Gran Turismo fell victim to this trend, initiated by NFS World I believe, of racing games as service.
It's a service. You won't get 100% of the content at launch. You're not supposed to. This game is unlike the classics in this regard.
The quality of the service depends on its continued support, not so much on the launch. Which is why reviewing services the same way retail games are reviewed is a practice that should've been extinct a while ago.
GT7, as a service, has been a mixed bag so far, but more negative than positive. They were quick to address a few bugs, but left us unable to play the game for more than 30 hours and balanced the economy rather poorly.
But every racing game has been moving to this model. Especially with Forza Horizon's success. Roulettes, timegating, credit income slowdown, everything bad about GT7 right now was taken from there. Turn 10 tried the same stunts on the Forza Motorsport players with FM7 and the game TANKED, to the point they were literally begging for an apology and had to drop support with it still being a broken mess, because few people played. EA on the other hand pushed through with NFS Payback and the game was dead on arrival and never recovered despite updates greatly toning down the lootboxes.
A wise CEO would've seen what happened with FM7 and wouldn't have repeated it in GT7. But neither Jim Ryan nor Kaz Yamauchi strike me as particularly wise when it comes to business. Because gaming executives' reaction to something that doesn't work is not to avoid it in the future, but try to sell it to a different audience hoping that this new audience will fall for the trap.
Make no mistake, this is how new racing games will be from now on, unless something really big happens, whether it's legislation or simply consumer dissatisfaction.
On the other hand, this news about GT has become mainstream already, so I think Sony will definitely act on the issue. How they're gonna do it is anybody's guess, but Sony heavily promoted this game and, with the rumored roadmap they have, which includes a possible PC port, they can't afford to have it tank.
Such a shame, OP. I understand you. I really like the game. It has a lot, and I mean A LOT of positives. But it's hard to disagree with the general sentiment. I even felt a little less motivated to play because the races don't pay enough.
) and made the conscious decision to charge full price for a hollow product that is giving the vibe as GT Sport in its launch state, except this time they don't have the leniency of disguising itself as a prologue game. That is strike one. The manner in which the way they handled the patch fumble was strike two. Being tone deaf in addition to the already questionable state of the ingame economy was strike three. The outrage from the fans is justified at this point, given that it never crosses the line of death threats and whatnot.
