Spa-Francorchamps is Not in GT Sport (Yet) Because of Licensing Issues

[V1LR-GUE10]

Tbh Spa isn’t really at the top of my list for tracks. Yes it’s great, but there are plenty of real world tracks that are great as well or even better than Spa like Sonoma, Monaco, Ascari, Circuit of the America’s, Sebring, Road Atlanta, Laguna Seca, Silverstone and Yas Marina. I’d rather have all of those rather than not get any tracks for a while because of Spa being so expensive to license. I’m not talking for everyone here too. I feel like I have to say that because if I don’t people will get triggered and say “Just because you don’t want Spa doesn’t mean we all shouldn’t get it!”

Spa but is a great track, but give me Ascari or Midfield or any lesser known track (original or real) I haven't played before. PD are doing the right thing by holding back, it makes good business sense - think the long term.

It's seems some people just want all the tracks we've previously had, and negate how good the new original tracks are!

Exactly

 

[Darla Starch]

What if we all chip in a $ each and don't tell Silverstone?

As long as it's for my fund to buy Silverstone and turn it back into an airport (which should markedly improve the tracks character and make it actually interesting), I approve.

 

[devildog666]

PD is pretty much a Sony sub-branch at this point (and Sony is a VERY rich company) , so all this "not enough money" thing doesn't sound convincing to me. Project CARS 2 got triple the amount of tracks that GTS has (including Spa), and SMS is definitely not as rich (or connected) as PD

Or maybe it is not as simple as i think it is, i dunno

It's not about having the money, it's about what you are willing to pay for.

 

[Tired Tyres]

Stuff Spa. Just put the best fantasy tracks in.

 

[devildog666]

Yeah this ^^^ - they wouldnt be charging a flat rate. If you're making a crappy mobile game you could possibly get a lower rate because your total exposure is small.

However if you're making a CSR2 by EA or a Forza by MS then your audience reach is huge and then the fee is larger.

Be that as it may, how bad could it be? I can imagine it'd be in the tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands.... former isnt a big deal, latter???

It's not just about what they would have to pay Spa, it's about what you would have to pay everybody else because of what you paid Spa.

 

[zeptrans]

FYI Forza 6 has the new Ford GT on their cover first and not EA's back then. Research and try again next time.....

Calm down, forum is a respect talk between users.

And, the last Ford GT (and the racing version) is an exclusivity to Xbox one, so Forza (Ford GT first marketing appearence).

 

[CRN_G-TR]

Gt sport is not a sim.

It SIMulates driving Right,

 

[Fabr_123]

Calm down, forum is a respect talk between users.

And, the last Ford GT (and the racing version) is an exclusivity to Xbox one, so Forza (Ford GT first marketing appearence).

What are you talking about? The Ford GT isn't a Xbox exclusive. It's featured in The Crew 2, PC2, iRacing and Real Racing.

 

[Pururut]

Never understood why companies want to make even more money over licensing. Why ask so much for a license in which you gain almost nothing. I understand that as company you give away a valuable asset (license) in exchange with money, but why on earth you charge it 2 or 3 times over others licenses.

Greed.

 

[Boston77]

Good on PD.
Spend that money wisely.
Mid-Ohio and VIR say hi.

 

[NevilleNobody]

Oh, really, it includes Oulton Park and Knockhill? I didn't know that; I was always put off getting PC2 as, iirc, its always been considered to be bit of a dog with a controller (and I unfortunately don't have space for a wheel).

It's an absolute dog with a controller.

What I want is PC2 with GTS Sport mode and controller handling. oh and without the 4 billion bugs.

The variety and QUALITY of cars and tracks is amazing.

 

[V1LR-GUE10]

What are you talking about? The Ford GT isn't a Xbox exclusive. It's featured in The Crew 2, PC2, iRacing and Real Racing.

I think he’s talking about the year FM6 came out. For that year it was a Forza exclusive. Just like how the McLaren Senna is exclusive to FH4 until a year after it’s release passes by...

 

[NevilleNobody]

Yep. Spa schma. I agree with PD. DONT FORGET LAGUNA SECA LOL.

Laguna Seca is a rubbish race track, one gimmick corner and that's it. Horrible for racing on.

