Will we ever see a classic Gran Turismo mode ever again?

  • Thread starter vasio
  • 86 comments
  • 7,690 views

Will we ever see a classic Gran Turismo mode ever again?

  • Yes

    Votes: 24 27.6%
  • No

    Votes: 63 72.4%

  • Total voters
    87
If Kaz knew well before GT7 launch that seasoned GT veterans would hate the talking heads, why is there no option to turn them off? Is this to deliberately troll loyal fans?
Mashing the X button, saves them from adding that option.
GT2: 146 GT League races, of which 18 are exact copies of 9 (ie. dirt events) but with a different difficulty level. On top of that one make races and a random event generator, 60 licence tests, no special events.
GT3 and GT4 - can't check, my PS2 isn't here.
GT5: 128 GT League races (not counting B-Spec as you aren't driving), 60 licence tests, 58 special events.
GT6: 191 GT League races, 25 licence tests, 25 driving missions, 43 special events.
GT Sport*: 267 GT League races, 48 licence tests (named Driving School), 64 driving missions, 37 circuit experiences.
GT7*: 175 World Circuit races, 50 licence tests, 56 driving missions, 47 circuit experiences, and custom races.

Looking at cold hard numbers, GT7 has already exceeded its "classic" predecessors in the overall amount of stuff and will only keep growing. Yet everyone loves the amount or races in GT2, which really wasn't all that high, and loathes GT6 while it in fact trumped GT5 very handily. GT Sport has a ton of races but it was continuously updated for four years. Let's see the figures for GT7 in early 2026 and then re-evaluate the situation.

*at the time of writing
I’d say it’s the qiuality of the races in past games. Yes, there were only six cars, but we had actual race series, as well as made up series races. I mean, BTCC, DTM, GT300 and GT500(Super GT in later games) and IMSA type races. GT5 & GT6 at least gave us GT3, NASCAR, more Super GT with full grids.

Taking out the expensive nature to recreate race series in GT7, there’s just not enough variety to take advantage of the tools we currently have. There’s just too much the players have to imagine: build TCR cars with alternate models, improvise Le Mans, try to recreate Super Taikyu, etc. it’s good that we have many cars from the 1990-2010, but at the cost to having updated cars to match the last couple years of real world racing.

Correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think a Gran Turismo has been this far behind with up to date(from game debut) road and race machinery.
 
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What I’d really rather prefer to see, more than a classic GT campaign, is more integration between the campaign in general - regardless of whether it’s in the vein of an older GT campaign or not - and Sport Mode.

More specifically, I would ideally like to see more Sport Mode races (including championship rounds) use similar regulations to events seen in the campaign, such as a race at Goodwood Circuit reserved for classic sportscars that are below a certain PP limit.
 
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The cafe would have been a good concept if they made all the menus like what the extra menus are now. I.e. just a collection of 3 cars which when completed gave you a bit of car history and a reward. It would have been an incentive to collect cars and a way to incorporate 'car culture/history' into the game. Then they could have had a normal career mode on the side instead of attaching races to the menus.

But yeah at this point I don't really care about them adding single player. I like starting a game out on career mode to learn the game and get the experience of the progression and game in general. That magic moment has already passed and I will get more enjoyment out of more online events and features. Daily races are ok but get stale quickly. The time trial is fun and interesting but doesn't last long. But more of those kinds of live events will keep the game fresh for a long time
 
What exactly are you looking for out of the game? There are 36 tracks with 104 different variations to play on. You have 454 cars you can buy and race with. 45 different circuit experiences to achieve, 5 different licenses to obtain, 7 separate missions to complete, the cafe menu events, the various extra events at each track, 3 online races that change weekly, a 1 lap time attack event where you compete against players from around the world that changes weekly, the occasional manufacturers cup events that pop up, The world series events that popped up, the ability to create your own customized races, the ability to create your own rooms to race online against your friends, soon it will be implementing VR headset compatibility... I mean, what else do you want??? What is this game lacking that is keeping you from being satisfied???

