There are a lot of assumptions there!
There isn't typically advertising for E3 announcement trailer videos. If there's info out there on an advertising campaign contributing to the FH3 trailer's 4.7M views, you'd have a point. As is, it looks like the videos for both GT and FM on their parent companies' pages (PlayStation and Xbox official channels) hit broadly similar numbers. Forza videos always tend to do less on T10's page (which isn't surprising), while some videos on Polyphony's page do very well indeed, typically because they don't have a mirror on the PS one.
You're right about GT5 having less views and selling more... and GT6's videos had far
more views than the GT Sport ones. From this data, I think we can only come to one conclusion: the best approach is to have videos for a game achieve absolutely zero views!
Gran Turismo is the top PlayStation franchise in terms of sales. Its status as a major PlayStation draw is very much unknown this generation. Personally, I think it'll be far more successful in stores than on Youtube: I can't imagine why a place like Best Buy wouldn't be demoing Scapes on a 4K HDR TV once the game is out, even if the images people see won't be representative of the actual gameplay.
I'll agree that it's not surprising to see Thrustmaster and Fanatec making wheels for PS4, not necessarily GT Sport: the PS4 is the better-selling console, it'd be silly to avoid it. Tying it to the only exclusive franchise is also just a smart business decision: the T300 RS rebrand/repackage sure didn't require any heavy lifting.
Yeah, I'd love to see some stats on how many PS4's, TV's, and PSVR sets GT Sport has apparently already sold. It's anecdotal at best.
Very,
very curious to see how GT Sport sells, as there's no real way to predict it based on previous performances. It's smaller than just about every other title in the series in terms of content (something which hurt FM5, and it was less of an extreme jump). It'll be releasing the longest time away from a new system's launch out of the entire franchise (we're 1120-ish days in). On the plus side there, it means it's also launching with the largest install base of any first-game-on-system GT title. Not that a big install base helped GT6, which sold less than half its predecessor. It has the biggest focus on online-gaming, which is apparently where the gaming world is heading (so long as we avoid the stats from Steam).
Honestly, in an ideal setting, I hope it snags a whole bunch of sales from casuals based on those pretty graphics, and has a realistic-
feeling physics engine that's, above all else, approachable for all talent levels. If it can make driving in video games interesting (and even fun), that could go a long way to reviving the driving genre long-term, sales-wise. 2017 has some cracking titles lined up, and the more people playing and buying, the more games that can come after.
