TheVerge: Wait for GT7 'unacceptable'

[Pseudopod]

Racing sim games have the advantage of being mostly based in the real world, so the developers already know exactly what to model and how to make it look. The creative process can move much faster because of this. There's no need to spend time on deciding on a track's layout, as it already exists. There's no need to decide where to put the trees, spectators, etc because this is already known. There's no need to design the cars, as the designs are already done. I imagine this saves a lot of time, which means they can get right to the actual 3d modeling part much sooner.

In a fantasy RPG (or fantasy anything else, really), the developers often need to build a whole new world up from the ground. They need to decide which plants exist, what they look like, which creatures inhabits the world, how they look and behave. In many cases, they create an entire creation myth for the world and makes the creatures and other organisms of the world tie in to it in certain ways. All this is of course on top of the actual 3d modelling process. In many cases, all this work is done just to make the world of 1-3 games, before they have to start all over again and create entirely new worlds.

Not to mention, in these games, you generally move a lot slower than 300 km/h, so the players get a much better look at the environment, making it way easier for them to notice any sub-par texture, weird polygon and whatnot.

 

[Nielsen]

The unacceptable thing is that GT6 turned out to be a somewhat crippled reinvention of GT5. I can wait for GT7 if it's worth it...

 

[chzsln485]

I have absolutely no issue with waiting for GT7. No issue whatsoever. What I do have an issue with, however, is that waiting longer does not correlate with the end result being better. We might wait five years for utter disappointment.

GT6 was crippled by the PS3 hardware in the same way GT5 was. I'm confident, in some respects, that GT7 will be a much better game because the PS4 is far more powerful yet simpler. This is a good thing.

Not all of GT's issues are purely technical, however. Some of them are design problems, issues with planning, priorities, decision making, and the vision for how the game will turn out. No amount of RAM or a super high performance CPU will prevent someone, somewhere, making a bad decision about what they want GT7 to be. Judging by the main issues in the GT series (sound, AI, career mode design), there are key issues in design that are the root of these flaws, not necessarily the hardware. Let's take the AI, for instance - is the rolling start format and weak AI in GT6 because the hardware forced PDI to make it that way, or because the staff wanted it to be like that? Possibly the latter, as GT5's AI was actually better in some ways. Will GT7 have the same AI, because the root cause is actually because someone thought it was a good idea.

While I expect a significant improvement in some aspects of the game due to hardware improvements, what we really need are improvements in the design phase. How great a game could be made, on PS3, using only GT6's assets, if only someone sat down and very carefully decided what they wanted to do with them? Why couldn't it be more like GT2 or GT4? There's no technical reason for the Career Mode being so short. I've limited the amount of time I've been playing GT6, because I get genuinely frustrated considering how much potential there is in that game, wasted by bad decision making. If someone came up to you and said, "hey, here are 400 immaculately detailed cars and 40+ tracks, with time change, weather change, and the some of the best lighting and physics in the business, go and make a game", you'd probably come back with something rather good. Not just because of the technical excellence of the game, which is undeniably there, but because it's all been utilised properly. Just read through the wishlists and ideas threads on GTP, there's some great stuff in there. Imagine if those ideas made it into a game with GT's physics and graphics.

I think in part, Kaz and whoever else need to sit down and very carefully decide what they want GT7 to be, what they want it to do, why they want to do it, and how they want it done. GT5 and GT6 feel inconsistent, rushed, even bloated, because PDI have tried to do way too much, and in far too many different ways. Upgraded hardware can only go so far in fixing GT's issues, and it's precisely this that worries me about GT7 and beyond.

 

[nocturnalgrey]

If GT7 is a solid racer with plenty to do, and if PD can whip up a decent Course Maker, Event Maker, Race Mod and Livery Editor, we'll never run out of things to do.

Give me all this and dynamic time and weather, and I will finally have the perfect racing game (I actually believed T10 was can pull it off).

 

[GT6mebe]

This is ridiculous. 3 years is hardly a long dev cycle for a sequel let alone one which will have as much content as GT7 will most likely have and is the devs first next gen game.

 

[Johnnypenso]

This is ridiculous. 3 years is hardly a long dev cycle for a sequel let alone one which will have as much content as GT7 will most likely have and is the devs first next gen game.

The inevitable comparison is to it's nearest competitor, which is pumping out games every 2 years.

 

[The Chosen One]

The inevitable comparison is to it's nearest competitor, which is pumping out games every 2 years.

Mind you with a way larger staff count behind it.

 

[Mulan]

Mind you with a way larger staff count behind it.

And whos to blame for that? Poor planning is just poor planning and if they dissapear its because competition is better, smarter, faster, within time and with its cutomers. PD was (is?) fat and happy and then reality catched up.