There are hundreds of hours worth of play time in this one game alone and you don't have to spend any additional money other than your initial purchase of the game to play it all. Okay, you need a PS+ account to play any of the Sport mode events, but that PS+ account expands well beyond just GT7. There are several AAA titles that cost just as much as GT7 and only give you 6-10 hours of play time and you have completed the game. Thats it. Game over. GT7 is hundreds of hours in its base game play with online play that is constantly changing. The latest updates have added more tracks, more cars, more missions, extra cafe menus, blah, blah, blah. Seriously, how are people still complaining about this game?

EDIT: Not to mention, custom car liveries to design, custom helmet and outfit liveries to design, custom tuning of all the car's power, aerodynamics, suspension, tires... basically all their performance attributes. Its pretty much limitless in the amount of customization you can do.
All great points. All it needs are tons of championships and multiples of events added.
There are 36 tracks with 104 different variations to play on. You have 454 cars
Absolutely 0-reason for there not to be more single player events with this many variations and cars. It doesn't require much "work" aside from whatever AI programming they would need to do for each event. For me, Sport mode isn't really feasible because I have young children and don't have that much uninterrupted time and I'm just not the biggest fan of multiplayer racing.

Custom events are nice, but I'm just the type of person who doesn't want to "create the fun" myself. If they put 50-events under each track, I would feel compelled to complete them all. It would give me a reason to use certain cars that I just skip over otherwise.
 
Given how many remakes there are now I wouldn't doubt if a classic GT with the classic mode gets a remaster, but I sadly doubt that a new game would go with the classic mode because it doesn't optimize the m iacrotransaction sales.

Due to it being a game full of licences can’t ever see there being a remake. Don’t think classic mode will be in GT7. Maybe return for GT8.
That 👆

Some people here compare number of events with previous titles. But that has to be put in perspective, you can't compare the number of events in GT2 (which competed with EA Sports Nascar, or TOCA 2) with the nowadays titles which compete with may titles with a lot of content and a strong competitor on the hardware side of the console market, which there wasn't in the late 90s.

The menus are interesting in the first hour, while we acclimatize to the game mechanics, after that are just feels like a straightjacket that doesn't allow us to explore the game. Many of us would like that need to strategize in the first hours, where to spend the credits wisely and so on. With the menus you really only buy the first car, than keep winning the cars you will need in the future, the grinding will only be needed on the collectors point of view, to spend in very expensive cars that aren't really needed to complete the events presented.

I believe one not assumed reason to not having this "classic" mode was to allow people to easily access the cars needed for Sport Mode from day one. The function of "Rent a Car" introduced by update on GT7 will solve this issue in future titles, I believe, as Sport Mode can be completely independent from the actual Garage.
 
I really don't think that gt7 or whatever follows after that will have the a bit more " older " ( short of) format we knew .
Times changing, world is changing and people too.
Games have pass to a new format via internet and there's no way back .
Many live from that,earn from that , depends their lives from that etc.
I can't remember when was the last time that i saw people around a table, having a brake at work , waiting somewhere , on a bus etc. without looking at their phones.

Sometimes is enough to keep people " busy" ,give them a little bit of this or that in a regular basis ( call it update ) and
the job is done.
Maybe some ( old dogs mostly) are unhappy or disagree but on the other hand there is no alternative and one way or another they will follow.
I am old dog generation but i can't complain, its worthless anyway.
Now is the era that almost everyone " live " with and through a significant part of an interactive world that he creates .
Not that is bad , the bad in that case is when " all you have " is only that.

PS
Don't know why but i have the feeling that after one ( much or less) year from now GT 7 will be a better game than it is now in every aspect.
 
I really don't think that gt7 or whatever follows after that will have the a bit more " older " ( short of) format we knew .
Times changing, world is changing and people too.
Games have pass to a new format via internet and there's no way back .
Many live from that,earn from that , depends their lives from that etc.
I can't remember when was the last time that i saw people around a table, having a brake at work , waiting somewhere , on a bus etc. without looking at their phones.

Sometimes is enough to keep people " busy" ,give them a little bit of this or that in a regular basis ( call it update ) and
the job is done.
Maybe some ( old dogs mostly) are unhappy or disagree but on the other hand there is no alternative and one way or another they will follow.
I am old dog generation but i can't complain, its worthless anyway.
Now is the era that almost everyone " live " with and through a significant part of an interactive world that he creates .
Not that is bad , the bad in that case is when " all you have " is only that.

