Polyphony Digital has crossed a line for many players. Perhaps they should have had second thoughts…
If we look at the games from Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) in North America, Europe and Japan (SCEA, SCEE, SCEJ), Sony Interactive Entertainment and PlayStation Studios on Metacritic, the racing game for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 is the lowest rated game at the time of publishing the VGC article with a 2.5/10 rating. This score puts it below World of Warriors (PS4, 2.9/10), NBA 10 The Inside (PSP, 3) and Cool Boarders 2001 (PS1, 3.3). Admittedly, these have only a couple of user ratings, while Gran Turismo 7 is already at over 3,600…
Most reviews came after March 17, when the 1.07 patch came out, which gutted the number of credits you get after several races, thus pushing you towards microtransactions (more expensive than in Gran Turismo Sport!). There was a 24+ hour downtime, which sounds impressive even for a single-player game. GTPlanet gives a pretty detailed analysis of the fact that you have to race for up to twenty hours to buy one of the most expensive cars. All “thanks” to the 1.07 update!
Several prominent gamers (e.g. SuperGT) have expressed their displeasure with the overly grindy gameplay, and many tweets criticizing the microtransactions have been liked by Valerio Gallo, a Gran Turismo eSports world champion. One of the popular tweets called Gran Turismo 7 “the real credit card simulator” (explanation: the GT series is officially called “the real driving simulator” by Polyphony Digital).
One of the most useful Metacritic reviews says that you need an internet connection to access single-player content (officially because of cheating and piracy… so the game will be unusable en bloc in the future?). One review says, “[I] was a [big] Gran Turismo fan. I’ve played this game since GT1 on PS1. Yes, the driving physics are superb. Yes, the cars are gorgeous. However, this is pointless given an extremely short career mode and of the most obvious cash grabs with their microtransactions, made so much worse after they nerfed payouts for single-player races. GT was always a grind, but it was never this bad.” Another adds: “It pains me to give me this a 0. The game feels fantastic, and so does the controller support. The graphics are great. Initial content is there, but the microtransactions… $38 of real money to buy a single Ford GT? And reducing the amount of money you get by playing the game with the most recent patch? And the loot boxes are rigged, so you always get the lowest reward. Will change this review to a 10 when it’s possible to buy cars with money earned in-game.”
Kazunori Yamauchi, the creator behind the series, addressed the critique in a statement: “I wanted to explain what happened in this update. Immediately before the release of the 1.07 update, we discovered an issue where the game would not start correctly in some cases on product versions for the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5. This was a rare issue not seen during tests on the development hardware or the QA sessions before the release. Still, to prioritize the safety of the save data of the users, we decided to interrupt the release of the 1.07 update and make a 1.08 correctional update. This is the reason for the delay. My sincere apologies for the late report to everyone. Also, in this update, some event rewards have been adjusted. I also wanted to explain the reasons for it and our plans.
In Gran Turismo 7, I would like to have users enjoy lots of cars and races even without microtransactions. At the same time, the pricing of vehicles is an essential element that conveys their value and rarity, so I think it must be linked with real-world prices. I want to make GT7 a game in which you can enjoy a variety of cars in lots of different ways. If possible, I would like to avoid a situation where a player must mechanically keep replaying certain events repeatedly. We will, in time, let you know the update plans for additional content, additional race events and additional features that will constructively resolve this.
It pains me that I can’t explain the details regarding this now, but we plan to continue to revise Gran Turismo 7 so that as many players as possible can enjoy the game. We would appreciate it if everyone could watch over the growth of GT7 from a somewhat longer-term point of view,” Yamauchi wrote.
Perhaps they should have thought about the backlash…
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