What, exactly, is the hold up at this point? Prologue as a game is really quite well done. The physics need a bit more work and there are a few graphic elements that can be improved on, but I don't think they need another year and a half for that. I know that adding cars takes a while... Release the game without 4 bazillion cars and add them as DL content in the future. Dayum.

why make so many cars? I mean you can only race with one at a time.

I wonder if they wouldn't be better served making some kind of store. Maybe have the game with a couple tracks and cars like prologue. But then give people the opportunity to buy new tracks and cars like pepole buy stuff for RB and GH. That way they could release the game earlier and continually add to it, rather then putting all the eggs into one basket.

The mythical man month doesn't really work like that because of dependencies.  The easiest way to think of that is that one woman can have a baby in 9 months so can two women have a baby in 4.5 months?  With this, two artists don't have the time exactly (though it does get reduced unlike the baby example).

I also wouldn't be surprised if that six months number was an exaggeration. 

And one last thing-- 900 cars is a little excessive.  Sure, it's a great bragging point but how many users are actually going to see all 900?  This is a perfect example of a studio just shooting themselves in the foot because while a lot of people will buy the game, not a lot will see the majority of the content.

I still think its an 09 release...I mean they have a LOT of the game built, GT5P is a 100% ( i think ) functional graphics and physics engine...and tracks cannot take tooo long to make...the cars, the damage and working out the online part (my guess for any delay) is the tough part...but GT5P has been out for months now, and if GT5 is a 2009 holiday release, that gives them nearly 2 years after the prologue to finish it...that seems like enough time...I think

Um, yes you can.  This game could sell millions of copies and I doubt it would barely see a profit if any.  Just because a title sells well doesn't mean you should sink an endless amount of money into it.  There really does come a point when they should just say start cutting things.

A perfect way to do this would be to dramtically decrease the number of cars.  Sure, they can't say they have 900 cars, but if the game comes out and those cars are already several years old and the majority of users aren't going to seem them anyways, what's the point?

The only reason why they would want to push it back to 2010 is to wait till the PS3 userbase grows. Probably figured out that they coudln't make a profit on such a small userbase.

How much will the development costs for GT 5 would be?

GT5:P has probably covered at least half, if not more than half of the development costs, they could easily make millions and millions of dollars if they released GT5 even in 2008.

Well, I'll buy a PS3 whenever this hits the shelves.