PS
Don't know why but i have the feeling that after one ( much or less) year from now GT 7 will be a better game than it is now in every aspect.
Sure there's a way back; we never actually left. Plenty of good studios out there still put out great single player games that don't need an internet connection. The most recent "Game of the Year" candidates (Elden Ring, God of War) being two very high profile examples. Sure, you don't get invaded/get to invade in Elden Ring, but that doesn't hinder progress at all. I'd bet at least half of the players launched that game in offline mode and never once played online, and that might be a low estimate given there is zero item/weapon/etc incentive to play online (unlike previous Souls games)

There's no reason PD or any other studio can't go back to the classic "CaRPG" that made it so unique and appealing, even to those that would otherwise ignore a racing/driving title. Hell, they can do it with what's already in the game without needing to license any new cars/tracks/etc. All the components are here, they just need to make a proper career progression mode with championships, endurance races, etc for each category of license (which are already in the game) as they always did in the past.

That's what's so odd about GT7: it has the cars/tracks/mechanics and in many ways the looks of a classic GT title, but it's just not finished. The stove is pre-heated and the batter is mixed, all they have to do is put it in the oven & this cake is finished! But instead they're letting it ferment on the countertop...

If this were a 3rd party game on PC there would have been a "career mode" mod a week or two after launch, and I'm not even being hyperbolic, that's how little work (relative to the work already put into GT7) needs to be done to make it happen. But they're doing nothing aside from routine monthly maintenance, at least nothing that's public-facing, as they don't seem to be focusing on the online portion either.
 
And, if I recall, beyond the A license play absolutely no pivotal role in the game unlike the prior mainline GT games. For being touted as a "return to form" it seems to ignore what that form was originally.
Lets be real, licenses have been functionally useless since GT5 made events gated by experience levels. Why Polyphony cling to it for any other reason then nostalgia, I don't understand.

Selling cars? One of [insert car here] per day because of in-game "marketing" trends. Its entire design language is borderline predatory.
So much of GT7 just feels like hyper-capitalism accelerated to an nth degree that it actively steps on any sort of fun gameplay elements (which might be there for some, but certainly isn't for me to the degree that playing it during launch and playing through to completion provided) it makes me wonder if Kaz even has an interest in cars anymore or if he's spent so much time bumbling around with high end collectors and Hagerty board members that he forgets no one is at all interested in market trends on collector cars as he is. I just wanna drive a sports car, man.

As my previous example, GT5 solved this issue with Seasonal Events. New events every week, granted after a while it was repeat events but it was still free money and a great way to use cars you'd acquired before, during or after the fact. The crux of my issue with GT7 is simply the lack of career structure. No Dream Car Championship, GT World, Super GT, etc, etc — so many licenses the game doesn't make proper use of. There's Super Formula cars — where can I use them? What happened to the Formula GT Championship? Vision GT Championship?
This is what confuses me. Granted, I have no doubt that the Polyphony of today would kneecap Seasonal Events to be a shell of their GT5 selves, but it would certainly help break up the monotony of the single player loop just a tad if they were added in. It'd provide the knock on benefit of allowing people to actually use vehicles that the game doesn't use at all in its current state, and plus, it'd give people a reason to actually spend more then the prices that get on for anything from the Legends Pavilion/Group cars above Gr.4.
 
I agree the microtransaction push isn't very explicit in gt7, but it is built into the core game.
Double post, but also this is not true at all. The MTX push is incredibly blatant and explicit. It's there as a hyperlink to the Playstation Store every time you spend credits in game. It's there in the fact that after the searing heat of an angry player base and gaming media was on them in the initial days of release when Polyphony backdoored microtransactions after good reviews were attained. And they still haven't been removed, close to a year after release.

There's no denying that MTX's were built into the core game from the jump (much like how they were built into the cores of GT Sport and GT6) but there's also no denying that it isn't explicit.
 
Doubly so when circuit experience is now a thing and is functionally identical to license tests.
I see Circuit Experiences as more so breaking down a circuit into specific chunks and how to best tackle them, and then bringing them together for a full lap. That being said, I certainly would not mourn the loss of license tests if they went away.
 