 

[KilzoneStrife]

I have absolutely no issue with waiting for GT7. No issue whatsoever. What I do have an issue with, however, is that waiting longer does not correlate with the end result being better. We might wait five years for utter disappointment.

GT6 was crippled by the PS3 hardware in the same way GT5 was. I'm confident, in some respects, that GT7 will be a much better game because the PS4 is far more powerful yet simpler. This is a good thing.

Not all of GT's issues are purely technical, however. Some of them are design problems, issues with planning, priorities, decision making, and the vision for how the game will turn out. No amount of RAM or a super high performance CPU will prevent someone, somewhere, making a bad decision about what they want GT7 to be. Judging by the main issues in the GT series (sound, AI, career mode design), there are key issues in design that are the root of these flaws, not necessarily the hardware. Let's take the AI, for instance - is the rolling start format and weak AI in GT6 because the hardware forced PDI to make it that way, or because the staff wanted it to be like that? Possibly the latter, as GT5's AI was actually better in some ways. Will GT7 have the same AI, because the root cause is actually because someone thought it was a good idea.

While I expect a significant improvement in some aspects of the game due to hardware improvements, what we really need are improvements in the design phase. How great a game could be made, on PS3, using only GT6's assets, if only someone sat down and very carefully decided what they wanted to do with them? Why couldn't it be more like GT2 or GT4? There's no technical reason for the Career Mode being so short. I've limited the amount of time I've been playing GT6, because I get genuinely frustrated considering how much potential there is in that game, wasted by bad decision making. If someone came up to you and said, "hey, here are 400 immaculately detailed cars and 40+ tracks, with time change, weather change, and the some of the best lighting and physics in the business, go and make a game", you'd probably come back with something rather good. Not just because of the technical excellence of the game, which is undeniably there, but because it's all been utilised properly. Just read through the wishlists and ideas threads on GTP, there's some great stuff in there. Imagine if those ideas made it into a game with GT's physics and graphics.

I think in part, Kaz and whoever else need to sit down and very carefully decide what they want GT7 to be, what they want it to do, why they want to do it, and how they want it done. GT5 and GT6 feel inconsistent, rushed, even bloated, because PDI have tried to do way too much, and in far too many different ways. Upgraded hardware can only go so far in fixing GT's issues, and it's precisely this that worries me about GT7 and beyond.

Great post!

 

[Tornado]

This is ridiculous. 3 years is hardly a long dev cycle for a sequel let alone one which will have as much content as GT7 will most likely have and is the devs first next gen game.

3 years isn't necessarily a long development cycle for a tentpole game, but (rapidly approaching) two years with no news whatsoever about a sequel when the genre is awash with new competition is. The silence is the big thing, I think.

 

[rono_thomas]

Aston Martins have a wait that most would consider fairly/very long - just picking a manufacturer of the top of my head - Maybe GT6 and GT5 was more quantity over quality, maybe, but really when GT7 hits the shelves if it turns out to be the best game ever are all the complainers not going to buy it just because they waited 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10.... years, I would severely doubt it. PD have the attitude I believe, that they will produce a game that they are happy with and more than likely the consumers will buy into their dream, I don't think they worry, they may read, about peoples opinions that they are waiting to long but at the end of the day the finished product is what they care most about. (My opinion).

 

[GT6mebe]

3 years isn't necessarily a long development cycle for a tentpole game, but (rapidly approaching) two years with no news whatsoever about a sequel when the genre is awash with new competition is. The silence is the big thing, I think.

Details are only heard after official announcements. Furthermore, Kaz has given not so subtle hints on numerous occasions.

I don't why you would think PD or SCE would rush due to other franchises when GT remains far above everything else in the genre in terms of sales and the PS4 is dominating sales worldwide. The only reason I could see them being rushed is so that they can fill a gap in the PS4's 2016 lineup (for instance fall 2016) and to help increase the PS4 user base.

 

[Mulan]

if there is a strategy behind all then its a strange one. I think PD must hold that position to have that option in the future. If other franchises get ahead then they lose that advantage. I think they have miscalculated the opposition and are pressed now. Many examples of this in the tech/game business.
Ps4 is selling great even without GT.

 

[GT6mebe]

if there is a strategy behind all then its a strange one. I think PD must hold that position to have that option in the future. If other franchises get ahead then they lose that advantage. I think they have miscalculated the opposition and are pressed now. Many examples of this in the tech/game business.
Ps4 is selling great even without GT.

Your statement has little grounding in reality where GT is still the biggest brand in the sim racing genre, where the PS4 is selling nearly as well as the Wii and twice as much as the XB1 and where the only sim racer on PS4 is PCars.

