I expect that GT5 will be released sometime this year and it will be great and we will all forget about the delays however...
Part of me thinks back to when I used to play PC flight sims back in the day and Falcon 3.0 was all the rage as the best and most realistic sim of that time. There were great expectations set for the follow-up Falcon 4.0. There were delays and when it finally came out it was technically flawed with many bugs and all but unplayable. These bugs were fixed over time but mostly by the user community as the development staff was let go after the commercial failure of the game due to the issues.
I also remember the anticipation of John Romero's Daikatana game after he had a string of successes in the game industry which made him the most highly regarded developer at the time. Of course that game flopped which may or may not have been due to Romero becoming less involved and interested in game development and more into peripheral hobbies such as racing his Ferarri's.
There was also the extensive time and investment in Shenmue for the Dreamcast ($70 million to develop way back in 2000) that never came close to making a return on that investment which shows that time and money don't always guarantee a successful game.
There are many other examples of great expectations of the new game based on past successes that didn't turn out so well so it gives one pause for thought. I still believe that GT5 will be great but of course I have no firm proof or evidence to back up that claim. I have no evidence to say that on the other hand GT5 will suck or never happen either. The interesting thing is that it is not absurd to consider what my racing game "Plan B" may need to be should this occur as this is not out of the realm of possibility. I don't think that I would have been considering that a year or six months ago.
Part of me thinks back to when I used to play PC flight sims back in the day and Falcon 3.0 was all the rage as the best and most realistic sim of that time. There were great expectations set for the follow-up Falcon 4.0. There were delays and when it finally came out it was technically flawed with many bugs and all but unplayable. These bugs were fixed over time but mostly by the user community as the development staff was let go after the commercial failure of the game due to the issues.
I also remember the anticipation of John Romero's Daikatana game after he had a string of successes in the game industry which made him the most highly regarded developer at the time. Of course that game flopped which may or may not have been due to Romero becoming less involved and interested in game development and more into peripheral hobbies such as racing his Ferarri's.
There was also the extensive time and investment in Shenmue for the Dreamcast ($70 million to develop way back in 2000) that never came close to making a return on that investment which shows that time and money don't always guarantee a successful game.
There are many other examples of great expectations of the new game based on past successes that didn't turn out so well so it gives one pause for thought. I still believe that GT5 will be great but of course I have no firm proof or evidence to back up that claim. I have no evidence to say that on the other hand GT5 will suck or never happen either. The interesting thing is that it is not absurd to consider what my racing game "Plan B" may need to be should this occur as this is not out of the realm of possibility. I don't think that I would have been considering that a year or six months ago.