GT2: 146 GT League races, of which 18 are exact copies of 9 (ie. dirt events) but with a different difficulty level. On top of that one make races and a random event generator, 60 licence tests, no special events.
GT3 and GT4 - can't check, my PS2 isn't here.
GT5: 128 GT League races (not counting B-Spec as you aren't driving), 60 licence tests, 58 special events.
GT6: 191 GT League races, 25 licence tests, 25 driving missions, 43 special events.
GT Sport*: 267 GT League races, 48 licence tests (named Driving School), 64 driving missions, 37 circuit experiences.
GT7*: 175 World Circuit races, 50 licence tests, 56 driving missions, 47 circuit experiences, and custom races.

Looking at cold hard numbers, GT7 has already exceeded its "classic" predecessors in the overall amount of stuff and will only keep growing. Yet everyone loves the amount or races in GT2, which really wasn't all that high, and loathes GT6 while it in fact trumped GT5 very handily. GT Sport has a ton of races but it was continuously updated for four years. Let's see the figures for GT7 in early 2026 and then re-evaluate the situation.

*at the time of writing

I've done all of the work for you here:


Number of events
Distance covered in events
Credits needed to buy cars
Credits won during the game's main events
Credits needed to grind to get cars after completing the events

... You have it all there.

And it's not just the numbers.

GT7's races, the big majority, offer no reward other than pitiful prize money. No cars... Not even a bulk prize money.
Heck, this crap game introduced something like Engine Swaps and Special Car Parts and locked them behind RNG instead of making them rewards for the races and events we complete.
Even the updates don't give you any real prize. They give you now a 6* Engine or Special Car Part ticket that you have to rely on RNG to get those that you want.

The rewarding part of this game is not fun at all. The grinding is not fun. The championships of several different car types are massively lacking...
 
I've done all of the work for you here:


Number of events
Distance covered in events
Credits needed to buy cars
Credits won during the game's main events
Credits needed to grind to get cars after completing the events

... You have it all there.

And it's not just the numbers.

GT7's races, the big majority, offer no reward other than pitiful prize money. No cars... Not even a bulk prize money.
Heck, this crap game introduced something like Engine Swaps and Special Car Parts and locked them behind RNG instead of making them rewards for the races and events we complete.
Even the updates don't give you any real prize. They give you now a 6* Engine or Special Car Part ticket that you have to rely on RNG to get those that you want.

The rewarding part of this game is not fun at all. The grinding is not fun. The championships of several different car types are massively lacking...
That seems to be the general theme of GT7 - not very fun. I can hop on for an hour or so but I quickly get bored.

With the games-as-a-service transition the industry has seen, it was only a matter of time before GT started to implement some of the same practices. The only proof you need is to look at the game. Heavily time-gated? Check. Egregious RNG? Check. Drip-fed "kan-tent" that, for all intents and purposes, should have been included at launch? Check. Pitiful rewards to keep you "engaged" with the game? Check. A borked Custom Race system where AI doesn't respect car settings and refuses to actually use the throttle? Uh.. wow, check.

But of course, some turkey is going to quote me saying "YoU haVe No eViDenCE!1". Lol.
 
This thread makes me want to start looking again for PS2s again and go back to GT4. I used to sit with a printed out sheet of all the races and rewards and strategize what car to use and try to spend the least amount of money. Those days are over now, but I think I might try something similar with my second account by selling all my cars to complete the menu books and start over with a single car. There is just too few events in GT7 to use all the cars.
 
Lets be real, licenses have been functionally useless since GT5 made events gated by experience levels. Why Polyphony cling to it for any other reason then nostalgia, I don't understand.

You know, I'd forgotten all about that. I remember licenses playing a more pivotal role in GT5 like in the games prior. Is that not the case?

So much of GT7 just feels like hyper-capitalism accelerated to an nth degree that it actively steps on any sort of fun gameplay elements (which might be there for some, but certainly isn't for me to the degree that playing it during launch and playing through to completion provided) it makes me wonder if Kaz even has an interest in cars anymore or if he's spent so much time bumbling around with high end collectors and Hagerty board members that he forgets no one is at all interested in market trends on collector cars as he is. I just wanna drive a sports car, man.

Having met and briefly talking to him in person, his love for cars is quite frankly unquestionable. What is questionable is the things he chooses to focus on now.