Looking at previous entries it should be clear as day that GT is a massive system seller for Playstation. For those unaware, its Playstation's biggest exclusive.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Your statement has little grounding in reality where GT is still the biggest brand in the sim racing genre, where the PS4 is selling nearly as well as the Wii and twice as much as the XB1 and where the only sim racer on PS4 is PCars.

Looking at previous entries it should be clear as day that GT is a massive system seller for Playstation. For those unaware, its Playstation's biggest exclusive.

You're only as good as your last game and the last game wasn't very good. Nobody cares what PD did in 2004 anymore just like no one cares that Blackberry owned the cell phone market 10 years ago.

 

[GT6mebe]

You're only as good as your last game and the last game wasn't very good. Nobody cares what PD did in 2004 anymore just like no one cares that Blackberry owned the cell phone market 10 years ago.

You're only as good as your last game......incorrect. Devs are remembered for their entire portfolio, even more so when the development team had no changed drastically.

Not being very good.....thats entirely subjective.
People clearly care about what PD do considering GT5 has 10+ million sales.

 

[Tornado]

Details are only heard after official announcements. Furthermore, Kaz has given not so subtle hints on numerous occasions.

I don't why you would think PD or SCE would rush due to other franchises when GT remains far above everything else in the genre in terms of sales and the PS4 is dominating sales worldwide. The only reason I could see them being rushed is so that they can fill a gap in the PS4's 2016 lineup (for instance fall 2016) and to help increase the PS4 user base.

Who said anything about rushing anything? 2 years after a console generation started to even say anything about your current gen game is a "rush"? GT2 was released very close to the PS2's launch (after the hype train had started and the console was finalized, and after its "sequel" was already announced and made playable at trade shows), and two years after it released GT3 had already been out for 7 months.

 

[Johnnypenso]

You're only as good as your last game......incorrect. Devs are remembered for their entire portfolio, even more so when the development team had no changed drastically.

Not being very good.....thats entirely subjective.
People clearly care about what PD do considering GT5 has 10+ million sales.

Thanks for proving my point. You skipped the "last game" and used one released 5 years ago to attempt to show how good PD is...which really proves my point.

 

[gtracedriver1]

You're only as good as your last game and the last game

wasn't very good. Nobody cares what PD did in 2004 anymore just like no one cares that Blackberry owned the cell phone market 10 years ago.

The inevitable comparison is to it's nearest competitor, which is pumping out games every 2 years.

I am sure GT7 will have lots of content and features. More likely more than the competition or on par with Forza7. So in the end it does not matter as long as the game is good and improved from previous version. I disagree about GT6. Apart from sounds, AI it is one of the best games from last gen.

 

[GT6mebe]

Who said anything about rushing anything? 2 years after a console generation started to even say anything about your current gen game is a "rush"? GT2 was released very close to the PS2's launch (after the hype train had started and the console was finalized, and after its "sequel" was already announced and made playable at trade shows), and two years after it released GT3 had already been out for 7 months.

Once again Kaz has already said several things about GT's future....as much as one can say before the official announcement of a game. Din't tell me you are seriously comparing the development of a PS2 game in comparison to the development of a PS4 game.

Thanks for proving my point. You skipped the "last game" and used one released 5 years ago to attempt to show how good PD is...which really proves my point.

Nope. GT6 was not mentioned due there not being any sales info on it.

 

[SVPSkins]

I'd sooner it tuck to long, then to soon. Quality over quantity

 

[Tornado]

Once again Kaz has already said several things about GT's future....as much as one can say before the official announcement of a game.

Which means that for all intents and purposes he hasn't said a single thing. He made pretty much the exact same coy and off the cuff statements about GT5 and after a while when that game continuously failed to come out and those statements continuously failed to have any tangibility to them the only people who kept paying attention to any of them were people on this forum. Kaz saying "The PS4 is pretty awesome everyone" and "GT7 will be earlier than people expect" and "I can't go into detail, but *stuff* is gonna be better" doesn't mean squat compared to an actual game announcement; and that's even if we didn't already have Kaz saying "The PS3 is pretty awesome everyone" and "GT5 will be earlier than people expect" and "I can't go into detail, but *stuff* is gonna be better."

Din't tell me you are seriously comparing the development of a PS2 game in comparison to the development of a PS4 game.

So that's a "yes", then. You do think that two years into a new console's life is still rushing it to even announce a game.

 

[Imari]

I'd sooner it tuck to long, then to soon. Quality over quantity

I dunno. Sometimes extending production is the worst thing a dev can do, and they'd be better off shipping whatever they have and starting afresh. See the saga of Daikatana for an example. They should have shipped the (admittedly kind of crap) game that they had and put their effort into something new, instead of chasing their tails for years.

