I agree completely that it is utterly insane that this game did not ship with leaderboards and matchmaking in the box. Particularly because it states ON THE BOX that these features are in the game.
I'm also shocked that people aren't more upset about this. Sure, we can wait for a patch, but this stuff is ON THE BOX and a dead basic feature for a racing game. Has it really come to the point that we allow developers to get away with implicitly qualifying printed feature statements with "... when we get around to patching them in?" I don't know, that feels really sketchy to me.
I know everybody loves GT here (I like it myself), but inexplicably missing features really sticks in my craw. It's one thing to withhold features that were only hinted at in development, but when there are features printed ON THE BOX that are not in the game, that feels like it crosses the line.
The guys on the F1 2010 forums flipped out when there was some in-game audio telling you to copy your teammates setup, and no such feature existed. Where is the outrage here over missing features?