It's becoming more and more apparent that, in a field he's designed, he can't see the forest for the trees anymore. It almost seems like as the older he gets, the more he focuses on things that's aligns with his own seasoned interests. And while there's nothing wrong with that at face value, the game itself has to be designed around that and not...shoehorned in without any sort of care for how it plays off of existing design choices.
 
I remember licenses playing a more pivotal role in GT5 like in the games prior. Is that not the case?
From what I remember, licenses are practically window dressing, and most of the events were locked behind experience level gates. But I don't have a copy of GT5 to check, and don't really care to look.

It's becoming more and more apparent that, in a field he's designed, he can't see the forest for the trees anymore. It almost seems like as the older he gets, the more he focuses on things that's aligns with his own seasoned interests. And while there's nothing wrong with that at face value, the game itself has to be designed around that and not...shoehorned in without any sort of care for how it plays off of existing design choices.
I really get the sense that getting absolutely waxed by Forza for the entirety of the seventh generation of consoles, and only coming up with two garbage fire games that both had little to offer in terms of worthwhile content, and too much dead weight holding it down, caused major psychological damage to the general psyche of Polyphony and especially Kaz writ large. They had been soundly beaten by a company of comparable size to them for an entire generation, and they couldn't simply just expect them to rule the roost any longer. Most companies would probably see and take that competition as reason to move things forward and try to match the competition, but Kaz especially has just...ignored it. They live in their own little world, when that world ceased to exist long ago, and now not only do you have Forza to contend with, but you also have PC sims becoming more ubiquitous, and easier then ever to get in on the ground floor with. Many of the people who play exclusively on PC probably got started on GT, but they've left it behind as they have grown older.

Like...what needs to be done is so blatantly obvious that it's screaming in Kaz's face. It's time to stop with the nostalgia trips and strip this series down to the studs and rebuild it in a way that's actually modern and can survive. No more fanciful ****, no more But they don't, because they (and really, Kaz) still live in 2004 when Forza was simply a one off game that isn't the major competitor it is now. The world's crashed all around them, but they're still clinging onto the scraps of the past thinking it's the only way things will get better.
 
You know, I'd forgotten all about that. I remember licenses playing a more pivotal role in GT5 like in the games prior. Is that not the case?



Having met and briefly talking to him in person, his love for cars is quite frankly unquestionable. What is questionable is the things he chooses to focus on now.

It's becoming more and more apparent that, in a field he's designed, he can't see the forest for the trees anymore. It almost seems like as the older he gets, the more he focuses on things that's aligns with his own seasoned interests. And while there's nothing wrong with that at face value, the game itself has to be designed around that and not...shoehorned in without any sort of care for how it plays off of existing design choices.
In GT5 the licenses were completely optional, everything was locked behind driver levels so you didn't need a license. In GT6 however you had to complete a license to open up the next tier of events much like in GT1-4.
 
All valid complaints, but GT7 still has plenty to offer. ABS Off, all assists off, run AI hard. GR3 stock on WTC800. GR4 stock at WTC700. 600pp for WTC 600. Can throw on Racing Hard for American 700. Gr1. World rally challenge. Still missing GR2 and would like to see extra of each events. Neo Classic 800 as well. Missions. Basically no payout, but I have 95% car completion and don't care about the rest. The entry level missions are crap, maybe the opposite of earlier titles.
 
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For me, GT7 was created by adopting a lazy mindset. Everything seems to be half baked here.

For all i care, PD can remaster GT4 (best every game, IMHO), redo the graphics, physics, add on the cars till 20, and have the exact same races, missions, etc, and GT7 will be easily the best racing game.

But yet here we are, with hardly any events for the garage queens of LMP cars, GT2 cars. No races more than 1 hour, pitiful payouts, etc.

Back in the day when I was racing GT4, I used to really miss the game after not playing for 48 hours. My mind would always go and mentally race in the 'Ring, when in reality i remember sitting in college. Can't wait to go home, on the PS2, and hit the GT4. I only had one game for PS2, and it was GT4.

These days, i can go for weeks without switching on GT7. I don't miss it at all.

Wife now plays Sacboy and I play with her overcooked2.
 
An engaging single player experience is one that well, engages you, it hooks you in and you don't want to put it down. I put GT7 down after trying out the new content the day the last update hit after about 35 minutes and I haven't picked it up again since.

