Gran Turismo 4 to be offline

[wco81]

Gamespot quotes the PD president as saying setting up the online infrastructure in Japan and Europe was a challenge for them.

I don't know how elaborate their networking support was going to be. Was it going to be simple peer-to-peer with a PS2 hosting the race for a number of other players?

Or were they going to have dedicated servers, a la SOCOM?

Maybe milking another $50 would help fund a more elaborate setup.

BTW, I'm hoping PD could just get GT4 over with and start work on GT5 for the PS3 if they haven't already. GT3 and GT4 took long enough so I'd hate to think how long GT5 would take, especially if they're ambitious and try to fill up a BD-ROM (over 50 courses in GT4 so they would probably try to top that number by a good margin)

 

[cthellis42]

Well that sucks. Someday I hope to see a really high-profile game that doesn't get delayed or suffer from feature-elimination.

 

[Evil_Cloud]

Well that sucks. Someday I hope to see a really high-profile game that doesn't get delayed or suffer from feature-elimination.

Halo 2 might have been delayed, but it seems like it's starting to live up to it's promises.

 

[cthellis42]

Right, but I'm talking both here. I'd be willing to wait for GT4 as well, only it was ALREADY delayed and now it's ALSO going to get pared down.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

True. If those VU's weren't such a bitch to program they wouldn't have had to do that.

 

[wco81]

The offline feature list seems pretty extensive, including the new B-Spec mode.

Millions have enjoyed the GT series offline. Pretty sure that won't change with GT4.

 

[cthellis42]

'course not. Considering the amout of people who bought the Prologue disks, they're champing at the bit regardless.

But it's still a rather big blue-balling.

 

[Inane_Dork]

um...either way, the comment doesn't make much sense.

Considering SOCOM II is more popular than Live, it's not too ridiculous to think that GT4 online would be the same way. Now, I expect Halo 2 to push Live participation through the roof, but it'd probably still be smaller than GT4 if GT4 were online.

The thing I would not understand is the feature set being greater than Live's. It's possible, yes. But it's taken MS quite some time to work up to where PGR2 is and where Forza will be. And that's with previous online experience. Personally, I think this is why GT4 is delayed. Polyphony needs a lot of time to do online decently because they have not done it before. So I would not expect their online functionality to be better than Live's. But hey, I could be wrong.

And I know B-spec was probably worked on before Forza was shown, but it almost seems like PD copied and toned down the drivatar technology.

 

[Snappy]

Its a beauty 8)

 

[Pepto-Bismol]

The thing I would not understand is the feature set being greater than Live's. It's possible, yes. But it's taken MS quite some time to work up to where PGR2 is and where Forza will be. And that's with previous online experience. Personally, I think this is why GT4 is delayed.

Here's an idea! Since PStwo supports the new Blu-ray Disc format, Polyphony Digital may be biding its time, waiting until after the new console has debuted before putting everything onto a single disc.

With the online option (and tons of extras) on BD-ROM, consumers will not only have to buy the game anew but may have to upgrade their consoles as well.

From Sony's perspective, the move would fix the architectural landscape online and, quite possibly, make it harder to cheat there.

Without barriers to entry, the sheer volume of players could be well beyond anything they'd want to commit to this side of CELL . . .

 

[wco81]

Surely nobody really believes Blue Ray will be on the new PS2 which is set to go on sale a little over a month from now.

Did we hear right that the offline version of GT4 will support LAN play for 6-players?

What kind of LAN, ethernet or Firewire? Probably ethernet since most of the newer PS2s no longer have Firewire.

So the PS2 apparently has the power to run multiplayer. But will they cut back the details? Can you play LAN multiplayer in B-Spec mode?

Then the next thing is can it provide this performance over speeds and latencies typical of consumer broadband?

 

[Yogi]

Sony sure knows how to milk her consumers.

Launch the game this holiday to get sales & launch the "final" GT4.5 with online play.



Just speculating.

 

[cthellis42]

Did the same thing with Minna no Golf 4 (4 then Online)and it didn't seem to work out too well... (Though of course GT:Online wouldn't require the hard drive--even if it uses it--nor would have a subscription fee.) At least not of box sales' comparison to MnG4 itself.

 

[Evil_Cloud]

Sony sure knows how to milk her consumers.

Launch the game this holiday to get sales & launch the "final" GT4.5 with online play.



Just speculating.

Nah, it's not to milk customers, they just couldn't finish the game unless they left out the online mode. "We want a perfect online mode and the European en Japanese infrastructure is complex" is just a bad excuse for not being able to finish the mode in time. They pumped about 60 - 80 million dollars into the project, this holiday is the only date where they can win back a big part of that number (however, they will never make a profit out of it).

 

[maskrider]

Did we hear right that the offline version of GT4 will support LAN play for 6-players?

What kind of LAN, ethernet or Firewire? Probably ethernet since most of the newer PS2s no longer have Firewire.

1-2 player per console, max 6 consoles linked with LAN (Ethernet port).

 

[Snappy]

Did we hear right that the offline version of GT4 will support LAN play for 6-players?

What kind of LAN, ethernet or Firewire? Probably ethernet since most of the newer PS2s no longer have Firewire.

1-2 player per console, max 6 consoles linked with LAN (Ethernet port).

Yep, if people want to play online they download this X-link ( www.teamxlink.co.uk ) software. Which is like Xbox Connect but for PS2, it works with all LAN enabled games, l use it for Timesplitters 2 and it works a treat and it's lagless.

 

[-tkf-]

They pumped about 60 - 80 million dollars into the project, this holiday is the only date where they can win back a big part of that number (however, they will never make a profit out of it).

How do you make this math work? How much do they (polyphony) earn pr copy? And do you count the GT4 Prologue earnings in since it uses tech made from those 80 million dollars, and where did u get that number?

 

[Johnny Awesome]

The online GT4 will probably only be 30fps, due to hardware limitations.

 

[Qroach]

Those photomode pics are not what the game looks like when you're actually playing. Not just the resoloution either. They change the lighting in that mode.

 

[maskrider]

The online GT4 will probably only be 30fps, due to hardware limitations.

Yeah, like the X-BOX wth PGR2 and Forza.