 

[DC2_Evan]

Good on PD.
Spend that money wisely.
Mid-Ohio and VIR say hi.

I would die if they added Mid-Ohio. I try to get up there once or twice a year to watch the IMSA race and maybe do a track day. It's a fantastic track

 

[doblocruiser]

Charade could probably be signed for a nickel and a dime....

 

[Savolainen83]

Everyone and their grandma wants Spa, but am I the only one who wants Tokyo R246? With "night" time like all the other Tokyo tracks?

 

[TrafficEmpire]

It's an absolute dog with a controller.

What I want is PC2 with GTS Sport mode and controller handling. oh and without the 4 billion bugs.

The variety and QUALITY of cars and tracks is amazing.

No kidding. I bought it last night so I could see the fuss about Spa, but that game is impossible with a controller. Not too happy about spending the money on it.

 

[crooky369]

Not that surprising at a track where value for money is questionable. When I went to see the F1 there I seem to remember that with general admission there was no option to use the grandstands on the Friday. At Silverstone you can go in almost any grandstand on the Friday. Plus if you wanted to use a toilet that wasn’t one of those blue portaloo monstrosities you’d have to pay as well. That’s a joke with the prices F1 charge.

Penny pinchers..

 

[Cosmique63]

There are plenty of other tracks. What about the Isle of Man TT it’s a public road and it’s fast. Why don’t car makers realize GTS is advertising, they should pay PD to be on the game, I didn’t like Porsches until
I used one on GTS, now I’d consider buying one if I had the money

 

[Normalaatsra]

Plus if you wanted to use a toilet that wasn’t one of those blue portaloo monstrosities you’d have to pay as well. That’s a joke with the prices F1 charge.

I hope this was a culture shock thing cause paying for toilets is a European meme thing. But paying for a portable toilet? That's just Belgium being Belgium.

 

[WyldAnimal]

Just do what other Games have done,
change a few corner details, give it a different name, and release it.

 

[HopAlong]

A lot of the comments from GT only players show they really are stuck in their own little bubble, kind of like the F1 jurnos. The Ford GT was not an Forza exclusive, it was part of a partnership, just like the Huracan before and they were in plenty of games.

Its funny to see everyone jump to the defence of PD and slate Spa. I remind you this is the same PD that while not wanting to set a dangerous precedent for track licence costs that may or may not affect them, they don't seem to care about the dangerous precedent they are setting that has an effect on all the other developers. No game released after later 2017 is allowed Toyota, all thanks to a dangerous precedent being set by PD and Toyota. They also seem fine with keeping tracks to themselves too, no one can have Pikes Peak.

So PD are worried that paying more for Spa would raise other tracks fees, yet they aren't worried the Toyota and Pikes Peak exclusivity wont start other game developers from doing the same thing.

Maybe Spa saw that the Japanese tracks were being funny with western devs, and fancied being funny with Japanese devs…….

I do agree with having new tracks, I'm getting bored of GT, Forza, DR2 and the like just re-adding the last games content. But that's another story.

 

[Interstellar9]

What a shame this is but I can understand why PD doesn't want to pay a much higher price than normal when they could bring 3 tracks instead of 1. I love Spa and for me there aren't a lot of tracks I'd prefer. I wouldn't choose Spa if I would get Silverstone, Road America and Motegi instead tbh. Maybe they have an agreement when GT7 releases.

 

[Satomiblood]

Just do what other Games have done,
change a few corner details, give it a different name, and release it.

They'll probably call it Ahhhh.

 

[NevilleNobody]

No kidding. I bought it last night so I could see the fuss about Spa, but that game is impossible with a controller. Not too happy about spending the money on it.

it's also really tricky re. set up etc, you need the right tyre pressures, ramp angle etc or the cars are undriveable. i think they went the wrong way and made it too sim like when they could have eaten PD's breakfast.

GTS is great for a mid life, time poor guy like myself. I mean you fire it up and BAM evenly matched racing in a heartbeat. it's freaking genius.

BUT it's very sameish because the lack of variety in race cars and the lack of good tracks. There's actually enough tracks and enough cars but most are rubbish.

