Probably it will sell even more than if they called it "GT7 Prologue".
About open beta: each online race will have a limited number of players, so online mode can be debugged with a more limited number of testers in a closed beta, while possible server problems with a huge number of online gamers aren't game-specific, but just the usual problems of management and balancement of servers, clusters or clouds with massive user bases, plus the usual gaming communities ones about matchmaking, etc, but these are dealt with outside of the race. A MMOG with persistent worlds OTOH would surely need testing with a much higher number of players, as the possible problems aren't just of managing servers and balancing their load, but also inside the game itself, that must manage a unique massive and persistent world with a huge number of players and scale up well as players increase.

I would need the source for those budget claims (but I can see a game with license payment for 1k models and several RW locations could become quite high), and GT on PS3 vs UC sales numbers are quite close (with both having their budgets of one game helping the next become cheaper).

Betas are more for the developers than players, so they can test how their servers/network handle traffic. I can see that it would take some manpower to setup a beta, but I would imagine the rewards outweigh the cost.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/uncharted-sequel-costing-usd-20-million

Uncharted 1: $20m

Uncharted 2:  $20m

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/GTA-5-Cost-265-Million-Develop-Market-58922.html

Uncharted 3: $25m

It's ~21m for Uncharted 1-3 vs ~11m for GT5.

Budget-wise that's certainly true, but don't forget that advertising 3 games certainly costs more than advertising 1 game.

Of course but when it comes down to developers worth to the publisher (Sony), it is not very important. Sony pays for it all, so it comes down to how well the developers did with the budget given.

300 Naughty Dog employees with $65m budget sold 21m games

vs

140 Polyphony employees with $60m budget sold 11m games.

GT5 budget was paid by the sales of GT5P, and seeing it use the same assets for GT5P, 5 and 6... it isn't much over the budget of 5.

That doesn't really help the argument, considering GT5 should have been cheap as Uncharted 2 was compared to Uncharted 1.

I mean for all of PS3 Gen it is Uncharted 1-3, TLOU vs GT5P, GT5, GT6.

But I chose the ones where the budgets were made public.

And we are discussing two hallmark games... it isn't the case that GT5 have done poorly.. you just want to measure the one that stand taller.

And I never said they do poorly or suggesting anything like that.

My first post on the matter included this "PD do fine, but they can do better."