Gran Turismo 4 to Make Holiday Release...Offline

sm4kxd writes "EuroGamer is reporting that in a press conference at the Tokyo Game Show, Sony representatives stated that Gran Turismo 4 is still on schedule for release. They're looking for a December 4th Japan release, followed by a near December 14th release date in both the states and Europe, but it will be exclusively offline. There is to be a follow up GT game with online capabilities that has a speculated release sometime in 2005."

Link is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Tis bust

Bad Link.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=56 697 [eurogamer.net]

what's the point?

[muel]

Who cares about a new Gran Turismo game without online play? It's been the same game over and over. Sure, the last sequel had the benefit of PS2-powered graphics, but what's this one going to bring to the mainstream-gamer's table? A few more cars? More decals? Spiffier-looking still shots that wind up being lost when you're actually racing? Please.

If Sony had any respect for its customers, they would abandon this game's Xmas hopes and prep the game's release, with online, for Spring 05, rather than wait a few months after a lame Xmas launch and later release an "online patch" product for the low low price of $49.99!!

Re:what's the point?

[Andy_R]

I care.

The percentage of PS2 owners who have their machines connected to the net isn't that big (I'm omne that doesn't), and online racing is only going to be an add-on to the main game which involves gradually being able to afford better (or more highly tuned) cars.

The real reason that GT4 is so desirable is that the previous PS2 incarnations of GT have been half-hearted, GT3 being a cut down but nicer graphics port of the PS2.

Re:what's the point?

[DJayC]

The thing is they've already built a fan-base. You could say the same thing about sports games (football in particular). Tony Hawk even.. same game, different levels, etc... Gran Turismo will sell well... and you know what's funny is they will probably end up making MORE money by the overlap who buy both the offline and online version.

Most people prob. wont even know there will be an online version when the offline one comes out.

Luckily I'm a ESPN fan, and the new football game only cost me $20 buc

Re:what's the point?

[blueZhift]

True fans probably will buy the online version too. But my guess is that they'll have to wait until the PS3 comes out for GT 5. Why? Because I think the online play was dropped because the PS2 doesn't have the horsepower to present the photorealistic GT we're all spoiled with now, and handle online multiplayer. There are other online racing games for the PS2 like NASCAR and Midnight Club. But those games have far less overall modelling detail than GT, and even at that you're talking about 4-6 car races with 4 being the best you can do performance wise generally.

So I'd say look for GT 5 to a PS3 launch title in late 2005 or early 2006. If they do it right, it should blow everyone's socks off!

Re:what's the point?

[Hadlock]

The network adapter is a hardware eithernet adapter, not software. Online play shouldn't effect gameplay.

Re:what's the point?

[blueZhift]

Online play does affect gameplay because data has to be transmitted back and forth. The world that player 1 sees has to be in synch with player 2 and so on. For a highly detailed racer like GT, that could be a whole lot of data. If you've played online games like Unreal Tournament, Quake, or Final Fantasy XI, then you know that things can get pretty choppy when there are a lot of players interacting and any lag in data transmission just makes things worse. Lag is caused by the time it takes for signals to t

Re:what's the point?

[Corngood]

Having written network code for PS2, I'm going to say they just blew it. The processing time/memory required to play online are a pretty minimal increase over playing the same sort of race offline, plus you can probably dump a lot of the AI (except for prediction). They should have also budgeted for these things during pre-production.

Re:what's the point?

[Etone]

Whoever modded the parent as flamebait is a fricking moron. He was right on. GT4 without online is nothing but a cash grab.

-E-

Re:what's the point?

[badfrog]

I care, because now I can drive my 350Z the way I really want to, without destroying it or my insurance. :)

Shocking...

[Anonymous Coward]

...considering Gran Turismo 3 was essentially perfect in what it was trying to achieve. The whole point of a GT4 (aside from making craploads of money) was to play Online.

I guess GT4 will just be GT3 with new cars and tracks - another expansion pack.

Re:Shocking...

[incubusnb]

GT3 was far from Perfect my Friend, GT3 was the rushed re-hash and re-tooled GT2 engine, it was rushed to meet the PS2's launch date, which it missed anyways. GT3 was originally called GT2000 as it was supposed to be an expansion of GT2 but Sony decided it would be a better marketting Strategy to call it GT3.

GT4 on the other hand, is a complete redesign and reimplementation of the engine, its not just a "re-tooled" GT3.

as for online... if it was implemented i would probably use it for a while, until the skill-less cheats took over, then i'd happily play offline anyways, the loss of Online is no big deal to me, i play GT for the cars, and to challenge myself, not to get told i'm not "ub3r 1337" by some 12 year old wannahack

Re:Shocking...