There's also a lack of high grip lowish powered stuff, in PCARS1, the Super Tourer around osterblacchin (sp?) is just a freaking joy. So is a Catherham around Knockhill or a Formula Ford 'round Imola.

With GTS is Crappy car on crappy track for race A, Group 3/4 on repeated track for race b and Group 3 or 2 on some god forsaken long track for race 3. Just so repetitive even if different cars and tracks are used.

 

[gtpierre]

Tbh Spa isn’t really at the top of my list for tracks. Yes it’s great, but there are plenty of real world tracks that are great as well or even better than Spa like Sonoma, Monaco, Ascari, Circuit of the America’s, Sebring, Road Atlanta, Laguna Seca, Silverstone and Yas Marina. I’d rather have all of those rather than not get any tracks for a while because of Spa being so expensive to license. I’m not talking for everyone here too. I feel like I have to say that because if I don’t people will get triggered and say “Just because you don’t want Spa doesn’t mean we all shouldn’t get it!”


Exactly

Please stop mentioning Monaco.

Monaco is a great track, but it is a city track, and a narrow track.
Which means penalties, dirty racing , Wall riding, and overtaking is almost impossible.
Not a good idea.

 

[Fosterions]

Hmmmm first thought from me is ****. Disappointing! But, the good news is the track is allegedly done and all it would take is a phone call and it's queued up for a quick update.

After I read the article carefully and sifted through the contributing thoughts here I started to smell something off....

This is me thinking out loud....

• Allegedly the Spa managing group is asking for a fee greater than anyone else for their track and PD/Sony is balking
  • OK, that's fair, regardless of opinions the track has the cachet to ask a premium between history, demand and so on
  • Fair enough to PD/Sony for balking, it very well could set a precedent with other premium tracks especially if they're being as unrealistic as rumoured
  • Spa is in other games, some studios have a pile of money, or backed by money, I think I read somewhere MS has money..... and are willing to pay just about anything to have that cachet, especially if the competition does not have the track
  • As has been mentioned, tracks, especially ones of this magnitude, are expensive to run and their sources of income are limited. Once the licence is paid and the track is in the game they've made their money right? I'm not very familiar with licencing, this could work at scale - if AC has 1,000,000 users their fee is X, GT Sport has 7x that, so, is their fee 7x? Random numbers, just thinking.
  • Is this a bargaining move? Revealing negotiations like this is can be power move if losing face costs someone something. I realize somebody else published this and gtplanet is just providing journalism.... that said, and I don't know the relationship at all, but we have seen evidence that gtplanet is very careful maintaining their press relationship, as they should be. My underlying assumption here is PD knows gtplanet is the largest body of followers for their platform and there's a relationship here that is beyond a news site. The guys here do a good job of being the unofficial marketing and communications department for PD at a very low cost. Let's think about a broader purpose for gtplanet publishing this beyond journalism, is publishing this is a polemic to get people worked up? At who? Spa's management group? What do we do? Boycott Spa? I'm going to stop buying Spas as of today! I'm throwing out my Eau Rouges!! Gather the mob and the twitter pitch forks? There's nothing to mobilize against Spa Management for this to be effective. They're not threatened by this bad press. Their response is easy, "we're a premium facility and that has costs". You can say **** em as much as you like but they don't care because as far as I can tell there's no impact/cost to them. If this is PD trying to apply public pressure to get something to happen it's a pretty weak move. Or, is this article a sign of something more sinister, is this change management for customers? More on this in a later bullet...
• Allegedly the track is completed
  • Ok, great, we could see it within days after an agreement! This is definitely positive.
  • So, this was not only started but built to completion without a deal in place?
    • The only way I've seen this happen is when leadership between parties make a deal then forgiveness is asked in the org, for example security clearances. "Uhhhh we bought this and development is nearly finished and we're ready to launch.... Can we do that please?" the business asks INFOSEC. I've never heard of development starting in a major house on a major project dedicating many expensive hours without a deal in place. Creating a track is an expensive time consuming undertaking. PD has said that a lot right? Hell if it's not, why do we just NOW have an average track count?
  • If this was done with no deal in place this is bad management on PD's lap. There is a TON of other stuff they could have been working on. Out of all the real world tracks out there someone must be willing to make a reasonable deal with PD and they could have been making that.
  • If this was done with a vague deal in place, verbal agreement, and Spa got dickish late in the game, bad on Spa
  • In short I'm surprised and/or skeptical a project of this scale was even initiated without a deal in place.
• "Kazunori Yamauchi Has 'No Intention of Stopping' GT Sport's Free Updates" But....
  • But he is interested in, or at least looking at, micro-transactions isn't he? We just got the ceiling lifted on the cars purchasable with the price cap lifted with a cost of $9.59 for a single car!! I'm cheap, but even if I try and think past that bias that sounds like an awful lot of money for a SINGLE CAR!! Especially considering the expensive cars have such little game impact. They're clearly not shy about charging us money. It will be interesting timing that this happened in hindsight if things change.
  • But that doesn't mean there can't also be updates that do have an additional cost
  • "But business costs are what they are and not everything can be free, unfortunately we have to charge for some things, did ya see what Spa did to us? Remember that article? Did you see that?! Evil Spa, now all track managers want more money too!!! Yeah, it changed the model and now all tracks are $20. Sorry! But we'll still release minor updates to the game and cars at no additional cost that cost way too much credits that you can grind for endlessly or you can buy them with your real money for the low low price of waaaaay too much money on the PlayStation Store!" - Kaz in the future
  • But this is a viable business model and will only help PD make more stuff. Look at all the other games that do microtransactions and make ca-ching! We should get in on that.
    • I'm not the youngest gamer. I remember buying a game and getting a full game for the money I paid. I like that, I believe people should make things they're proud of and stand behind them at a fair and honest price. I believe caveat emptor has made unscrupulous people rich and the world a poorer place. But that's me and the world is changing, people's expectations are changing and more and more seem to be willing to pay full price for a game that is incomplete and continue to pay for it to be finished. At release and full price this was not a full game, and my thought was hey, good on you PD for continuing to fill it out at no additional cost. That's the honourable thing to do Yamauchi-son.

