Are you really that thick? It had everything to do with it. They re-worked the entire game to bring it up to "next-gen standards". Time management is about setting short, mid and long term goals. It has to do with setting realistic, achievable targets as well for that matter, unless you want to keep your consumers waiting for years (Hey Kaz, How's that 100 x 100km course maker going?). It is about setting priorities, managing your resources in a smart way, etc. The did a tremendous job at it. Yes they outsourced the modeling, (Or parts of it, I don't care. As a consumer I look at the end product) but those 3D models do not make the whole game. Outsourcing was a time saving strategy, not only a financial one. It allowed them to focus on developing and having a solid game by release date, great! They simply didn't waste time with stupid, useless features such as "knock cones on the moon", "perfect sky", etc.
Now please don't forget that they were also able to release DLCs (both payed and free) like clockwork. They had huge projects such as re-doing the Nurb (30 artists/ 13,000 man hours) and yet there were no delays.
No, time management is managing your time to meet goals. You've only described having different goals. I love how you call me thick when you're conflating the
choice of development strategy with the
competency to carry out that strategy.
The way you put it (by saying "time management", specifically), it's like you think PD made use of the same resources, tried to reach the same goals and achieved less, all because they forgot to schedule, or something. In reality, they chose to ignore those resources and set different goals for themselves.
You don't like that, fine; it doesn't make them bad at time management, it just means they're not making a game for you. Just like any number of other developers; why single PD out?
I don't know, ask PD. They sure know about it.
I meant in terms of development costs. PD don't outsource to developing nations (as prolifically, at least), so their development costs per man hour are inevitably higher. What happens when everyone tries to do the most work for as little cost as possible ("race to the bottom")? We'll be getting a lesson soon enough, I'm sure.
So what is the the right thing to do in the long run? Is it to keep shoving jaggy standard cars in their games until 2030 until they can finally convert all cars to semi premiums? Never fix the granny A.I? Have their fans pay full price for games that re-use most of their assets?
PD can choose to make the AI better, or not - that's one thing. How they choose to actually achieve that is open to interpretation - that's quite another thing. Try not to conflate those two, either.
They could target a long-term goal, perhaps a difficult refactoring to achieve something new that's sitting provocatively out on the horizon, or they can continue to fiddle with small changes and keep the same architecture, gradually adorning it with bells and whistles until they can't put off the big change any more (which they wouldn't have even started working on yet). Which is better? Who knows? Let the experiment run, I say! Those shiny things on the horizon won't get here if we don't go out and fetch them! Interestingly, physics is the only thing that has consistently improved with each and every GT game; and lo and behold, it's got about all the bells and whistles it can handle: it needs something entirely new to improve substantially (PS4 might be a good opportunity, if PD are ready).
Also, people paid full-price for a game with more current-gen cars in than GT3 (the previous "first game on a new system") had, which was also full-price. If the Standards are so bad as you say, then they aren't even acting as a selling point (except through the whole car-count thing, which is naughty), and so they are not technically generating any revenue (assuming you're right). The bulk of the costs that revenue has to cover are due to the new assets only, and so the price itself (return on / recovery of cost) has nothing to do with the Standards anyway - it reflects more the work that PD did on the Premiums (which they budgeted for). Ironically, if PD had made 1000 cars to Premium quality, they'd need more sales (or a higher price) to break even (because making more cars at the same quality costs more) - is it guaranteed that a game like GT (that sells essentially because it has a picture of a car on the case) would sell as much more (i.e. "enough") with so many more cars? Of course, if PD outsourced, you'd be demanding the price be lowered, then, too?
Now where do you get from that Kaz's game is a long term project and all the others aren't? If it is, it is a bad example of one. It is old, yes, but it hasn't stood the test of time. It has been patched here and there but they have never sorted out the game's biggest problems. Take sound for instance, since they did such a crappy work to begin with now they will have go and re record everything. They could go and buy existing samples from other companies but no, PD is too proud. They rather have vacuum cleaner sounds than outsourcing some of their work.
You have no clue what you are talking about!
Out of everything you could have mentioned, you chose sound: big mistake. The sound is the epitome of PD's long term approach. They could have easily reused the recordings they had and made samples appropriate for PS3; it turns out they've been aiming for something different (there is evidence in the games, regardless of whether Kaz had announced it), and as someone who dabbles in this kind of thing, that makes me very happy indeed. But, it's taken them longer to achieve that, because it's harder to do.
A "project", or game
series can be long term (or not), but very few games are made with long term plans, because publishers focus on the next installment, next year (or the year after, now they've learned to relax a bit). So individual installments of a long-running series will tend to have short term goals because of the short term targets, and because of the heavy handedness of publishers with targets, emphasis is on those short term goals rather than long term. Flagship titles like GT or FM are a little different, sure, but GT is so in the extreme (which I think is justified just because it's interesting).
