Not everyone is obsessed with that stupid 'ring.
Them's fightin' wurds.
Actually, I'm another one who's obsessed with the 'Ring. Like many here, I've raced it so many times that I can usually do a pretty sharp lap after not racing on it for months. Yet another reason that GT4 is still so awesome. But I'm sure that GT5 will feature a range of tracks of all lengths and lap limits to suit us all. Even the other Nurburgring tracks will be available in GT5, so you can race a short Nurb if you want to.
My issue is with PD saying repeatedly that online was going to be a part of GT4, and then it, well, not beng there. True, the readiness of the PS2 in general for online gaming was an issue, and that's more down to Sony not predicting things so well, but it's not like online was impossible for the system.
Well, there's a difference between being possible and being business suicide, but fortunately those are the old days when the net was new and the spork had just been invented.
The article seriously uses that wording?
Wow
And that would definitely explain a few modeling issues plaguing the three Forzas. I'm hoping that Forza 4 finally doesn't come across as Turn 10 betaware.
As for the online deal hurting Premium car development, I don't think that was an issue at all with the Premium count being so low. The online development was handled by a software and network special team and the car modeling by another. Once again, I think this was an issue of GT PSP clobbering Polyphony. The amount of compression that went on to take something even bigger than GT4, which was more than five gigabytes, to just
one gigabyte, had to be insane.
Keep in mind that all games are compressed at least somewhat. Code has to be gone over to streamline it and make it tighter while still being bug free to take up less ram and run fast. Polygon data has to be optimized to make sure backgrounds and game objects like cars look good but don't slow the game down, and the same for artwork. Textures are compressed so they stream faster, while not being compressed so much that the system has to devote too many processing cycles to "unzip" them, and the same thing for audio, with the added burden that compressed audio still has to sound very good on a good home audio system. Heck, even the physics was improved from GT5 a bit, and all that had to be a huge headache to Polyphony and Kaz.
Especially when it meant that he would be forced to drop work on his masterpiece for a game he probably considered a toy in comparison, and didn't want to work on until
after GT5 was done. Just getting GT4 itself compressed an additional 5:1 or more and still running well on a brand new but "primitive" system would be a miracle, let alone a game which is even larger.
Yes, Kaz should have hired more modelers, but I'm sure that SONY was growing increasingly grumpy about writing checks to fund GT5 as it was, and evidently burned through all the profits of Prologue already. But now, after so many people threw a fit over the Standard car issue, Kaz needs to take remarks from us and go to the board and throw it in their faces. "This is what people think of what we had to do in my game. You all know how important GT is to Playstation and SONY. And you surely understand what the fans want in GT6. I need more modelers. The best modelers."
Hopefully, SONY will be understanding...
for now 
