Rather subjective analysis, considering the franchise has sold what almost 14 million units in 4 years, 17-18m in 5? (There are numerous games made by folks listed on the front, that _wish_ they had those kinds of numbers.  Granted, your Marios and Metroids aren't among them hah).  Hell, add all 18 versions of Ace Attorney and you're still looking at ~5m units, since 2005.  Go back to 2005 w/ GT and we're talking 21m units.

sales are not the only metric. undeniably i think, driving sims/realistic racing games are on the decline, taken over by open-world arcade-y racers like burnout and need for speed on the one hand and mario kart and its numerous knock-offs on the other. (mario kart, by the way, has alone outsold, as a series, all the gran turismo games, with the best-selling doing 30m+.) but... there's also the series' declining critical reception. it's gone from a high of 96 in 1998 (for the original game) to 81 in the most recent installment (gt6).

anyway, it's an omission, as is harada. i've admitted as much. it's less to do with my not caring for them as my not remembering them immediately. if you had posted earlier on in the thread i would probably have added him, but we're too far along at this point.

This isn't about driving sims/racing sims, it's about japanese developers.  Kazunori Yamauchi accounts for a great deal of sales among said developers over the last 10 years.  Additionally, that's a rather odd statement, given Driveclub is outselling FH2 (On two platforms, no less), Burnout hasn't done anything in a few years (and it's lifetime sales aren't even above 20m for the franchise), and Need for Speeds numbers have done nothing but decline since Underground in 2003 (Gran Turismo still avgs much higher sales per game, than Need for Speed).

As far as Mario Kart, really want to bring that up?  Ok, let's take a look at those numbers, shall we?  Firsly, throw out 92 and 96, since they're before Gran Turismo was even created.  And for someone so concerned about 'sales drops', the decline in Mario Kart sales from the Wii to Wii U, is far, far, far more dramatic than the drop in sales from GT5 to GT6.  I mean, on the Wii it sold ~35m, on the Wii U ~4m.  Wouldn't that suggest that the world is in fact more sick of Mario Kart than...well, any other game listed?

Either way, the only dev I cared about is gone, so the rest is irrelevant (To me).