Zardoz
2007, huh? Man, that's a long time.
Not to worry, though. PD and Sony will keep us busy with "GT4 For The PS3", which they'll kindly bundle for free with the PS3, as I so convincingly predicted in this thread:
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=66031
*dives into foxhole and covers head in anticipation of incoming barrage of abusive responses*
I read all of that thread and I don't quite know what to say. There was an awful lot of mud slinging going on. I was going to post in there, but I saw the date of the last post, your final comment, and figured everyone would blame me for "sleeping in." Don't be scared though because I'm not going to throw a grenade your way, nor am I going to find my beloved M-16 and nail you with a 3-round burst. I remain neutral on the subject but I see your point and where you are going with everything.
Yes, the next full version of Gran Turismo will be Gran Turismo 5. However, there can be a filler to keep people satisfied until the real deal gets there. Dine at a mexican restaurant and the free chips keep hitting the table while you pick from the menu and wait for your meal to be prepared and delivered. Does it mean that all you get are chips to consume? Well I guess if you wanted to just hang out, chill and socialize with your friends you could go that route, but there could be more coming if chips aren't all you want to fill up on. Any cost lost to the restaurant in chips gets more than made up for when they sell alcohol and main courses. Some restaurants will even let the designated driver drink sodas for free; I know of a few. The point here is, you can get something free to snack on while you wait for the main course to arrive.
Another rendition of GT4 (Gran Turismo 4½ if you will) would be plausible if it came out for free as you suggest. This version could do more as far as pushing the PS3 envelope and would be more entertaining than GT4 currently is. I can believe that it would make sense for Sony to "update" GT4 to make it more fun and entertaining while we wait for Gran Turismo 5.
All of the basic building blocks of GT4 are there, it wouldn't be too hard for some developers to code a Playstation 3 version while the rest continue to work on GT5. I presume that Sony & P.D. have more than just a handful of people working on any given Gran Turismo game at the appropriate time ... ? Taken a look at the credits? There are a lot of people that make each GT game possible, borrowing a few for a specific task shouldn't be too much to ask. It would be like if Car & Driver or Road & Track sent out three people to cover a Honda Odyssey while everyone else flocked to cover a Ferrari 575. Each story would get done by "X" deadline and in reading the two articles you could not tell how many people covered each story unless you were behind the scenes or otherwise had inside information.
Think about what got left out of GT4. Think about how long it took to get from GT3 to GT4. Gran Turismo, GT2 and GT3 were released within about 2 years of the one prior. Wasn't it 1997, 1999 and 2001 sequentially? Then we had to wait until 2005 for GT4
with the launch of Playstation 3 looming about 1 year away. If you're a game developer working on GT4, that had to be something you were thinking about. In the time between GT3 and GT4, we could have had another Gran Turismo game slipped in sometime about 2003 if they followed the original 2 year plan. Think about this too. GT4 may have been delayed, but now why are there reports that K.Y. wants GT5 to release sometime in 2007? 2007 is 2 years after GT4 was released earlier this year, 2005. People want to quickly dismiss the 2 year goal because of what happened with GT4. I'd like to believe that it will be here in 2 years and I shall hope that K.Y. is right about a 2007 launch date.
Why bring out a game after much delay and much anticipation when the PS2 is more than 90% of the way through it's life cycle? PS2 was released in late 2000, yes? PS3 is slated for a 2006 release. The PS2 has been around for 5 years and it's getting replaced before it hits year 6. Why not just bite the bullet and release the game one year later when PS3 comes out? It would only have been another year of waiting at this point. Well, development on GT4 had long been started for the PS2 system. Remember that GT4 was in the works when PS3 was still just an idea on a piece of paper. Another thing, people were getting antsy for the next Gran Turismo. GT4 had been delayed long enough, I believe the quote I'm looking for is, "Ship it!" and "Do what's necessary to get it out and I want it out yesterday!" This is when you cut out some of the details and features and make do with what you've got. Haven't any of you been in that situation for school or work projects?
I'm a huge Corvette afficionado, and as such have learned that C4 (model years 1984-1996) was not supposed to last that long. Each year after 1992 that C4 was out was only a model that got light changes over the previous year because C5 was delayed by so long. Read "
All Corvettes Are Red" if you are interested in the rest of that story.
I told my brother, because of this long delay of GT4, that I wanted Gran Turismo 5 released before I had a fair chance to get finished with GT4. I know they wouldn't do that, but I was so over it, so frustrated that from GT3 to GT4 took
four years to come out. Think of it this way- You could have bought GT3 as a first semester freshman in high school and not gotten GT4 until you were in your second semester senior year and about to graduate. February, let's see, that's around the time you start thinking about prom dresses (F) or seriously start narrowing down the options of who you want to ask to prom (M) and the parties you want to attend after (Couple). People who bought GT3 new, bought it before the attacks on September 11, 2001; that was quite some time ago. I bought my PS2 and GT3 Greatest Hits in August of 2002.
I'm done ranting for now. It makes sense to me that a free or seriously cheap copy of GT4½ comes out with Playstation 3. By seriously cheap, I mean sub $20 with free refills. Whether the people at Sony and Polyphony Digital do this or not remains to be seen.