[DarkZero]

...considering Gran Turismo 3 was essentially perfect in what it was trying to achieve. The whole point of a GT4 (aside from making craploads of money) was to play Online.

I guess GT4 will just be GT3 with new cars and tracks - another expansion pack.

GT3 was a great game, but it wasn't "essentially perfect". The tuning system was really abusive if you didn't already know EXACTLY how to tune a car (and the in-game information was absolute crap), the physics engine didn't allow for anything other than very stiff or very wild movement, and the physics engine also rewarded driving like an idiot. I've played one of the mountain stages probably over a hundred times and I still haven't found a faster way to handle the widest curve other than letting your car slam into the guardrail and slide across it.

The real attraction, for me, is the new physics engine, which is the soul of the entire game, along with the new modes, such as the drift competition. The new cars and tracks are just gravy on top of that.

Re:Shocking...

[DourSalmon]

Other flaws with GT3 include the ridiculously pared down (from GT2) car and track list, as well as the unwieldy menu navigation. I don't know how many times I've accidentally started the "intro" on the track that I was meaning to play. It was frankly just poor QA and testing and whatnot. To me, GT3 was beautiful but vapid, like some chick on Elimidate, whereas GT4 (hopefully) will be more like Sherilyn Fenn. (MC Frontalot reference)

PStwo + GT4 Online...

[Drakonite]

A PStwo and GT4 online bundle for christmas would have been a HUGE seller and made a huge impact on PStwo and GT4 sales, and a huge boost to the amount of people playing online.

This seems like one of those "Someone is going to get fired" screw ups to me.

The New XMas Bundle

[blueZhift]

Given that the online part of GT 4 was the big new thing, I think that Sony now has big time egg on their faces. So I'm going to make the big ol' guess that they will want to do something to make up for it in part. I wouldn't be too surprised to see GT 4 bundled with the new PStwo for XMas at some discount. And to sweeten the deal a bit, I'm guessing that while there won't be online multiplayer, there probably will be some kind of online goodies, like leader boards and stats, and maybe some downloadable cars later. They might even have downloads of player data for ghost races.

Now to toot my own horn, I speculated on this several weeks ago in my blog [proliphus.com]!

Re:The New XMas Bundle

[Osty]

But you can still use the new Photo Mode [kikizo.com], since "according to the developers, they expect some gamers to purchase the game for this new mode alone."

Looks like Forza Motorsports [xbox.com] won't have much in the way of competition, now.

Makes you wonder about the netcode

[llevity]

Something must be seriously wrong with it to push it back this far. I mean, they've known from the beginning that they wanted to make it online, so it's not like it's been a last minute hustle to try to shoehorn the game online.

The game has been already oft delayed enough as it is. I could understand if it were delayed to add more track, cars, or improve the AI, but to this news implies that the major delay has been related to the online piece of the game. Considering that GT4 Prologue edition has been released in Japan and Europe's markets earlier this year, it's obvious that the engine is done.

I am now having my doubts on how well it will perform online once the online version comes out if they haven't been able to nail it down after all this time.

Re:Makes you wonder about the netcode

[Delphiki]

I believe I read in a preview a few months ago that there will in fact be Porsche and Ferrari cars in the game. It was a while ago though so my memory could be a little bit fuzzy.

Re:Makes you wonder about the netcode

[wheany]

You know, you don't have to buy the game as soon as it comes out. Especially if you're short on money.

Reason for delay

[Taulin]

It was stated a while back one of their reasons for delay was due to not being able to get license for most of the 500 cars they will have in the game. Usually companies who have vehicles, property or people, represented in a game require it to be pretty close. For the cars, I would suspect the manufacturers probably had them change models and physics to closely match the real car, and not make it wrongly represent it, which could actually affect real life sales.

Re:Reason for delay

[llevity]

I've heard that too, but I've lost faith in that type of reasoning. I remember they blamed lack of damage modelling on the inability to license the cars if they also showed them damaged. Something about the manufactuers not wanting to show the cars in less than pristine condition.

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable and valid excuse at the time, but since then, numerous games have come out with realistic damage modelling on licensed cars. I suppose it could be something like if even one of the manufac

Great!

[contagious_d]

Am I the only one that thinks this is a good thing? The Gran Turismo games are, IMHO, the best thing since Tetris. If I want to play against a bunch of assholes, I will just invite my friends over. That way, when they park their cars sideways on the corkscrew in Laguna Seca, I can kick them in the nuts instead of yelling/typing at them. Seriously though, I have always enjoyed single player GT more than multiplayer, and I am kind of glad that they are releasing these as different games. I doubt I will buy the online version.