Turn 10 Studios made sure to get the sounds right from the start and looks like SMS with PCars will have no problems with them in the future as well. Regarding graphics SMS can now output their game to 12k resolution, How's that for future proofing? Same goes for other areas and if they are start stinking they fix them, they don't let them sit and rot. T10 had a partnership with Pirelli for years, that helped develop their tyre models (you can change your tyre pressure in the game, it is awesome!) and now they have one now with McLaren to learn about and use data regarding aerodynamics. Do you think they would go those lengths if it would not be a long term project?
PD got the sounds right from the start, too. For their era. The sounds in GT6 are (mostly) older than those in the original Forza game. Again, PD aren't doing the same thing as everyone else (i.e. Forza is actually a very different game, and always has been, despite how it came to be), because they have their sights set on something bigger. I think we can afford one game that luxury; you can guarantee that if PD get it right, other developers will take notice and consider whether it's appropriate for their own game.
That about resolution is nonsense, by the way; it's as though you know nothing about real-time graphics rendering, either. PD demonstrated "4k" (multi-display) versions of GT4, remember. That wasn't future proofing (except that the multi-monitor tech carried over to GT5), because a framebuffer is transient; content is not. T10 may well be practising their own future-proofing; however, "future-proofing" to me implies not having to do work again in the future; "long term planning" does not imply the same.
I'm sure PD could have put tyre pressure adjustments in the game and come up with a fudge in the physics (you know, with Yokohama's "help") so that people who have no idea about anything will be impressed. But the game is full of such fudges already, much as any game is, so I think we can do better than that - that'll take time, though. Neither game's tyre model is exactly stellar; I'd rather PD worked on getting the fundamentals right before adding extraneous features to a flawed system (but then, the physics are more important to me).
If you would have Forza 5 you would understand. You see, there are nearly 300 cars. T10 didn't bother simulating anything more than this. Most of those (haven't used them all yet) cars have different body kits. Now all of these cars and their body kits have been modeled to the same high standards, this ensures quality (no "PD standard car" equivalent in the game). These combinations provide quantity while maintaining visual consistency. Also liveries are developed by the community, this also saves time. In short there is quantity + quality.
OK, so the body kits have a "quality", that's an obvious thing to say. But body kits themselves are content; they are quantity from a development standpoint (which I know you don't know much about, but hang in there). All content has a "quality", but more content at the same objective quality takes more time: more man hours. Consistency is also separate; it is not in itself a measure of quality, but instead a property (in this context). If what you mean is that you don't like the inconsistency between the quality of the Standards and the quality of the Premiums, then fine; but some people aren't bothered by that, and that's regardless of what they might
prefer.
Following from GT4, PD chose to apply a certain number of people to the task of making new cars for the new game (budgeting). They focused on quality (including using their own staff, trained to make the meshes exactly to the unusual spec), rather than quantity; that's why they only managed 200 of them for GT5's launch, and why the quantity of visual mods was so low (their quality was invariably the same as the cars themselves). If they had more people or more time (or both), they could have made a higher quantity of cars at that quality, and / or more (quantity of) modifications. They spent their time (which they will have managed in some way) making those few cars only. Compromise.
Probably fearful of a backlash like that they received with GT3 not having enough cars, PD decided to put GT4's cars into GT5 as well (Sony was already getting twitchy about the wait for GT5, so GT:HD - i.e. paid-for direct recycling of GT4 on PS3 - was conceived and subsequently canned; just like GT6 PS4-edition). They needn't have done this if they'd focused more on quantity with the Premiums; i.e. with the resources PD had, if they had decided to make more cars at a lower quality, they might have felt they didn't need to carry the Standards over. So include the Standards in an appraisal of the quality and consistency of the cars in the game by all means, but exclude them in an appraisal of the work PD actually did - i.e. how PD actually spent the bulk of their time, which was making high-quality work.
The other choice they had at this point was to drastically grow the team (logistical nightmare) or outsource (logistical and creative imprecision and general inefficiency); PD decided instead to gradually grow its own team, probably mainly to avoid quality issues. Remember it was said that the mesh quality of PD's cars is necessary for tessellation (yet more quality!), which was not being used in the mainstream (so contractors would be practically useless without retraining / buying in talent themselves)? Long term plan.
So, what you're effectively saying is that, when people say "quality not quantity", what they really mean is "I want both, reality be damned". I think it'll be interesting to see where this goes for the mainstream games industry as a whole, because we've been here before. On the other hand, perhaps what you're really saying is "I want quantity of the things that matter to me, and then I'll call it quality".
One question for you. Since you say you "like cars, end of" why don't you buy Forza 5 as well and play both? They are pretty similar, after all Forza is clearly based around GT. You will get awesome physics as well as cars and tracks you will not find in GT. Plus you will get to enjoy a next-gen (actually we should call it current-gen now since they've been out for over a year
) game now and it will make the wait for GT7 shorter.
I'm not going to buy a new console yet. I'm a PC gamer, first and foremost, anyway, and I have plenty to go at (which is why I think games should be allowed to be different).
