1013... I mean look at the PS2/PS3.

And as for the bold part, I will correct you and say that GT games sell well on the assumption they will not be bad based on previous performance.

Considering a huge amouont of GT5 was sold on pre order and early sales that were in large uneducated purchase (because there wan't enough info out there to really educate yourself and what was out there was spread pretty thin) any ill will from GTPSP and GT5 will probably not show strongly in sales numbers until at least GT6.

 

[Akira AC]

Well unless you expect them to have no overlap between generations, PS3 until 2014 means PS4 somewhere aroudn 2012-1013... I mean look at the PS2/PS3.

And as for the bold part, I will correct you and say that GT games sell well on the assumption they will not be bad based on previous performance.

Considering a huge amouont of GT5 was sold on pre order and early sales that were in large uneducated purchase (because there wan't enough info out there to really educate yourself and what was out there was spread pretty thin) any ill will from GTPSP and GT5 will probably not show strongly in sales numbers until at least GT6.

We have been discussing(not with you)something similar back at the titech,the thing about Sony marketing at this moment is to provide the highest amount of releases before start development of the PS4, proof of this is the option showed for an "Upgrade PS3"(translated ver.)hardware add on to update PS3 tecnology and avoid development of a new console,and GT5 in my opinion fells incomplete because of the "rushed" release,the PS3 lifespan to this date is about 6 years,while PS2 lifespan was of just 5 years,the main problem is the technology progress,specially the processors,memory and storage space,which has increased at higher rates over the last 4 years(comparable to last decade processors development).

Develop a whole system that will probably will be obsolete in a matter of years is something that both third producers and developers are afraid of,providing the console to the public with such advances will represent more investment by the regular consumer,a PS3 or 360 is around 280-300 USD,which is affordable compared to 600 USD price tag of the PS3 at launch,Sony is just seeing the profits of the system since 1 year ago,so is unreasonable to keep losing money at this rates,this also explains the development of both motion capture devices(although this is also attributed to WII's success in the market).

And sorry bad calculations by my part,there is probably a PS3 calculated life until 2014-2016 if the device in question is develop,in that case I'm afraid there is room for one more GT in this generation,a complete one at least.

 

[transam1998]

I'll pay for upgrades, if the price is reasonable

 

[Devedander]

We have been discussing(not with you)something similar back at the titech,the thing about Sony marketing at this moment is to provide the highest amount of releases before start development of the PS4, proof of this is the option showed for an "Upgrade PS3"(translated ver.)hardware add on to update PS3 tecnology and avoid development of a new console,

Looking at the actual patent http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2010/0312969.html it doesn't specifiy PS3 anywhere... it simply patents adding external upgrade too existing hardware. It could be an addon to let your Bravia TV push a roomba vacumm cleaner around.

The PSlifetyle story was a big presumptuos. At best I would imagine it's a patent for a type of connector they might add to the PS4 in the future.

I really couldn't believe Sony would do an external add one processor... I mean I don't even know where it would go (what external port on the PS3 has bus speed high enough to make an external prcessor of any value?) and we such things have never been successful (remember the N64 had a RAM addon) and fragment the community.

 

[Metfanant]

I would advocate for PD splitting their development team right now. You take half the current team and dedicate them as the GT5 team, while the other half begins work on what is needed to laying down the framework of GT6.

The GT5 team then works continuously on patching this game and re-modeling as many of standard cars as they can and giving them the premium treatment. Patches and bug fixes come along as needed (monthly) and then they can add events and championships along with these premium upgrades on say a six month schedule as paid DLC.

The reason I say paid DLC is because if done right, and continually updated GT5 would be able to evolve and change enough over time that GT6 could be a launch title for the PS4.

Then maybe a year and a half from the release of GT6 the two teams come back together and finish up the polish on GT6 as a full dev team with updates for GT5 stopping at that point. By that point you would hope a SIGNIFICANT chunk of the current standards would have been re-modeled, and any new cars between now and than included...you toss all the redundant standard models and you have hits the lineup for GT6...