Maybe it is just some stupid April Fools thing. God I hate April first. The internet is useless because of it for three days straight until all the crap gets filtered out. And yet, I hope it is just a bad April Fools ruse. I don't think it is, I think that's desperate reaching. Ultimately the bad thing is there's not a likely happy ending unless we take the article at face value and they reach a deal that keeps tracks coming at no additional cost. OR, PD stay firm and honourable and don't start paid content and we don't see Spa for a long time because of a pissing contest. OR, it comes next month at a sweet sweet deal of way too much money. #nowinning.

As we celebrate mediocrity
All the boys upstairs want to see
How much you'll pay for
What you used to get for free

- The late great Tom Petty

 

[Tired Tyres]

Everyone and their grandma wants Spa, but am I the only one who wants Tokyo R246? With "night" time like all the other Tokyo tracks?

Good idea. 👍

 

[Beezer215]

No kidding. I bought it last night so I could see the fuss about Spa, but that game is impossible with a controller. Not too happy about spending the money on it.

Hold that thought. You just got it. There are a multitude of settings and while no where near as user friendly as GTS out of the gates, it can be usable with a controller. Check the other forums for some settings.
But all this gets a bit moot when you get a wheel, and let's face it, you will get a wheel if you're into sim racing. You'll discover what PC2 can be and then Assetto Corsa and other titles that fill the void Gran Turismo has now.

 

[phil_75]

Funny that this wasn't the same comment made when SMS couldn't get Suzuka.

Guess you don't believe in the idea that suddenly, the price for licensing something could go up because someone decided to play hardball with certain others?

Yeah you're right.
Only Spa decided to do this and only to PD.
So the excuse for Silverstone, Laguna Seca etc is?

You all swallow the "it takes months to model each car/track" line so you saying that they couldn't get license but thought it a good idea to spend "months" modelling the track when they didn't think it would be in the game and there's so little content and hundreds of other tracks they could have modelled?

They tried to get away with the minimum content they could but it failed spectacularly.

The damage control is why we got so little content, no offline mode at first, PS2 cars in GT5 & 6 and we are having to race in a mixture of 90s, 2017 and total fantasy cars to make up a group.

Watch this track magically turn up in the next 2 or 3 months when they really get finished modelling it.