Just as a few examples of what I feel about GT7 as a single player experience, in my opinion Gran Turismos 3 and 4 are hands down the best two Gran Turismo games to show this.

With GT7 you motor through the Menu books pretty quickly, it chucks cars at you during that brief period, including what you need for the next menu most of the time and it chucks away the open career sandbox of previous titles. It makes little use of many of the cars in the game and no use of other cars outside of creating custom events.

In GT3 and 4 you had a lot of choice over what order to buy cars and complete events, it wasn't linear beyond the licenses and one event (IIRC) in GT4, and there was a lot of choice. Even after all of these updates there are far fewer races in GT7 than there were in GT3, let alone GT4.

The races themselves are poorly thought out, feature chase the rabbit style processions rather than the normal grid style setups so you start 30-40 seconds behid a lead car and rather than battle with the pack you end up in a race to the front before you run out of race. It's not an engaging format at all.

In GT3 and 4 the grids weren't as big but the races felt more like actual races and the variety of races was much more engaging. GT3 is a particular delight for me with it's structure.

The custom races for some reason limit you in odd ways, the payouts are really poor making not a good way to grind for credits and you have to handicap your own car to make the AI competetive because they've declined to let you choose 4 or 5 chilli difficulties. It's a great idea and it's executed ok, but it takes a long time blancing a race and your own car setup to get a competetive race constructed and when you finally do manage it, that's due to you.

The games economy itself is heavily geared towards grinding and nudging those inclined into buying Cr via microtransactions and the grind itself is uninspiring yet even those 3 races result ina long trudge towards obtaining the LCD cars.

Which brings me to another problem, the LCD and UCD being based on real days rather than in game days, some cars have been missing from the LCD for over 3 months. If you really wanted one of those there is nothing fun or engaging with waiting days/weeks/months for an ingame item to appear. It tkaes considerably longer to purchase the most expensive car in GT7 compared to previous titles. And the less said about the invitation cars the better.

GT7 isn't a terrible game, but it's a dissapointing Gran Turismo as far as the single player experience is concerned. It's structure feels more like that of a mobile game than a AAA full priced title. To be clear, it isn't that of a mobile game, and I'm not saying it is the same, but it makes use of a number of the same mechanisms a F2P mobile game does to try to force engagement, longevity and MTX transactions.

For the record I have created and released a moble game in the past and am fully aware of the way F2P games are structured and how to use FOMO in game design as well as how to utilise and push MTX's and no amount of debate around GT7's game mechnisms and nudge towards MTX's will change that GT7 makes use of FOMO to drive engagement and pushes towards MTX's.

That's my personal opiion on it, and of course others are free to agree/disagree with all or part of this as per their own opinion. But
I don't know if you remember but actually many GT races of the past were also Chase the rabbit style and grinding has always been part of GT as well....
 
The way I see it is - the Cafe and Menu Books work perfectly as a side mode that complements the main GT League. But the way GT7 has done it, where the Cafe makes up the main career mode that awkwardly throws events at you in an overly linear fashion, leaves a lot to be desired.

Let's hope GT8, or even a massive overhaul to GT7, can sort out the career mode's issues.
Just give us an editor, or even simpler, make the game choices like GT3! Only participating restrictions were FR,FF,4WD,Turbo,NA,80's etc. Or at least after finishing the Cafe Book we could change everything in the Cafe Books! So it would be great to replay it.
 
Unpopular opinion - I prefer the Cafe approach rather than a GT League.

Just needs a load more menu books (and for them to have more than 3 events in each one).
Yeah I actually agree with this, except maybe the word “prefer”. But I liked the cafe aspect, it’s a pretty good idea in theory, and I did find the dialogue quite interesting (if a little twee).

But yeah, nail on head with its biggest flaw - there’s simply no need to have every single book only be three races.

It’s another thing of several in this game that started life as a good idea but they totally fumbled the bag in execution.
 
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Not expecting to get a 'proper' GT game back again (proper as in the layout etc of most of the older main games).

But then again, they went in a different direction with GT Sport, clawed it back to familiarity a little with GT7, so maybe GT8 will be the GT7 a lot of us actually wanted.

They didn't need to change a formula that wasn't broken. It's left some die hard fans a bit 'miffed' about the GT series at the mo.
 
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