Company structure changes coming soon.

[Christopher Dorn]

In all honesty, that is how I felt with the Shift series, I wanted to love it because it looked great but like you say, I went off at every corner and didn't feel like I wanted to spend the time learning, I was used to unreal arcade games.
With pCARS I felt differently and the 600mhz change has pushed that even further, infact the first night of playing this build I played for nearly 5 hours grinning my face off at how fkin great it felt! How that translates into a controller will be the major factor.

600 Tick on 360 controller feels good as well

[Steve Broca]

That's great news

[steventot]

From the Autosimsport interview with Ian Bell:

Autosimsport:
Do you see yourself in the same field as iRacing, ISI, and Simraceway--or are you playing on a different field altogether?

Ian:
We're a more realistic GT5 and Forza4 for the masses and multiplatform.

Take from that what you may. I read it as, Ian wants to compete with Forza/GT5.

Ian even states :We're a more realistic GT5 and Forza4 for the masses and multiplatform.
Means pCARS will be more realistic.It is between GT/Forza and iRacing genre (where the plan sets it).

So no we are not competing with Forza but opening up a new racing sub genre on the consoles , the field undiscovered.
As I said it before.But that will need time so the console player base can adapt.Which will take time and I am sure SMS is well aware of this.
That is one of the reasons Michele is here.To present and translate this new "way of thinking" to an even more undiscovered market ,ASIA.

In all honesty, that is how I felt with the Shift series, I wanted to love it because it looked great but like you say, I went off at every corner and didn't feel like I wanted to spend the time learning, I was used to unreal arcade games.
With pCARS I felt differently and the 600mhz change has pushed that even further, infact the first night of playing this build I played for nearly 5 hours grinning my face off at how fkin great it felt! How that translates into a controller will be the major factor.

This what makes a game either good or bad from a casual players view.If he can't drive the damn thing he will be mad and just leave and say its crap...
But if it feels good then it might actually work magic.

[Big Ron]

I think Ian wants to compete with GT5 and Forza on what the game itself offers, but he wants to be more realistic...which is one feature to be competitive. pCARS will in no way offer the amount of manufacturers and cars GT and Forza offer. Therefor it is important to have different features and offers to settle. And being more intense and realistic is one way. pCARS can do a lot of things much better than GT5 and Forza which both are totally boring when it comes to race intensity and featuring motorsport. Overall, if pCARS becomes the dirtier sim, it can win shares of the competition. Dirty here means rough and not so perfectly clean and dry in how you experience the game.

[Martin Nilsson]

So no we are not competing with Forza but opening up a new racing sub genre on the consoles , the field undiscovered.

I think that pCARS is doing both of the above though. The realistic racer genre is quite worn out and tired now. Out of all of those console users who want more from a racing game I guess that only a small minority have had enough commitment and funds to migrate over to PC sim racing. The large remainder have little choice than to pick up the next 'episode' of the established titles.

I agree that in some respects a new sub genre is being created (or resurrected) by pCARS for the console market but would expect large scale migration from previous GT5 and Forza gamers to pCARS as it will offer a more rewarding experience in almost every way. The key point is that it is not necessary to focus on the competition and compare pCARS with them because it has so much more to offer and as such stands entirely on it's own. That doesn't mean that we are not competing in the same market though.

I like to think in the future gamers with limited funds will forfeit the latest iteration of 'realistic racers' knowing that there is a superior alternative that will provide much a deeper enjoyment than alternative purchases. Those with more funds will probably buy both anyway, even if one of them ends up leaving them unfulfilled.

[Luke Taaffe]

From what i have been reading about Pcars development, the career mode plans already look 10 times better than Forza / GT from a casual + sim racers POV. It is just the multiplayer mode that should be very immersive and make the user want to play regardless of skill level or desires (drift / cruise /race etc..)

From my experience, sim games tend to not bother with excellent single player modes or multiplayer modes that keep the users coming back, because all us simmers need are a few cars + tracks and a good physics and tire model.

I really do think Pcars can match GT5 / Forza's sales, of course with some marketing. I think it could beat GT if the multi-player could be competitive AND for casual gamers also. Otherwise the casual gamers will just pick Pcars up, do a race or two and be bored that there is no incentives to continue playing.

