cusman said:
Exactly Price is always set by market demand which is based on perceived value. It has nothing to do with how much a game might have cost to produce. Perhaps the lesson to GT is that maybe it should focus more on fun and less on being hyper realistic and boring. |
"Boring" is your subjective opinion, it remains one of the best selling racers not only of this generation but of all time, the market and demand for simulators is rather big and the market of arcade racers is awash with hundreds of titles, most of which are of poor quality and no value to people who truly enjoy cars and realism (and there are many of us).
If a sim is to focus less on realism and more on your notion of fun (I assume this means over-the top arcade lunacy and bumper car mechanics) then it is no longer a sim and their whole market disappears and they are left to compete with the NFS' of the world. If you flip the argument, you'll notice that when arcade franchises try to become more sim in their appearance, the sales go down, they fall between chairs and miss both demographics.
GT games have sold over 67 million units worldwide, which is nothing less than astonishing for a racing sim and it proves two things;
1: The "boring" sim market is potentially huge if you deliver a good product
2: The GT series needs no lessons on how to sell or appeal to the right demographic
For the record; I love and enjoy both GT and Mario Kart, for different reasons they are both highly entertaining franchises to me.
Besides, price is not always set by market demand and percieved value, the PS3 alone is solid proof of this. Their ludicrous entry price killed demand and the percieved value was obviously lower than 600$. Like I mentioned in my previous post, if Nintendo titles were re-released as some form of Classic or Greatest Hits after a certain amount of units or a certain amount of time on the market, they would sell even more, this is something they need to understand to function on the modern market with DLC, online income and subscriptions, added content, indie titles and other bangs and whistles.
Edit; Jumpin, as a sidenote, you do realise that MK isn't really that much bigger than GT worldwide? Its been around for a lot longer and is spread across more platforms and a bigger installed base. The first MK game released in september 1992, while the first GT released in december 1997, more than five years after. The PS family is roughly 390-395 million strong as of today while the Nintendo consoles number around 450-455 million, counting only from the SNES era when MK launched. With that in mind, MK's roughly 87 million sales on an installed base that is 60-65 million bigger and with five years longer on the market (33% longer), the GT series' 67 million is starting to look pretty damn impressive.
Not too bad for a boring series that people in the real world don't find entertaining. In fact; there are those that would argue that GT is just as big on its own merit given these circumstances. I am one of those people. GT is a behemoth and the third best selling racing franchise of all time (the top selling is NFS, which launched three years prior to GT and is spread across all imaginable platforms, giving it a massive installed base potential). You're making it sound like an unpopular niche series, which simply isn't true, not even close.
