I mentioned the graphics. Physics I don't think affects most gamers, to whom GT3 was 'perfect' and who won't be interested to buy GT5 on account of improved physics. Gameplay on the other hand hasn't much evolved and hasn't room to. What's different from Forza or GT versus their predecessors? Whatever car-collecting "career mode" mechanics you have, the end result is driving the same (sort) of cars around the same tracks, just like last gen. Compare that to prerrenial games like FIFA which have subtle progressions buyers get board with, but also complete engine overhauls from time to time that lead to better games. Because the football genre is so far from realistic, there's plenty more room to improve, so there's reason to buy FIFA this gen versus last, and reason to buy it again next gen. Same with shooters, which are much bigger in scope and variety now than last gen, but going forward will there be any improvements to keep the genre alive? Whereas last gen racing got pretty-much nailed and anyone who spent weeks and weeks on GT will already have had a very filling racing experience - do they really want that same experience again or something new? Racers are equivalent to formulaic sequels. How many Die Hard's or Rocky's will the public care to see at the cinema if every one is broadly the same as those already seen?
GT4 was a major engine overhaul compared to GT3 and there was three times the cars and tracks, I think what happened was that some gamers did not like the progression of the physics giving them more penalties when before they could get away with murder.
Forza is just a GT copy cat like Sega GT before, it does not help that Forza devs have not really taken their time like the company they are trying to imitate or really trying to make the games they make stand out much.
Biggest difference with GT5 current gen versus last gen (including perfect GT3) is that appart from graphics, physics, gameplay tweaks there are going to be a larger number of AI rivals with expected sophisticated AI routines as well as the inclusion of a more believable day to night racing transition to increase the challenge.
Driving a car in real life is just not really going to change much because there are things you just cannot do in real life compared to a sim like or arcade style racing game, its too bad Hollywood did not understand that almost ten years ago when they were making The Fast and The Furious considering that the article (Esquire magazine) the movie was based on, the racers were not using nitrous yet they came to the conclusion that in order to be different or stand out as a movie that they needed nitrous and not driver skill (the movie is still good though), not that nitrous is bad, its just not practical in alot of races or we would be seeing rocket racing circuits.
Gran Turismo, Motorstorm, Wipeout and Ridge Racer from a traditional console first party perspective are very important games that help push the technology and the genre forward... even though Ridge Racer has been insulted for not being realistic this gen reguardless of the fact that its not supposed to be the Playstation 3 needs another Ridge Racer sequel hopefully one that either eliminates nitrous or just has it as an optional circuit.
Third party racing games however is where we can find some companies having questionable practices, yearly NFS, burnout games?? we really don't need yearly updates even though a year is a long time, the racing audience can grow weary or tired and next thing you know we have all these racers that fail to stand out.
CliffyB: "The future of racing is RPGs".
This is what racing game makers should focus on. Imagine this.....
a space flight racing RPG sim. You have a ship like the millennium falcon. You start off on one star system and your objective is to make it to another star system. In process, you have to collect items, upgrade your ship w/ enhancements, evade pirates, do some trading, navigate hostile(plasma storms, colliding asteroids, etc.....some what like the show "the amazing race".
This game would require reflexes and coordination like any racing game(evade pirates, dodge asteroids to through a asteroid field), but also require tactics and strategy(evade traps, decide on whether going through badlands, or circumventing it but by going by a longer route, use of cloaking)
The races would probably be little bit longer, like maybe 15 to 30 minutes.
Even though gave examples for a space flight sim race game, I think a lot of those ideas could work for a purely land based one.
What you are describing has already been done with SEGA's last gen and current gen DD remake of Outrun 2 and Coast to Coast, thats the realm of arcade style racing going back to the 80s with no circuit racing or laps system, imagine how the mainstream press received those games by making unfair, missinformed comparisons to regular circuit racers and constantly mentioning how you could not tune your car.
OTOH since you made a star wars reference think of all of the Star Wars Episode One Pod Racers made in early last gen and how noone even with this generation's perceived dev tools being mature has attempted making a SWEO Pod Racer title out of that then again LucasArts is a shadow of its former self so far this gen.
It's pretty rare to see a racing game on a top 10 sales list. I think the thing is that casual-friendly racers are just getting rare. Like as in racing games made for people to play in the same room in split-screen and that don't require deep knowledge of the subtleties of the physics engine.
OTOH you would expect that something like the Codemasters racing games would sell really well. They have a good amount of innovation wrapped up in shiny graphics and arcadey-sim handling. I would think that those are the easiest types of racing games to sell to the general public.
It's become a little bit more diverse. I guess the idea is that it's funner to shoot stuff if you can track your on or offline experience and rewards and whatnot. Perhaps racing games should add an OCD component like that to make them more popular. The hard part about building up levels, abilities, etc in a racing game is that you have to justify it all with some sort of story and when was the last time you were impressed with the writing in a racing game?
That may also have to do with what kind of coverage or if the game is worthy of getting coverage, EA pays for getting the word out on NFS but alot of the gaming media seems to have a screwed up mentality when it comes to covering racing game genre as opposed to the shooting or killing genre.
The best example I can give is take a bunch of print gaming magazines of the last 5 years and line them up to see what stories made the covers or were put on the cover, in websites its harder to do this but its there as well.
Back in the 90s with SEGA's Virtua Racing, Daytona USA arcade games there was a learning curve, there was also a learning curve with Ridge Racer but it was really rare to find 8 player link set ups but Sega's Daytona USA (they could have called it Virtua Stock Car Racing) was a major profit maker and you would always see crowds around those games with people trying to beat each other, trash talk, etc
When Sega's Model 3 arcade board yielded the barely known SCUD Race/Sega Super GT and Daytona 2, Sega went towards pushing the technology by making the sit down experience more dynamic with hydrolics and even though these games had more sophisticated graphics, physics, gameplay, AI, etc because of that approach you almost never saw 8 player link ups in Arcades (aside from the growing prices)
That was a different era though and alot of franchises died in the dark because of trademark license or sports franchises, it does not help that for some reason there is a lack of imagination in alot of the current non-realistic racing games out there.
) and although it may not have evolved the genre... it pretty damned well honed it to a fine point... Amazing game; so polished in so many ways and offers so damned much in the ways to approach the game and keep you coming back for more. they then tie it all together in a pretty package and add fun racing for the bow on top.
