You really dont know this, GTS are totally unpredictable based on the fact the last two GT games were disappointing, basing it on wether people know what GTS is about. This game would certainly not shift big numbers without GT on the box.
GT5 sold 10 million copies, a racing game. Were there anywhere near 10 million players online? Nope. Your stats regarding GTA and Rocket league are completely irrelevant to a racing game.
Rocket league has 25 million people who have played it at least once ( the game was free on PSN), it certainly does not ave 25 million players that play the game. 4 people out of 100 on my friends list play the game whilst the rest download ed it and tried it. There are only 100k players online at any one time. Rocket league is also easy to play as is GTA, unlike a racing game where if You're not very good then online racing is no fun.
Pcars my have sold 2mill copies but SMS are not investing in online for those 2mill buyers. It should be pointed out Pcars had a proper career mode whilst GTS wont.
It should also be pointed out selling 2 or 3 million copies is simply not a good return on investment for Sony. You are deluding yourself here that millions of people will buy GTS for online. GTS imo will be the least played GT of all, regardless of sales figures.
Lets line up the arguments:
Regardless of online/offline, sales numbers
do not mean active players.
GT5 sold 12mi units but that does not mean there'll be: 12mi playing online. 12mi finishing or constant playing career mode. 12mi doing time trials or arcade mode races.
That's logical and has not been argued. I mention player retention because I'm well aware there's a normal drop off curve of users. I even mentioned Star Wars' extreme case.
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Rocket League or any other game peak daily activity/total activity numbers are great. At any given hour you have from 40k to 200k users connected.
At low estimation (
median play time on Steam is 3 hours) that would give you ~800k unique users, daily.
That's the kind of number publishers would be happy to see their games
sell.
You seem to not understand that having
240k at this current time is an impressive number that any game would love to have. Most MMO rpgs don't see those numbers.
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On game easiness/being good at it.
DOTA, LoL have steep entry points due their RTS systems. They have extreme learning curves for motor control of inputs and game internal rules.
Most played games online.
OW and shooters in general, easy to pick up and play, simple controls/rules. Has an extreme learning curve to perform well.
Rocket League is the same.
This is just to illustrate how the argument fails because it's estabilished that competitive sports attracts people regardless if you'll be good at it or not.
The center point is
accessibility.
If it's a sport that requires a proper place/equipment, less people will play.
If it's a sport that requires a hard to obtain channel to watch/follow, less people will watch/follow.
That works the same for games.
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On why e-Sports is seemingly important to SMS.
PCARS is investing because even if 2mi bought the game, and 20k play online, and 2k participate in e-Sports events, there they'll have a market that can generate viewership/advertisement/whatever that will be a constant stream of revenue if they know how to nurture unlike the single copy sales of their otherwise offline game.
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Proper career mode.
Other than FUD I don't even know what this illustrates.
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Selling 2-3mi copies and Sony's RoI (and what I think it'll sell?).
I mean we can have GTS 2 next year and GTS World the year after and so on. 
