Why is there not a new car or new track every day?

[Beppesignori]

I don't understand the lack of development in GT5. Maybe I underestimate the customer potential, but why are there not 100 software developers employed to supply a stream of new cars and tracks. In this day and age, where we buy Apps on our phones for a dollar or two without blinking, there should be a huge potential for selling cars online. Lets say it takes 1 developer 6 months to design a car. It sells 50.000 times world wide for 2 dollars. Not a bad return. Imagine all the cars we miss in this game could be a reality at the push of a button. Has anyone been to a track day without a BMW E30...imagine driving you home circuits like Brands Hatch, Knock Hill, Knutstorp etc.
I would pay the same for let's say 30 new cars, and 5 new real life tracks, as I would for a complete new game. And the development costs would be a fraction of that of a complete game....

( and by new cars I don't mean the endless stream of livery changes and spoiler additions to Japanese touring cars, or company sponsored sales pitches like the VW and Corvette initiatives )

 

[Tarkata]

I would pay the same for let's say 30 new cars, and 5 new real life tracks, as I would for a complete new game.

I would not.

 

[roflcoptor]

Lets say it takes 1 developer 6 months to design a car. It sells 50.000 times world wide for 2 dollars.

Far too simplistic to be anywhere near viable. 👎

The amount of work to accurately research, model and code a car from scratch is beyond just one person's capability. Nobody can do all that by themselves, you need teams of people with individual specialities.

So your $100k return becomes pittance before you even consider paying the car manufaturers any licence fees and royalties.

I understand your frustration about lack of new DLC, but to say that new cars "could be a reality at the push of a button" is somewhat naive.

I'm sure that PD would be doing this if it really were that simple, after all, a games company is still a business existing to make money.

The fact they are not doing it, says that there are some other factors you have not considered.

 

[Guardian]

I would not.

Exacly this^.

If we got maybe 100 new Premiums then fine.

Otherwise I'll stick to having awesome fun, one-make races with some slow standards. For me, it's given this game a whole new lease of life.

 

[TwistyDrift]

Nope. I'd rather buy DLC.

 

[TheeFrogmanlego]

Sony dropped the ball.. they should pumped dlc for this game like crazy in the form of one or two cars a month.

 

[XS]

Far too simplistic to be anywhere near viable. 👎

The amount of work to accurately research, model and code a car from scratch is beyond just one person's capability. Nobody can do all that by themselves, you need teams of people with individual specialities.

So your $100k return becomes pittance before you even consider paying the car manufaturers any licence fees and royalties.

I understand your frustration about lack of new DLC, but to say that new cars "could be a reality at the push of a button" is somewhat naive.

I'm sure that PD would be doing this if it really were that simple, after all, a games company is still a business existing to make money.

The fact they are not doing it, says that there are some other factors you have not considered.

This.
Not to mention that a $100 return over a six month job is not what any business would consider good. Just doing some rough, rough math here... Even if a team of 10 employees worked for 6 months to turn out new cars there would be at least $200,000 in payroll alone. In order to sell dlc for $2 and break even just on the payroll over a six month period you would have to develop 100,000 cars/tracks/paint etc. Or charge significantly more for content. When you actually think about the payroll that PD and Sony have to cover now, it's amazing we get any free content at all. Be thankful. Edit, I think he meant 50,000.00 times, not 50. Even still, they're not breaking even with a $100,000 return on one item.

 

[Beppesignori]

I see your point, and yes, it was a very rough calculation. Then forget the idea of selling single cars for a few bucks, and look more towards an evolution package. Surely developing 100 cars, and 10 new World Tracks is massively cheaper than developing 1200 cars and an entire game engine. Especially considering the game engine is already in place, one must assume that with a limited amount of testing, and by entering data of different cars, it would be possible to develop further cars at a smaller cost than the first batch. 100 cars would be sufficient if cars like a new Honda Jazz or Toyota Prius were left out, and emphasis was put on cars racers would actually drive. I know that part of the original gameplay is based on working your way up the classes, so I don't complain that these cars exist in the original game.
Developing real world tracks is of course much more difficult than fantasy tracks, but it is so much more rewarding, when you can actually use the information you gain from driving on the PS when you visit the real track, or even when watching real cars on those tracks on Yotube etc.
There are of course many different approaches and uses of this game, and users can be anything from 12 year olds without at drivers license, to real world LeMans drivers, driving online with friends.
To me it is about driving some of the cars I will never drive in real life. Having a discussion amongst friends wether a BMW E30 M3 is actually faster than 205Gti and then testing it on the PS. When I bought my car, I had previously driven 100's of laps on the Nurburgring in that car. I took it straight from the dealer, changed fluids and pads, and drove straight to the ring. I was amazed how close the Gt got the real life driving characteristics. But I will never have the time or money to drive all cars, but would love to know how a lot of them behave and compare to other cars...

