Sorry but this is a bit contradictory
Not really?
how is the sim racing genre only focused on a few select people, yet in the same sentence you're saying they only build the games that sell in quantity?
The sim racing genre is the
reason why most every racing game is so focused on realism. There is a reason why pure arcade racing games don't exist anymore, and that's because people (though really, it is mostly the sim racing crowd) have been so focused on demanding realism as much as possible. The only way you can provide that is through money. Money that most every other developer or publisher not already established can provide. There is no real thing as a pick up and play racing game anymore, unless you count indies, which by this point have followed the trend of most indie games in being nostalgic tripe that traffics in harkening back to an age that an increasing number of people don't have an attachment towards.
b) that the developers are only pandering to what sells?
Developers are pandering to the loudest crowd. That crowd, as much as they are a loud minority, are sim racers, who want a return on investment from their sim racing equipment, and in places like this, and on social media, beat against games for not being realistic enough. As such, developers and publishers are under the belief that what sells are sims, but only because they are the loudest crowd, and are in reality a minority.
I'm sorry you don't have the space or finances to invest in a wheel etc, but sim racing is thriving right now and most of us are enjoying it. Sure, there's always people that want more of this or more of that, but generally speaking, things are good.
And yet that circles back to PCARS, doesn't it? SMS' games since NFS Shift have always had horrific pad handling that even with adjustment isn't that great, and they've consistently said that they would fix it, would make it a priority in the next game. They haven't, and in a racing game that absolutely *needed* good pad handling in PCARS 3 (with SMS once again bleating about how it was the best it had ever been) they didn't deliver. Again. By this point, this has been a nearly decade long occurrence. If I am someone who sees this, why should I bother playing a game that is only really good with another upfront cost that in the middle of a pandemic, I don't have the money for? Are things really good when in order to actually make use of a genre of games, people need to spend more money on items that might not even get enough use to justify the cost if they don't enjoy it in that one instance?
And as for controller players, all the titles that are gamepad friendly are the ones with the most financial backing, i.e Gran Turismo, F1, DiRT and Forza.
...two of these titles are essentially sims. One of which literally had a arcade spin off not do well because, among other factors, people were wondering why it wasn't the follow up to the popular sim racing strand, even though Codemasters made it crystal clear (something that SMS never did with PCARS, it should be noted) that the game was going to be arcade as it could be.
Gran Turismo Sport is more or less a sim by this point, considering how Kaz took the wrong lessons from the failures of GT5 and 6 and thought that people would bust down the doors for what essentially amounted to a console iRacing clone with fancy FIA partnerships and what turned out to be an effectively online only game that probably will become a paperweight once GT7 comes out. Soon Kaz was walking back his words within a year, adding the things that people actually wanted in a GT game, but didn't even manage to fix the problems present with that either.
Forza is two series, yes, and Horizon is the more popular one, but maybe it should tell you about the near effective monopoly in the racing game space between those with the most financial backing that Horizon is one of the success stories? And you can look in the main FH4 thread in this very forum about the challenges that Playground have in creating a game that not only sells, but makes car people, which the vast majority of this forum are, happy? Spoilers, it's becoming a challenge, and it's going to reach a critical mass point with the development of FH5 and beyond, considering many of the problems with Forza are shared between Motorsport and Horizon.
So yeah. Is the racing game genre really that good a shape? Because what I see is a genre, overall, that is increasingly becoming more focused on realism then actually fun gameplay or interesting ideas, and those that aren't interested in sim racing all the time anymore (myself included) are finding themselves increasingly grouped up in a few arcade racing monoliths that cannot please everyone, and as such, are basically told to accept it or take a hike.