In a recent article in "The Fall of Babylon", GameLook once criticized SE for not finding its own service-oriented game positioning, "wanting to make micro-transaction money, and not being able to put down its own body as a stand-alone old factory", and finally only launched a product that "plays like a free game, but is as expensive as "Eldon's Ring of Law".
Just last weekend after the article was released, another AAA masterpiece also flipped the word of mouth of players because of similar problems, that is, "Gran Turismo 7 (hereinafter referred to as GT7)".
Will not do micro-trading advice to learn from Japanese mobile game factories
"GT Racing" is a simulation racing game series developed by Polyphony Digital in Japan, the first generation of "GT Racing" was launched on the PlayStation in 1997, and the total global sales exceeded 10 million sets, and the series has been the top exclusive IP of the PS platform for more than 20 years.
Unlike Microsoft's "Forza Motorsport" series, "GT Racing" basically maintains the update frequency of two works on each generation console on the PS platform, GTS (Gran Turismo Sport) before GT7 is already a game five years ago (2017), and the word of mouth of GTS is not particularly good, the average score of the media on Metacritic is only 75 points. The average player score is only 6.1, far lower than the 2013 GT6, it can be said that players have been looking forward to the GT7 to play a turnaround battle for a long time.
In fact, in the early stage of the game's release, GT7's reputation is still good, the media score is more than 80 points, in terms of sales, GT7 since its launch, but also three consecutive weeks of Pressure Elden's French Ring, won the British physical game sales list champion. It wasn't until developer Polyphony Digital released an update on March 17 that slashed the revenue players received from in-game matches that GT7's reputation took a sharp turn for the worse.
At present, GT7's rating on Metacritic is still 87 points, but the player rating has fallen to 2.0 points, which is the lowest user rating ever recorded on Metalacritic's Sony First Party masterpiece.
As for this adjustment, according to the reward adjustment data of the player statistics, except for the two events whose rewards were adjusted from 5000Cr to 70,000Cr, the rewards of all the other events were almost cut by 30%-50%, and the rewards of some events were even cut by 65%. For details, see the figure below:
If the reason for the adjustment was that the in-game currency was too cheap compared to the price of the item before, then polyphony Digital's slash may not have caused much controversy, but before the adjustment, the GT7's rewards were already small compared to the price of some of the top cars.
In GT7, players want to get part of the vehicle need to consume Cr points, Cr points in addition to direct kryptonite, only through repeated in-game games to obtain, for example, the most complained about by players at present, a McLaren F1 1994 in the game price of 18.5 million Cr points, according to Twitter netizens estimates, before the adjustment, want to get the car will take more than ten hours to repeatedly play 3 minutes a game.
But after the adjustment, to get such a car, the netizen needs to continue to liver for 35 hours. Don't want to do what to do with the liver game, then Krypton gold, the game 20 million Cr points in the United States priced for about 200 US dollars.
McLaren F1 1994 players exit online
That is, if the player's dream car is this McLaren F1 1994, after spending $70 to buy the game, it will cost another $200 to get the game experience they are looking forward to. With such outrageous microtransaction prices, coupled with Polyphony Digital's apparent kryptonic behavior, it's no wonder that the player community fryer.
In this regard, the explanation of producer Kazunori Yamauchi is that "the pricing of the car is a representative of its value and rarity, so I think it is important to correlate it with the price of the real world", which is to say that "you can't open it in reality, and you don't want to open it in the game".
Although the car culture that GT7 has been emphasizing has been recognized by many players, for the interpretation of Yamauchi Kazunori, there are too many slot points, and GameLook really can't tell whether this is playing stupid, or the producer really follows his own inner speech out of respect for car culture.
The author only wants to say that the game is first and foremost an entertainment product, and the pursuit of added value such as culture and education and ignoring entertainment, as well as the need for people to escape from reality, is tantamount to giving up the end.
Not to mention that GT7 respects car culture, Sony's little abacus can be too shrewd. Unlike the 20 million Cr points that can be purchased for 20 million Cr points in the United States for 200 US dollars, it is possible to buy 200 million Cr points in the Japanese area with less than 20 US dollars (2200 yen), which is not obvious that it is cutting the leeks of European and American players who love car gun ball games.
In this way, the player's already high-pressure emotions exploded after a long period of maintenance on March 17, and on March 17, the official Twitter announcement said that the original two-hour server maintenance would be extended due to a problem found in 1.07.
Prior to this, as a strictly single-player game GT7 needs to be fully connected to the Internet has caused many players to be dissatisfied, but out of anti-cheat (PS5?) As well as some understanding of online content, players don't have much to complain about, but this update of GT7 takes up to 32 hours (enough for players to liver a McLaren F1 1994).
"GRID Legends", published by EA and developed by Codemaster, also added fuel to the fire, adding a handful of firewood when the player's negative emotions accumulated, tweeting, "GRID Legends is a game that can be played with both cars and now."
