As we can see, there's a number of reasons people feel the way they do. Personally, it's like this:
-the course maker in GT5, while extremely limited, did become a useful tool once people became proficient with it. Speaking from a drifting standpoint, I can quite confidently say that by the end of GT5's time, many of the best drift tracks available were custom tracks. People tweaked and refined their creations to the point where the flow, challenge, and overall appeal was equal to or higher than the PD generated tracks (both real and imaginary) The single best track I have ever drifted on in a GT game was a Toscana track made by members of team Blackout (oh how I miss that track!)
-for the Togue community, the course maker was the be all end all.
Moving on to GT6, through a combination of miss-information and overhyping within the community, many people came under the impression that the GT6 course maker would be a revolutionary tool in the racing game genre.
The general belief was that people would be able to use a GPS tracker to record real life roads and tracks, to a satisfactory level, and then create a digital version of that road/track in the game. Imagine being able to create a street circuit in your local neighbourhood. Imagine being able to upload a version of your local grassroots track (which basically has no chance of being done by PD themselves, as they won't waste their time with your unheard of local track).
Another aspect of it is what is going on in other racing games, such as LFS, rFactor, Asseto Corsa, and pCARS. While these games don't really feature a "course maker" per say, their open source coding allows regular users to create and share their own tracks. Because of this, these games now feature a community generated list of tracks which far surpasses that of GT.
PD does not have the resources to recreate every track and every mile of road on the planet. Not if they try to do it all themselves.
However, if someone can generate a tool which allows millions of users to contribute to the effort, the task becomes much more doable.
And make no mistake, a completely virtual copy of earth is where the genre will eventually end up. Whichever company can provide the best tool at the earliest time will be the winner.
Eventually, track lists will no longer be a selling feature of a game. Rather, the comprehensiveness and accuracy of a given games course generator will be what is important.
So, I think a lot of people, myself included, were under the impression that PD were attempting to take strides in that direction, which was extremely exciting. I'm willing to admit that a lot of this anticipation had no concrete backing, and was mostly a product of the community hypetrain....but it is what it is.