Which is why i proposed some sort of MMO style Online lobby where everyone can start off in this small area of land with various things to do, before choosing what mode they want to do, I amongst alot of other people would be happy with that alone, to keep me playing.
Being able to mess around amongst all of the other people online at that time, showing off cars drifting and whatever before pulling up to the competitive racing Queue.

[Christopher Dorn]

^^Exactly. The biggest reason why the pc simulators are so niche is because they usual make the actual game an after thought, they just concentrate on the cars, tracks and physics. They have always had poor singleplayer and multiplayer features and content. Also the visuals and audio have also taken a back seat aswell in pc simulators (this maybe due to budget reason). Its like its a rule or something that a simulator must have average to dated visuals.

For the really big sim racer fans like you see on this forum or iracing or rfactor they will get pleasure just out of the driving experience and don't care that the single player or multiplayer features are very basic and lacking or that the visuals are quite dated.

For gamers/casual/car fans there is no incentive what so ever to keep playing after having a couple of racers. Pc simulators have always been great driving experiences and simulators but bad games. GT5 is the same, the driving side of things is very good but the actual single player is just a grind that gets very boring very quickly. And the multiplayer is the bare minimum aswell.

Its like producing the best RPG game mechanics ever and not giving it a story. It doesnt matter how good the gameplay is, if there is no context or incentive for the player to immerse themselves into.

The difficulty of a simulator wont be off putting if the game side of it is engaging.

Theres a bigger difference in difficulty between arcade games and GT5 than there is between GT5 and pc simulators. So its definitely not the difficulty that puts people off. Its the game side of things that does.

This is why I joined this project and have high hopes for it because it seems to be the first Simulator that will also be a great engaging game package aswell.

And Pcars can go against GT5 and Forza because they are driving simulators that are more about car collecting, where Pcars is a Racing simulator that concentrates more on the racing side of things. Because if you look at GT5 or Forza the racing element is kind of missing as its basically some cars going round a track with a set limit of laps. Where are the qualifying, safety cars, weather, pitstops etc?

And the way some people talk about the game side of things, it looks like this project might fall back into the old habit of a pc simulator where its an amazing driving experience but really poor to basic game package and if this happens the project has already lost.

[Steve Broca]

And the way some people talk about the game side of things, it looks like this project might fall back into the old habit of a pc simulator where its an amazing driving experience but really poor to basic game package and if this happens the project has already lost.

I really don't think SMS have that vision so I highly doubt it would happen.

[Micas]

^^Exactly. The biggest reason why the pc simulators are so niche is because they usual make the actual game an after thought, they just concentrate on the cars, tracks and physics. They have always had poor singleplayer and multiplayer features and content. Also the visuals and audio have also taken a back seat aswell in pc simulators (this maybe due to budget reason). Its like its a rule or something that a simulator must have average to dated visuals.

And this is why pCARS will crush AC and rF2, although in fairness, what we've seen in the limited views of AC, the visuals look okay.

That's why I also laugh at the Horde when they continually point to Ian's "more realistic Forza" blah blah comment. The point was that it's going to have the elements of a very good PC racing sim, but actually fun to play on your own - with a broad appeal in the console market. Any potential Asian market penetration will be a bonus.

This was all very obvious to me nearly a year ago when it first came up. We all know that SMS has experience in hard core sims, and the game features from the Shift games, so fusing those elements and improving on them without interference from a publisher was obviously pure win. The inclusion of the more positive and insightful members of WMD is also a big factor because we can't expect the SMS team to cover every conceivable twist to what will improve the game.

That's why I laugh at the haters. I'm sitting here with a big-ish stake in the biggest leap forward in racing games in generations and they're spending every day pointing at Ian Bell quotes and WIP youtube videos as if their entire reason for living is to drag this project down. You can bet that after the game ships and the numbers start coming in, I'm going to go to the other forums and laugh at them directly and relentlessly. Then I'm going to enjoy league races with a NA group and so on.. and maybe buy me a fucking Jaguar F Type. Maybe the V8 version.

With cash.

And I'm going to do it again on the next project.

[DCLXVI]

Really MP is the key. I really like Umer's view on this. Taking over AI can be rewaring somehow but taking over your friends is priceless.

And that really help the sales because it lengthens the life of the game.

Once you've beaten the carrer mode and events proposed in solo mode, then there is little replay value. Boosting AI (or difficulty) is present in a lot of games but seems to add little to the replayability.

It also help justifying to buy the game and not find a pirated version.