 

[Monatsende]

More cars? Absolute nightmare for us "Pokemon traders" in the marketplace.
I`m happy with GT5 and waiting now for GT6.

 

[eran0004]

Because if you hire 100 software developers you need to:

• Recruit the people with the right skills
• Rent a bigger office
• Invest in more equipment (mainly computers)
• Hire more administrators
• Hire more supervisors and quality controllers
• Invest time and money in training for 100 people
• Transform the company culture and management style as the business grows.
• Get rid of everything above when the DLC doesn't sell anymore (people do move on to other games after a while)

There might be a profit in doing that, but there's not much sustainability.
There is also 6 month before the people you hired will start to generate some money. If each of these artists have an annual wage of $30 000, that's $1 500 000 in wages alone during those 6 months. Including additional costs we could round that figure up to $2 000 000. Add to that the cost of renting a bigger office, investing in equipment etc. you'd have to spend a lot of money before you see any return. And if people would have stopped playing the game after those 6 months, then you wouldn't sell any DLC and you'd have to fire everyone, wasting every penny you've spent on them. So it's a lot of risk-taking as well.

Sure it's a path they can take, but it's not an obvious path to success. It's up to the management if they're willing to take the risk, and to judge if the company is at the right point of facing such an expansion.

Looking at the corporate profile they'd have to double in size, it's a pretty big risk.

 

[Johnnypenso]

I don't understand the lack of development in GT5. Maybe I underestimate the customer potential, but why are there not 100 software developers employed to supply a stream of new cars and tracks. In this day and age, where we buy Apps on our phones for a dollar or two without blinking, there should be a huge potential for selling cars online. Lets say it takes 1 developer 6 months to design a car. It sells 50.000 times world wide for 2 dollars. Not a bad return. Imagine all the cars we miss in this game could be a reality at the push of a button. Has anyone been to a track day without a BMW E30...imagine driving you home circuits like Brands Hatch, Knock Hill, Knutstorp etc.
I would pay the same for let's say 30 new cars, and 5 new real life tracks, as I would for a complete new game. And the development costs would be a fraction of that of a complete game....

( and by new cars I don't mean the endless stream of livery changes and spoiler additions to Japanese touring cars, or company sponsored sales pitches like the VW and Corvette initiatives )

I agree, PD missed the boat. Good quality DLC should have been well planned, included tracks, and been flowing from the beginning. Were I in Kaz's shoes I'd be happy to be breaking even on the deal, just to keep interest peaked and focus on the franchise. They missed out on a huge opportunity and anyone that doesn't understand that doesn't know a lot about business.

 

[eran0004]

I agree, PD missed the boat. Good quality DLC should have been well planned, included tracks, and been flowing from the beginning. Were I in Kaz's shoes I'd be happy to be breaking even on the deal, just to keep interest peaked and focus on the franchise. They missed out on a huge opportunity and anyone that doesn't understand that doesn't know a lot about business.

You don't just hire a hundred skilled people with a snap of your fingers and you don't just double the size of your business in the blink of an eye. Anyone that doesn't understand that doesn't know a lot about business.

Ask any professional businessman and they'll tell you it's a lot more complicated and time consuming.

 

[Samus]

The (semi) answer to this is simple, for whatever reason PD refuse to outsource any of their work or expand their own workforce in large numbers. Without doing that you're never going to see a large flow of content as you see from Forza. I'm not going to get into another debate about whether outsourcing is a good idea or not but it's clearly what allows T10 to put out content so quickly.

 

[Beppesignori]

@eran004
I understand the committments required, but as mentioned, it should have been done from the start, and there would be no need to close the operation down, since they would continue doing the same thing on the next version of GT. Even if it did cost 2 mill dollars, it would keep people interested in the game, and effectively bridge the gap between GT versions...and I am sure BMW would not charge much of a license fee to publish an E30...they might even want to sponsor...

 

[MoLiEG]

The (semi) answer to this is simple, for whatever reason PD refuse to outsource any of their work or expand their own workforce in large numbers. Without doing that you're never going to see a large flow of content as you see from Forza. I'm not going to get into another debate about whether outsourcing is a good idea or not but it's clearly what allows T10 to put out content so quickly.

Yeap, this is pretty much the reason.

