Mainstream appeal = sales

?

Is GT more realistic though? It was released sooner than Forza 4, so you'd expect Forza to have superior graphics.

Gran Turismo set the standard for racing sims on consoles. I don't think that anyone can deny that. The GT games on the PS2 were absolutely incredible for their time. Forza emulated them very well, but still, GT will always have that high level of recognition.

It also has to be mentioned that Forza runs into the same situation that makes FPS games sell so very well on the 360. The 360's primary user base is heavily centered around shooters, as that is far and away the top genre in North America. Racing games, on the other hand, perform better in Europe and Japan, markets where the 360 is the weakest brand.

Finally, it has to be considered that GT5 is better now than when it was first reviewed. The degree of support it has received is pretty impressive. Who is to say which game is the highest quality at this very moment? This is an area where Metacritic fails.

Who was there (or popular) first has a lot to do with sales too.

The iPod was the first very successful mp3 player. It's popularity is part of the reason, I went for a iPod Mini as my first mp3 player. I got used to iTunes, to the click wheel, bought a car adapter and the product satisfied my music listening needs.

Since then plenty of mp3 players have been released and I have no doubt some of them are of superior quality to the iPod but each new mp3 player I bought over the years have been iPods because that's what I know, I feel comfortable with the interface and I'm still satisfied with what they offer me.

The same logic applies to those (mindnumbingly boring) racing sims. Gran Turismo was there long before Forza, people know it, people are satisfied with the experience and that's why the game performs better.

This guy just nailed it.

That is a possible explanation, yes.

That's like comparing Just Dance to Minecraft; they're totally different genres. Forza and GT are better illustrative examples because they're basically the exact same game, except Forza is better. The question is, why, given that Forza is better, has GT sold more?

well uncharted and halo or both shooters and action games, you can easily compare them

This is a bad comparison. The two games are only available on platforms with different gaming preferences. They never had the opportunity to sell to the same audience. Gran Turismo is available to a userbase that prefers racing games in general. The PS3 has sold more racing games with much less titles so the average racing game sells higher than on the other console.

PS3: 74 racing games; 53.49 million sales
http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=&publisher=&platform=PS3&genre=Racing&minSales=0&results=200

360: 87 racing games; 50.13 million sales
http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/name=&publisher=&platform=X360&genre=Racing&minSales=0&results=200

A better pure example would be GRID vs. Need for Speed Undercover sales.
-Both games came out on both platforms in the same year.
-GRID has a significantly higher metacritic score than NFS (more than 10% higher)
-Yet NFS Undercover sold better on both consoles.

GRID
PS3 Metacritic: 87
360 Metacritic: 87
PS3 Sales: 1 million
360 Sales: 830K

Need for Speed Undercover
PS3 Metacritic: 59
360 Metacritic: 64
PS3 Sales: 1.88 million
360 Sales: 1.48 million

This example is a much better demonstration than the very flawed one featured in the OP but I assume it is overall much less satisfying for him.

So this thread was created with the purpose of trolling Gran Turismo?

Who is the incompetent moderator that unlocked this?