I'm posting again, so get ready for another wall-of-text term paper.
I don't think it would be as much profitable for a game company to keep updating a game and releasing DLCs for 4 years than to release a new game.
You might want to reconsider that. Keep in mind that the DLC we're getting is stuff earmarked for GT6 and is being produced under that budget, so selling tidbits in this style of DLC is mostly profit. Let's follow your four year scenario with an average DLC of say $7.50 US every two months, and with costs deducted, maybe $5 of profit. Since every pack may not be wildly popular, let's say that each one garners an average of 750,000 sales. Over four years, this will amount to 750K x $5 x 24 DLCs = $ 90 million.
Yes, between Prologue and GT5, the profit is likely way more than $100 million, maybe closer to $200M, but the work to produce this DLC is also way less than creating an entire game - at least $80M for GT5 - and so is the cost. Nor is there waiting three to five years with rising bills, since each DLC is a quick infusion of lots of cash every eight weeks or less. If I'm near the mark on what income this is for SONY and PD, this could cover much of the cost of GT6's development.
As for which system GT6 will be on, we had quite a discussion in a previous thread about this. If you've studied systems as much as I have, you'll know that the potential horsepower for any console is just about tapped out four or five years into its lifespan, which is where we're at with PS3, and when the producer is about ready to launch the next hardware. I know the PS3 is very advanced with a mega-CPU with seven available cores and very fast ram. But it's also hamstrung with a bandwidth bottleneck between the CPU, SPEs, RSX graphics chip and the two ram banks. Because it only has 256 megs of system ram, developers have to do a lot of data shuffling and time it
very carefully to deliver everything they want in graphics, physics, world rendering and gameplay potential. And be stable.
The GT5 Engine has been hammered on and tweaked for at least four years, and yet we still have a game with wonky shadows and ugly particle rendering artifacts. I seriously doubt that the engine can squeeze anything more from PS3. In that other debate, I covered a lot of things the team could do to scavenge processor overhead needed to improve the game, such as dropping the 3D engine aspects and making them optional installs, doing much more dynamic polygon culling and "down rendering" of objects, and dropping the resolution to 720p. In other words, simplifying some of that graphic splendor to devote to better shader and particle rendering. But I seriously doubt that the team is interested in dropping the overall quality of the game like that, even if it could deliver better graphics overall.
I think with Ninty's new toy ready to ship this year, and MS likely yanking the veil from the NextBox this E3, SONY is planning on this and will be right there with them. And be honest, both the 360 and PS3 won't seem as new and interesting with a brand new Nintendo, no matter what the specs are. SONY and MS both will have to remind the world where the real action is, and at least tease about a new system like Ninty did last year.
And I'm sure Kaz is itching for even more powerful hardware with much more ram, that's almost a no-brainer. Plus, remember that at least one developer
is working on a Playstation 4 game. And in spite of how popular Uncharted, Killzone and God of War are, I can think of a certain race series which is a guaranteed mega-seller, as well as system seller.
Don't think that the GT5 Engine would need four years of work to even be decent. Engines can be ported and optimized for various systems without too much trouble. Remember that the Cry Engine 2 was ported down to both the 360 and PS3 from much more powerful PC hardware, and runs well. Porting up is likely even easier, thanks to more processor capacity and abundant ram. The car and track models PD is creating will work on anything. The physics and A.I. will need some attention, but it would have probably been tweaked if made for PS3 anyway.
And for those groaning about a PS4 costing $600 or more again, catch your breath and let me ease your fears. The reason that the PS3 cost so darn much is because the hardware was all cutting edge and initially cost SONY somewhere in the neighborhood of $850 for each unit at launch. The Cell chip was $150-175, and the single speed Blu-ray drive could have been $200, thanks to the brand new blue-violet laser diodes which were in global short supply. Now, you can get a
12 speed dual layer BR drive for your PC for a whopping $60 from Newegg, and the drive inside the case might not even cost $30 to produce. How about PS Vita, with that HD OLED screen, pressure plate and all those fancy newfangled high tech features? Bet it costs a pretty dollar? Sort of, the base WiFi model is $249, with AT&T 3G, $299. The PSP at launch? $249. I don't expect PS4 to cost more than $399.
While both the XBox3 and PS4 could conceivably launch this holiday season, I expect both in 2013 at a reasonable price, and GT6 to launch within a year, by holiday 2014. I anticipate as many as 500-600 Premium level cars - no Standards, and around 50 locations with as many as 100 tracks. I expect decent damage modeling, Race Mod of almost every car and some sort of a Livery Editor, a better Course Maker along the lines of the one in ModNation Racers, a nice long single player career and well endowed online, and more goodies than you can bust a Move at.
In the meantime, I expect GT5 to be updated periodically with DLC and features patched in, and each year, for SONY to produce a new edition with all the features included. It will finally be the GT5 we wanted all along. For the most part, but in some ways, even more.