 

[Broseph]

There's like 1100 cars in the game. I think that's plenty. And there's more than enough tracks to keep me happy.

 

[Johnnypenso]

You don't just hire a hundred skilled people with a snap of your fingers and you don't just double the size of your business in the blink of an eye. Anyone that doesn't understand that doesn't know a lot about business.

Ask any professional businessman and they'll tell you it's a lot more complicated and time consuming.

So you're telling me that a $5Billion gaming franchise can't find a way to hire a crew to make virtual cars? That's your argument? They can't plan these things out ahead of time? Seriously? Business 101: This should have been planned for before the title was released, not a spur of the moment hiring of people to program. It isn't the corner grocery store. The boat was missed 3 or 4 years ago in the planning stages.

 

[eran0004]

@eran004
I understand the committments required, but as mentioned, it should have been done from the start, and there would be no need to close the operation down, since they would continue doing the same thing on the next version of GT. Even if it did cost 2 mill dollars, it would keep people interested in the game, and effectively bridge the gap between GT versions...and I am sure BMW would not charge much of a license fee to publish an E30...they might even want to sponsor...

Yes, but there has to be an economy. If you double the workforce, you double the cost. It would also be based purely on selling DLC, and what do you do when people don't want to buy DLC any longer? The DLC that has been released so far has probably been selling well, but with the principle of diminishing return it's not certain that the result would be the same if new DLC was released every week, that is also something you need to include in the calculation.

And is DLC alone enough to keep a base of players interested in the game for the entire period between two titles? Some players always stays until the end, and with regular DLC more would probably stay, but would it be enough to support the business?

So you're telling me that a $5Billion gaming franchise can't find a way to hire a crew to make virtual cars? That's your argument? They can't plan these things out ahead of time? Seriously? Business 101: This should have been planned for before the title was released, not a spur of the moment hiring of people to program. It isn't the corner grocery store. The boat was missed 3 or 4 years ago in the planning stages.

PD has a capital of 10 million yen, roughly 110 000 USD. They can't blindly hire people without having a budget for it. PD has been growing steadily over the years, they are not yet at the stage where they can produce DLC as often as we would like to, but if they keep growing then they might be there some day. Turn 10 manages to do that today, but PD is not yet there.

 

[eran0004]

Double post.

 

[GranTurismo916]

You can't just magically get employees, an office building, equiptment, etc. I think the car count now is fine...if there was a new car or track every day, we would have over 700 tracks and cars for DLC.

 

[Samus]

Car count isn't important, it's what cars are in that count and because of the lack of DLC there is a serious lack of 2010+ models in GT5. Hopefully that is rectified for GT6 but again they're going to get left behind on new/future models if they can't keep pace on DLC. It's all very well doing one car like the Vette but they need more. The days of just including cars revealed before your game releases and then that's that are gone. You've got to keep up to date these days.

 

[Johnnypenso]

You can't just magically get employees, an office building, equiptment, etc. I think the car count now is fine...if there was a new car or track every day, we would have over 700 tracks and cars for DLC.

Forget the every day part...I'm sure it was an exaggeration. But to say they need to massively expand their operations to add a couple of new cars a month and 4 or 5 tracks a year is baloney. It should have been done just to maintain interest in the franchise. It's a lost opportunity.

 

[Bacon]

Load times are already long enough so with a new track and car everyday for over 2 years would result in ridiculous loading times that would render the game unplayable.

 

[Samus]

Load times are already long enough so with a new track and car everyday for over 2 years would result in ridiculous loading times that would render the game unplayable.

Uh, what? The game doesn't load every car and track all of the time.

 

[Bacon]

Uh, what? The game doesn't load every car and track all of the time.

Does it not? Only when you have that much data on any game not matter whether you are using it or not it will always increase the load times which is why it encourages you to install the game because it decreases load times.

Have you ever tried loading you garage up with just 1 car in? It doesn't take very long at all. Now buy very car in the game, 1200 cars. It now takes a very long time. Add 700 more to that and it takes even longer.

 

[Aquarelle]

I have 1400 odd cars in my garage and it still takes next to no time to load. Not sure what your argument is anyway since the game allows you to have 2 thousand cars, it doesn't require you to.

I'd imagine the reason DLC production is so slow is because assets are being saved for GT6. 👍 just because a company can do something doesn't mean they should. They've already increased their manpower for the next installment as is.

Pay cheques don't clear themselves

 

[Lambob]

Let's not forget that Sony, the dynasty, has total control, as to "how much" a game franchise can "reward it's players". If Sony gave the greenlight to PD, or if any company grants something too big to be true to one small segment, it will destroy the big picture, no one would then play other games released by Sony, thus actually losing money and power, for them, in the long run.

