Forza had iirc 800-900 as for now. Not 1000 yet but almost getting there.
Just did the research.
FM7 currently has the most at 834, but only launched with about 700. Depending on where you draw your lines, this is a little less, or a bit more than GT4 (~730) which (to my knowledge) held the previous record car count of consistent/non-generational port* quality. FH4, the most recent title from the same studio, even has less at 723. FM6 had 450 launch/620 with DLC, FM5 200 launch/320 DLC.
*of course GT4 had cars from GT3 carried over, but this tends to happen in any consecutive titles in most racing game series.
So, the most comparable (IMO) franchise to GT, with one of the more notorious reputations for outsourcing the modeling for its assets, averaged an increase of around 250 cars between the launch of each game in this last generation, with around 125-175 cars coming in as DLC/post launch support to pad it’s launch count. GTS actually had comparable numbers in post-launch support, but we don’t have as many data points on GT’s game-game content increases. GT5-6 in premium content increased by a bit over 150 depending on how you view each game’s DLC/preorder bonuses.
So, using Forza data and pretending GT7 will go exactly as smoothly as if it’s carrying on from the same hardware generation as GTS (~170 cars at launch) and accounting for the fact the GT games tend to have more time between release, a
very high ball estimate
could put GT7 at 500,
maybe 550 cars (100-125 per year), with 700 at the end of its post-launch support (pretending we know how long and how PD intends to support GT7 and/or handle gaps to future games/GT8). Realistically I see it being closer to 450, if even, especially considering content tends to get bottlenecked/reduced at the start of a generation (look at GT3/FM5/GTS), and we also don’t know how much content PD did/didn’t hold back from GTS DLC. I.e. if they were pushing out as much content as they could post-launch as soon as it was ready in GTS, or if they trickled out some while developing a meatier list that could beef up GT7’s appearance, or somewhere on that spectrum.
The track record of similar games, the much lower starting point for GT’s current roster, and the precedent that
no one has managed to achieve the 1000 mark yet really puts the hopes for such high numbers in the insanity category for me.