Through what? There is a possibility that impossible can be possible obviously. But the profits made from everything previous, plus all the HD content that can be directly carried over is already a major advantage. However I would stilll hope that they spend as much as they did on GT5 on top of that to make the game an undeniable thriller.
Now with the new sales figures, the thread's question effectively does not remain a question anymore. They can afford 3 titles with no profit made before they would even think about shutting down the GT franchise. And for that to happen, someone else will have to have made extrordinary leaps. Good thing PD don't look to be stagnating, I'm sure they're weary and will have listened to many of it's fanbase's requests.
All right, apparently we do need to go through it again. Probably it's unclear if you've never worked for a subsidiary of a larger company.
Polyphony is a subsidiary of Sony. What that means is that they likely don't have access to all the historical profits, those would go to the parent to be used as they see fit. It also means that they operate year to year, or probably more accurately in Polyphony's case, release to release.
The last major international chemical company I worked for was a fine example. They had traditionally had very strong market position in Australia and been a very profitable part of the larger company. But some strong competitors have shrunk their market share, and increasing costs for manufacturing have put some serious dents in their profits.
So much so that a couple of years ago there was some serious restructuring as they moved the R&D section to China, and made some big cuts on the manufacturing floor. The same is likely to happen again in a year or two, if they don't flat out shut down the factories and just start importing from China. It may be that the AU office becomes salesmen and a warehouse to hold product from China.
The bigwigs don't care that the business was successful ten years ago. They care whether it's successful now. That it was historically successful is reason not to give up straight away when the going gets tough, it's been proven that the company can be successful. But if the subsidiary isn't making money, then the parent has to look at whether their funds would be better spent elsewhere.
The same goes for Gran Turismo. Historically, it was very successful. Recently, less so. A company whose profits are declining is going to be under pressure from it's parent. If it cannot stabilise and generate what the parent considers to be a fair return on investment, then the parent can and should make changes.
There is not a possibility that the impossible can be possible. That's just an abuse of the English language. There is a possibility that an unlikely thing will occur. It is
unlikely that GTS will sell 2 million copies or less. But not impossible. GTS selling only 10,000 copies would be as near as dammit impossible, random holiday gift purchases will get it higher than that.
The profits already made are not an advantage, other than in the sense that it creates a buffer for how much 🤬 Sony will put up with before they take major action. The HD content that they have is an advantage, although just like PS2 where they thought they were future proofing, the PS3 premiums turn out to not be entirely at the quality that is expected of a PS4 asset. It will take more work for them to have engine bays and other internal partitions modelled on all cars, and to prep them all for proper damage.
If they spend as much as GT5 again, which probably ended up being somewhere over $60 million, all that does is raise the number of copies that they have to sell to break even. I'd be wary of that if I was Sony. I'd prefer to get a cheaper, smaller, highly polished game out quickly. That allows me to limit my risk, attempt to evaluate how much of the GT6 drop was due to damage to the brand from the PS3-era mis-steps, get some solid prototyping done on the new system, and try to build some hype for the next big game.