I think its for the benefit of everyone that more people look through more of what Nenkai has posted, there are some fascinating discoveries.
Part of the narrative certainly needs to shift from "PD delivered an unfinished game" to "PD got forced out the door early' - though it still begs the question as to exactly what they were working on for so long.
Easy: PS4 port and possible PC version. Jimmy Ryan forced a PS4 port on them and, frankly, it hasn't brought that many more sales, as most of the purchases are on PS5.
Horizon also suffered with it. It got released in a state that was good enough, but not as refined as I'd expected. And God of War could have been delayed because of the PS4 version as well.
This was definitely a Sony issue, because it's usually publishers who push for early releases. Gran Turismo is a core part of Sony's first-party strategy, even more so with the newfound success which fringe groups repeatedly try to undermine (and fail miserably at it), and its release is part of a more global roadmap for the PlayStation platform and services.
To put it in context, when Cyberpunk 2077 was revealed to be a mess, it was revealed that the high management at CDPR forced the studio to release the game. That's not to say both games are comparable, though. I've played both at launch and Cyberpunk 2077 was plain broken, period. GT7 on the other hand was smooth as butter.
IMO GT7 should have been released in September, because Horizon was already being released at the time. Sucks about the lobbies, but vast majority of people don't play online and don't care about it. Focusing on the core rather than the features will eventually pay off when they finally add them, as the game will be more stable, given the short deadline they had.
Also Jalopnik is ****.
The thing I don't understand is how come it's a game with effectively 10 years worth of development time (GT Sport is just a GT7 prologue) yet the game still came out unfinished even with a delay. The average car development cycle is 3-4 years, so it doesn't make sense why it would take this long to make a game. If nerfing the game so it would work cross-platform with PS4 was the reason why, then it's a big mistake and Polyphony should've made that known.
The pandemics have changed everything. Chip shortage pushed publishers to force last gen ports on developers. Game development itself also became surprisingly difficult during this time. It doesn't excuse some of the things I've seen in crossgen releases, though.
Worth mentioning that TDU Solar Crown was gonna be a crossgen game but they canceled the ports and pushed the release to 2023. Meaning it's not just PD who's having difficulties.
I agree Nebuc. I'm going through his post and seeing many comments from pissed off people. Legitimately so. What he's uncovering is showing that this game was far from complete. Whether it was Sony pushing to release or PD. Who knows. At the end of the day what we got is clearly unfinished. Basic functionality was stripped and disabled to meet the release date. Many comments saying ill give it one more month and if lobbies arent fixed its time to move on. Im right there with them.
Yeah like PD cares about 10 people on Twitter. The bread and butter of the game's online mode is Sport Mode.