In the eyes of many players, GT7's full networking is already a snake, and now because of this server problem that should not be there, it is impossible to access this game that they bought for a whole day and a half, even if they do not have much dislike for game microtransactions, they are also broken at this time.
More than 4,400 players vented their anger on the game's Metacritic score, with a large swath of glare of 0s occupying the front page of player reviews.
"Sadly Polyphony Digital has gone down the path of Rockstar and EA", "Polyphony and Sony's behavior is absolutely shocking. ”
Some players even dug up Sony's tweets 9 years ago that mocked Microsoft Xbox games for needing to be connected to the Internet, "'PS4 physical games (GT7 also launched on the PS4 platform) can play without internet's thunderous applause", and taunted, "Just today, GT7 proved that this is a lie", and the comment area of the tweet was also occupied by GT7 players.
Make money, don't be humble
In 2022 alone, Sony will continue to have new tumults in first-party games.
Last month, Horizon West made a show of the same product, different prices, the PS5 version is $10 more expensive than the PS4 version, but the content of the two games is exactly the same, and the PS4 version can also be upgraded to the PS5 version for free. According to GameIndustry, 68% of players in the UK have purchased the $70 version of Horizon West, and Sony's only risk is that it could face a class-action lawsuit over this pricing strategy.
Today's GT7 "paid Kryptonian online game" approach, in fact, looking back at the financial situation of Sony's game and network services department, it is not difficult to find the reason.
According to analyst Daniel Ahmad, Sony's Gaming and Web Services division revenue reached $24.87 billion in 2021, up 8.9 percent year-over-year, but the unit's EBIT profit was just $2.63 billion over the same period, down 21.3 percent year-over-year in the first full year after the PS5 release.
If you break down the revenue of this segment, the console hardware division accounts for 24% with $6 billion, and the sales of the game body (including physical and digital versions) account for 23% of the monthly revenue of 5.5 billion. But the point is that add-ons/in-game microtransactions (MTX)/DLC, etc., account for 32% of Sony's games and web services division's full-year revenue with $8 billion in sales.
Pricing is just an appetizer, and the GT7 "paid Krypton gold online game" model is the real cash cow of Sony's game and network service department.
High revenue from in-game microtransactions is just one aspect of the problem, and the other is that Sony's games sold poorly last year.
According to Daniel Ahmad, Sony sold a total of 294 million games in 2021, a decrease of 14.2% year-on-year, of which physical sales fell by 24.8% year-on-year to 95.6 million units, and digital sales fell by 7.9% year-on-year to 198 million units. Among them, the sales of Sony's first-party games "plummeted" by 37.5%, only 37.3 million units. In contrast, Microsoft achieved growth last year, both in hardware and software.
Although the media always says that last year's Sony's voice was not as loud as Microsoft's, this year will be a big year for Sony games, but in the face of the first year of the next generation of consoles is not ideal performance, Sony's top management may have been unable to wait. In addition to the shortcomings of kryptonite in the game, various bugs and logic problems such as UI and interaction after gt7 is launched may also be the sequelae of the game's hasty listing.
$70 also has to be earned, MTX also has to earn, compared to the third-party games that are not easy to control, Sony obviously wants to squeeze the earning power of its first-party games as much as possible to make this year's earnings look a lot better.
GT7 doesn't just have the microtransactions problem, but microtransactions are clearly the most compelling one
The money is earned, so what is the price
As mentioned earlier, unlike the "Forza Motorsport" series, which is changed every year, the GT racing series has always been updated with two works for each generation, belonging to the AAA masterpiece of slow work, from the poor GT6 to the decent GTS, and then to the GT7 with a collapsed reputation, players have waited for 9 years.
And Sony's positioning of GT7 is also different from the previous game, GT7 will be a long-term operation of the service game, that is to say, the entire PS5 generation, players may only have this GT racing series of games. Even if Sony changes its plans due to the change in player reputation, the next GT racing car with more than 8 points will still have to wait for years.
Although the GT racing series has gone through more than twenty years of history, it is already a very remarkable achievement, as sony's first-party racing game IP, the prospects of the GT racing series naturally do not have to worry, through gt8, GT9 Sony can still change their lives against the sky, pull this IP. But players will change, not to mention electronic ED and other issues, just ask how many decades a person's playing career.
On the one hand, it is the GT series that has been downhill for decades, and on the other hand, there are no surprises, but it will not suddenly die or cheap (XGP) for forza Motorsport, Grid and other opponents. Although the positioning of these three does not completely overlap, but they all belong to the racing game category, the GT racing series that has left the racing game market for a long time, in the face of the steady output of the same type of products, I am afraid that in the future, more amazing works will be needed to return to the peak and save their lost reputation.
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