Re:Great!

[llevity]

Enjoying the single player isn't mutually exclusive to enjoying the multiplayer. What if online was a little bit more than an online matchmaking? What if there were cars you could win only in an online series? What if there were parts you could get only by winning online tournaments? Or, since that would probably piss off the people who can't or don't want to get online, it could be as simple as a special decal or cosmetic part that distinguished your car, a badge of honor that shows, at a glance, how m

convergence

[eamonman]

It would be very cool if soemone would combine the photorealism of the GT models, the terrain maps of the world (see today's worldwind program), and finally the online road DBs of mapquest into one uber driving sim game. I know there's a lot to be desired in terms of terrain height maps (above a certain resolution is probably not available to the public), but if someone could just add details to high density areas, it would be worth the trouble.

Just think, if the PS3 had this game, they could put to use the BD-ROM's storage capacity to store the US (or wherever)'s road data. And with an internet connection, you could download the weather and maybe even traffic conditions of whatever town you are driving in at the moment. I know it sounds silly, but just think; I wouldn't mind practicing a drive in some town that I would be travelling to for business. I'd even do it for town I'm probably never going to but would be curious to 'see' (Barrow, AK in the dead of winter comes to mind).

Yeah, I know True Crime SofLA tried some of that, but all the models were rather low in resolution (cars, streets, and height maps).

Too bad the costs of such a project would probably be massive, but I would certainly 4-5 times more for it than a regular PS2 game.

Re:convergence

[Kevin Stevens]

I agree. My "Big Idea" for a racing game would be a game where you could do races along routes. Not race tracks, but routes like DC to Boston, or a typical commute from the Nassau/Suffolk border on Long Island to manhattan, etc (throw in traffic for an alternate "ultra realistic" office-space type mode). Then I realized that to do it right, it had to be real, and maps that size are just infeasible. mebbe on the PS10 :)

Re:convergence

[Corngood]

Test drive 3 did this on a smaller scale, I really liked it. The race just had a destination and you could navigate yourself there using a highway map they provided.

Heh.

[Nexzus]

5 years ago, there were reports of delays for Gran Turismo 2. It wouldn't make it out for Christmas '99, and would be pushed to February 2000.

Through some miracle though, (I heard it was 120 hour work weeks), they were able to release it a week before Christmas, to the surprise of almost everyone. Of course, you could only complete 98.2% of it.

So, I guess I haven't lost hope yet.

no damn way

[Anonymous Coward]

screw them, i will NOT shell out $$ for offline version.... and i LOVE the series. :(((((((

Re:no damn way

[Donoho]

and i LOVE the series

No, you don't.

I've got mixed feelings about the decision.
On one hand, I respect Sony & DP's decision not to put out something that isn't up to GT standards (and because of them there is a very high standard - still remember the warm and fuzzy from seeing GT1 for the first time). I also understand the need to publish an otherwise complete game as production costs require compensation. Time is MASSIVE amounts of money. A delay of the magnitude they're speaking of could do s

Doesn't bother me a bit...

[samdu]

Why? 'cause I STILL don't think that the ability to take a game online is a make or break feature. I will scoop up GT4 on release day, online or not. Hell, many of the games I've bought recently are capable of online play and I never end up playing them online anyway. Judge the game on its merits. Is it fun, are the graphics good, the sound, the mechanics, etc... If there is an online mode, is it well implimented? It doesn't make sense to judge a game for features it doesn't have. For instance, would you hold it against a game if it didn't support a VR helmet? Of course not. The same should go for online modes. Personally, I'd rather see no more games support online play than have online play sledge-hammered into every game under the sun JUST so they can throw it on the feature list.

Real Car Enthusiasts

[TheBot]

Will love the game even with it's lack of online play. Those types of people appreciate the game's realism, not the photorealistic bushes on the side of the road. Some people can't always get what they want, and they just have to whine on here about it. Please, get over yourself, no ones making the game exclusively for you. The lack of online play is a bad move for the developer, but you know how these things happen, publishers want the game pushed out NOW NOW NOW, especially with the holidays coming up. I know people who have a Recaro Race seat, big screen TV, Wheel Controller w/ Shift Knob and Pedals set up as their GT playzone. So until you guys really play the game like that, I think you need to stop barking to the big dogs about how the game is just a re-hash. What kinds of Fans are you?