1up is reporting on the new Gran Turismo HD. It’ll come in two versions, light and non-existent.
Check out the article. In the meantime:
I can’t supply the rest of the quote. It’s too precious.
The other, Gran Turismo HD: Premium, will ship with two courses and 30 cars, with an additional 30 cars and an additional two courses online at a later date. The Premium game is being considered a prologue to the PS3’s eventual Gran Turismo 5.
That really makes no sense.
At what point does “there’s no such thing as bad PR” break down?
Apparently never if you’re Sony.
well, thats one way to solve the problem of the game shipping with 500 different fucking skylines that are all the same.
I liked GT4, as I hadn’t played 3 enough to get that ‘more of the same’ feeling, but…
Forza, take me away!
I love how after mentioning the possible cost of all the cars and tracks, they say that doesn’t even include the cost of the menu.
Which, of course, immediately reminded me of how horrible the menu system in Gran Turismo games has always been. Go to your garage, get in your car, back out, navigate the menu to finally get to the race menu, browse the races, decide that you want to do the Front wheel Drive Front Engine race, try to start it, get denied, realize that you’re in a car with a mid mounted engine, back out of the racing menus, go back to the garage, browse your list of cars, get in a car with an FF configuration, back out of the garage, go to the race menu, browse the races until you find the right race, finally start the race.
Meanwhile, in Forza: Browse the race menu, go to the FF race, it’ll say you’re not in a FF car, and it’ll display all the FF cars you own, so you select one and you’re in the race.
Phew. Man, I’m never going back to Gran Turismo, unless the next iteration of Forza does to that series what Sega did to their wonderful Sega GT series with Sega GT 2002. (They took out the coolest part of the game! Being able to build your own car from scratch! Suddenly all the flaws in the series like lack of good tracks, and horrible music, really started grating).
This is why the PS3 wants to teach us discipline. So we can work four jobs, to afford one of their fucking games.
I just gotta chuckle. Hell I’ll BUY one of these thing sveentually, but good lord, their marketing campaign at this point is that thye are arrogant assholes so the MSUT know whats up, and their shit is GOLD and priced as such. Which is ridiculous.
Dumbshit name too, the last gt was already HD (1080i, if you have component cables obviously)) on the ps2.
It looks like wumpus’s dreams of a Micropayments World is going to come partially true with this iteration of consoles.
Given how I tend to play Gran Turismo, that might actually work out cheaper for me. It’s not like I actually wind up unlocking that many cars – I fire it up and do a race or two occasionally, then go back to WoW.
If the microtransaction-only version is free, and I can buy a “starter pack” of cars and tracks for a few bucks, then sure, I’m in.
Ain’t holding my breath, though.
Hopefully you just purchase unlocks for data already on the disc, rather than having to transfer the assets over a network. In fact, I hope it works that way, because broadband penetration doesn’t really cross the threshold where it would be a superior delivery mechanism versus retail. Not in North America, the country where Sony plans to ship 75% of its launch allocation. If the additional content was only available online, well… That does not seem to be a robust model.
I calculated that it would take, for example, about four and a half days to download 20GB on a 5Mbps broadband connection, once transfer overhead is taken into account. Maybe four days if you’re closer to the trunk. Math is not my forte, however, so I invite you to run those numbers yourself.
It stands to reason that the overwhelming bulk of the content would already be on the disc, however. Vehicle and track data should be reasonably sized by comparison.
Still, then Sony is forcing us to pay for what we already have on the disc. In a way, that’s far, far worse.
How so?
I doubt it will end up more expensive for most people, except for the insane completists who want to have all 800 billion cars in their garage. I’ve owned every GT game put out and I can’t say I’ve probably even driven 1% of all the cars. Don’t get me wrong, GT’s always been really great as a car collection game, but that’s just because once you beat all the races, that’s all that’s left to do. I probably spent as much time browsing the cars as I did actually driving them, but I certainly wouldn’t pay for more than one or two versions of any given car in this PS3 game.
The part about how “a complete game will cost somewhere between $426.50 and $975” seems pretty unlikely and very sensationalized, especially since the article also said they weren’t entirely sure how the whole thing would work. I guess I’m supposed to throw my hands up and scream about how I’m not going to be able to afford to play Gran Turismo.
Isn’t 1up’s math as bad as Jake Planes?
Theyt don’t know the exact pricing but going by the most expensive suggested in that interview they come to a complete game with all 750 cars and 50 tracks costing $975.
O.k. 750 cars and 50 tracks - how many did the last GT have? How many does Forza have? (I’m asking here, because I’m not really into racers or consoles and have played neither).
Do you even need 750 cars and 50 tracks? If you got the time to try every car on every track just for a single circuit, that’s 37.500 rounds played… maybe you deserve to pay $1K?!
Part of the cost as far as I understand is that the makers of GT has to pay car manufacturers and track owners licensing fees - this way you only pay the fee for the cars you like. I’m sure there will be plenty of racers on the PS3 not called Gran Turismo which will cost you $50-60 and have fictional cars. Play that.
I won’t play either but don’t understand why people a getting their undies in a knot over this (as well) I own the last GT made for the PS1 (GT2?) and for the amount of time I played it, it would have cost me less than $5 under this scheme.
Because eventually they’ll do this to a game we do care about. The very idea that Sony thinks this is okay is horrifying. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’s only for the Japanese version and the US will get the full thing without having to play Iran Hostage Crisis Online for 90% of the game.
But you didn’t answer my question.
Is there any other game with 50 real racing tracks and 750 real liscensed cars avaliable for $50-60 dollars?
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t really care about all this “the sky is falling, the sky is falling”-crap - unless the sky is actually, you know, falling.
And this board is full of it from the fear of an Iranian nuke sometime within the next 100 years to the fear of Sony stealing your wallets while you’re sleeping.
You guys are Americans and supposed to be in love with free market capitalism, I on the other hand voted communist once (I was very young), so why am I defending a companys right to make money (and your right to deny them that by not buying crappy products)?
I do not believe so. The last Forza had around 20 tracks. If you add in the backwards versions we are around 40. If you do Sony math, you add in mirrored versions of both for 80.
How about this question: is there any game that costs more than $600 for all of its content?
I can guarantee that it won’t be that expensive for most people. Most people just won’t pay it or won’t buy it to begin with.
I’ve done a little of my own math and, if I played the new GT like I played the old ones, we are talking about a substantial price increase. Oddly, it’s not the price alone that bothers me.
The GT games have always been about exploration and experimentation. Want to try out that Toyota from 1974? Let’s take it for a spin. Let’s play with this car for a while and then try something completely different. This type of purchase violates the very spirit of the game – a game that did provide a ton of options without the constant need of a cash register.
One more thing, monetizing each individual track means that any multiplayer they are kind enough to implement this time around is neutered. It’ll be difficult to play with your friends until you all buy the same tracks. That’s a pain in my ass and wallet.