It's hard to say, but I suspect the PS3 generation would have gone better for Polyphony if they'd released a cut down GT5 a year or two earlier, spent the next 12 to 18 months patching it (like they had to do anyway), and then rolled what they'd learnt into a GT6 released around 2011/2012.

Having a less expansive first game gives them more room for improvement in the second game, and getting it out early means that they learn faster what works and what doesn't. Or they have the opportunity to learn, at least.

Kaz was making noises about GT5 being ready to release for a long time before it actually was, so I think it would have been possible. After the success of GT5P, it might even have been a brilliant idea.

Being the best isn't everything. Sometimes you just have to accept being OK and use the experience to learn more about how to be better. Gran Turismo has a lot of areas where it needs to learn how to be better at the moment, and I don't think anyone should expect to go from substandard to best-in-class in one jump. If it was me, I'd put out a solid, adequate, foundational game (not unlike GT3 in it's time) and then work on it from there.

Get something out in the market, get to supporting it and learning, and then start work on my magnificent octopus.

 

[Mulan]

I remeber Duke Nukem and the sequel that was coming and coming....

 

[GT6mebe]

Which means that for all intents and purposes he hasn't said a single thing. He made pretty much the exact same coy and off the cuff statements about GT5 and after a while when that game continuously failed to come out and those statements continuously failed to have any tangibility to them the only people who kept paying attention to any of them were people on this forum. Kaz saying "The PS4 is pretty awesome everyone" and "GT7 will be earlier than people expect" and "I can't go into detail, but *stuff* is gonna be better" doesn't mean squat compared to an actual game announcement; and that's even if we didn't already have Kaz saying "The PS3 is pretty awesome everyone" and "GT5 will be earlier than people expect" and "I can't go into detail, but *stuff* is gonna be better."


So that's a "yes", then. You do think that two years into a new console's life is still rushing it to even announce a game.

I see you have now changed the goalposts from Kaz has not said anything to I don't believe in what Kaz says. You are free to believe in what you like but don't go round saying that we have heard nothing about GT7 as that is simply incorrect.

So thats a "yes", then. You are comparing a PS2 dev cycle to a PS4 dev cycle.
Dev cycles are what tell us whether a team took too long or dd things too quickly not the placement of an announcement which could vary from each game.
3 years seems a reasonable amount of time for GT7.

 

[Tornado]

I see you have now changed the goalposts from Kaz has not said anything to I don't believe in what Kaz says.

I see you're trying real hard to be witty with this, especially below, but try not to get so focused on the trees that you miss the forest.

You are free to believe in what you like but don't go round saying that we have heard nothing about GT7 as that is simply incorrect.

Except we haven't heard anything about GT7. In the three links I posted above, what actual information do you see? If people are hungry for GT7 news in the face of three Forza games, AC, ProjectCARS, Drive Club, whatever, all showing what the power of the new generation of consoles can be harnessed to accomplish and how they are being used as such, what are they supposed to take away from Kaz doing an interview where he says pretty much nothing but "it'll be better this time" or "it won't take that long"? The fact that it exists? The fact that it is being worked on? Because neither of those things are news.

And why do Kaz's meaninglessly vague statements about this game exist in a complete vacuum wholly unrelated to any other interview he's given about any other upcoming game that were almost identical in content?

So thats a "yes", then. You are comparing a PS2 dev cycle to a PS4 dev cycle.

Yes I am. I could also compare it to the PS3 dev cycle, which was certainly far more protracted than GT7's will be, but still had something to show and announcements and news provided very quickly after the system launched. By November of 2008, we had 2 different Gran Turismo demo games released showing what progress PD had made to that point; one of which even released to retail. What do you think is the case with the PS4 (which has not just Kaz has been talking about how much better it was than last generation) that completely precludes PD or Sony from providing any actual news about the game we already knew is coming even approaching 2 years into the PS4's life cycle? Because you're acting like that is so obvious that it defies explanation, but I'm not entirely sure you can actually give one.

Again, don't try so hard for a "GOTCHA!" that you actually miss the point. Which, again, wasn't about development cycles:

Dev cycles are what tell us whether a team took too long or dd things too quickly not the placement of an announcement which could vary from each game.
3 years seems a reasonable amount of time for GT7.

3 years isn't necessarily a long development cycle for a tentpole game

You don't say.

 

[Mulan]

The conclusion is: We wait as long as they want us to wait, we have no investments now so we have no claim. But if they want advice then its nice to communicate with potential customers and timeinvestors or we take our potential money and time and put it in a company/game/franchise that fulfills our expectations.