The gaming entertainment industry is a trillion dollar business this decade. They are riding the wave high almighty, with sharks biting at every crest. It will be interesting to see which big fish survive the end of the tide. We already seeing in our faces, very disheartening business practices from our longtime successfully proven developers, take for instance Diablo 3 from Blizzard (merged with Activision), where they do nothing to reward casual gameplay anylonger, making you pay to win, changing the course of gaming history, where many of us want no part of, sorry for straying OT.

easier said than done, but if I were Kaz? I'd separate from Sony, make my own hardware box for the sole purpose of providing unabridged GT game to my fanbase. easier said than done, because of all the legalities involved, and Sony owns the right to what PD can and cannot do.

This is what Gabe Newell is doing with his Steam service. He is detaching from all those around him saying this is failing, PC is declining, yada yada yada, he believes no part of such lies , but is branching out and making his own hardware Steam console (box) to run on " a TV in every home" , while Microsoft continues to ailienate and insult its users with "touch" operating systems that no body wants.

Love GT5, and will love GT6 nevertheless, and yes, even the PS4. lets hope they come together late this year.

If I ever won the lottery, I'd dream to open my own gaming dev studio, but to run on custom console , I would want no part of the big three (MS , Sony, Nintendo) telling me what I can or cannot do. Too bad that money wouldn't be enough though.

Perhaps I will eye Kickstarter one day, and see if I could realize such a dream.

 

[TokoTurismo]

I have 1400 odd cars in my garage and it still takes next to no time to load. Not sure what your argument is anyway since the game allows you to have 2 thousand cars, it doesn't require you to.

I'd imagine the reason DLC production is so slow is because assets are being saved for GT6. 👍 just because a company can do something doesn't mean they should. They've already increased their manpower for the next installment as is.

Pay cheques don't clear themselves

That. That is excatly what I thought as well, as to why GT5 has been slow on DLC. Is because all that DLC are being saved specifically for GT6. It's going to take some time for others to know and understand this main reason, just enjoy what's already in GT5. 👍

I understand others would want more DLC for GT5, but you'll maybe blown away to see what new cars and tracks would be in the next installment that weren't DLC for GT5. I'm just dying to see GT6 and PS4 (Omni or Orbis).

 

[Beppesignori]

A new car or track every day, was a bit of an exaggeration. But just some of the cars that people feel that are missing. I am not sure what sort of numbers you would get, if you made some statistics on which cars are actually being driven. But if you look at the open rooms, you rarely see a Honda Jazz or Prius room. A package of cars and tracks every year, maybe 50-100 cars, and 5 tracks...perfect. I only drive real world tracks, because the inclusion of those tracks, in my mind, changed Gt from an Arcade game to a driving simulator...

 

[MSTER232]

I don't understand the lack of development in GT5. Maybe I underestimate the customer potential, but why are there not 100 software developers employed to supply a stream of new cars and tracks. In this day and age, where we buy Apps on our phones for a dollar or two without blinking, there should be a huge potential for selling cars online. Lets say it takes 1 developer 6 months to design a car. It sells 50.000 times world wide for 2 dollars. Not a bad return. Imagine all the cars we miss in this game could be a reality at the push of a button. Has anyone been to a track day without a BMW E30...imagine driving you home circuits like Brands Hatch, Knock Hill, Knutstorp etc.
I would pay the same for let's say 30 new cars, and 5 new real life tracks, as I would for a complete new game. And the development costs would be a fraction of that of a complete game....

( and by new cars I don't mean the endless stream of livery changes and spoiler additions to Japanese touring cars, or company sponsored sales pitches like the VW and Corvette initiatives )

But the thing is, it's not as easy as just picking what cars you want to add into the game and start modeling it. You would be surprised if you worked in PD's office for a week how difficult modeling GT5 is. It takes quite a while to make one decent quality Premium car and you definitely could do it in a day. The same goes for tracks so asking for a new track every day is totally unfair and unreasonable.

PD also has to deal with copyright, and not all cars we ask for are going to be added in the game, because the car companies may say no to PD asking for permission to replicate their cars in the game.

EDIT: I see you've acknowledged the title of this thread but I think you should change it to something that isn't as misleading. Also, welcome to and I hope you like it here. PD actually used to give out DLC every month I think, but they've recently stopped developing DLC so quickly because they are focusing on their new game GT6 and as a result they have to put less of their focus in GT5 and put all of their focus into GT6.