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Gran Turismo 7 review: the grandaddy of racing games

March 5, 2022 Audrey

As a splash screen reminds you when you boot up Gran Turismo 7, this is the 25th-anniversary year of Sony’s flagship PlayStation racing game. It’s also been more than eight years and one whole console generation since we last saw a mainline, numbered entry in the series, the 2013 PlayStation 3 swan song Gran Turismo 6. These long spans of time loom large over the new game. Maybe they explain why it’s so preoccupied with legacy.

In the quarter century since “the real driving simulator” became a sensation with its involved physics and grainy photorealism, our relationship with cars has changed. Climate change has forced a reevaluation, and the internal combustion engine is on the way out. Can cars even be cool in 2022? “You won’t find as many people talking about car culture anymore,” director Kazunori Yamauchi said recently, adding that GT7 had been built with this new reality in mind.

Our relationship with racing games has changed, too, in the years since Gran Turismo 6. Back then, its main competitor was the Forza Motorsport series, which was made in GT’s image. Today, an upstart spinoff from those games has become a popular phenomenon by putting vibes first and borrowing the design of open-world adventures, culminating in the magnificent Forza Horizon 5, in which the cars — and the racing — were only part of the point.

an Alfa Romeo racing car crossing the finish line on the Trial Mountain circuit in Gran Turismo 7

In 2017, though, developer Polyphony Digital looked to the future with Gran Turismo Sport, a multiplayer-first, live-service-inspired detour. It got many things right, not least the way it brought driver and safety rating systems from hardcore simulator iRacing into a more approachable arena. But it launched as a slender shadow of what the public expects of a Gran Turismo game; a traditional single-player campaign was only patched in as an afterthought, and many GT features, including the car modification system that has always been a hallmark of the series, never made it in.

This is the world Yamauchi and his team strive to confront in Gran Turismo 7. They seem to want it to be the Gran Turismo that fans remember, with all the features they love. They want — quite desperately, it seems — to get people excited about cars again. They want this all-encompassing series to carry all its baggage, plus over a century of motoring history, into the future.

It’s a testament to their enormous skill and passion that they largely succeed. Despite its big ambitions and wealth of content, Gran Turismo 7 always feels slick and manageable, and it’s a treat to see Polyphony bring its renowned technical gloss to the PlayStation 5. But still, it’s not what you would call light on its feet. At times it seems hemmed in by tradition, and at others, held back by a heavy guiding hand.

a blue Porsche 911 sits outside the Gran Turismo Café in Gran Turismo 7

That’s not to say it’s without the eccentric flights of fancy that have long livened up a series with

iRacing purchases Monster Video games, teases racing games for the ‘broader market’ like consoles

January 7, 2022 Audrey

1 of the paid subscription products and services that professional sudden progress through the pandemic has been iRacing. When actual-daily life racing leagues were on hiatus, they used the in-depth and real looking sim racing assistance as an esports broadcasting system, and sufficient new individuals started out playing to expand its base of racers on Laptop from 110,000 at the beginning of 2020 to around 200,000 currently.

Now iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations suggests it has acquired Monster Game titles, Inc. (MGI). That Minnesota-dependent studio made the very first 4 online games underneath the NASCAR Heat brand name and its most the latest title, SRX: The Activity, for engage in on Computer and the PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

A press release asserting the order is very careful to observe, “The iRacing progress workforce will stay 100% targeted on continuing to create the core products, iRacing.” But Monster Games’ working experience building console game titles is plainly a aspect of the ideas going ahead, as the launch also says this deal will “further the company’s capacity to deliver the maximum good quality racing online games to the broader marketplace, including the console room.”

Pumped up by its subscriber development, iRacing also lately obtained Orontes Games, which experienced by now developed a proprietary sport motor to electrical power the high-res graphics and advanced physics for its Drag racing activity which is offered by using Steam Early Entry.

Abundant Garcia, CEO of Monster Video games, has a background with iRacing CEO Dave Kaemmer from the early times of Kaemmer’s former corporation, Papyrus, working on effectively-regarded Pc racing video games. The system is for MGI to release an unannounced title in progress later this yr and then establish game titles utilizing the methods of all three studios.

A lot more information and facts on what is future is promised “in the coming year.” Nonetheless, a quote from Kaemmer provides a potent trace about what we ought to assume, “We are at a position as a business that we are comfy setting up out these two new teams to take a look at the broader racing match sector to finally funnel severe sim racers to our flagship item iRacing on the Computer. Rich and the Monster team will be an critical component of that method as we use our code and practical experience to provide their video games to a different degree.”

An iRacing port for the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X appears to be unlikely, based mostly on that assertion, but bringing its ultra-realistic knowledge to racing game titles built for perform on consoles, as nicely as ongoing tech updates for the flagship title, appears to be a safe and sound wager.

Horse racing idols app injects new lifestyle into Japan cell gaming sector

December 15, 2021 Audrey

FILE Photograph Perspective of an advertisement for cell recreation “Uma Musume” in Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district, Japan August 26, 2021. Photo taken August 26, 2021. REUTERS/Sam Nussey

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TOKYO, Dec 13 (Reuters) – When an ageing racehorse, Makahiki, broke data by successful his initial race in five several years in Kyoto in early October, Japanese social media was flooded with remarks from an unlikely team of racing fans: avid gamers.

The on-line outpouring was the newest sign of boundary-spanning for “Uma Musume Very Derby”, the Japanese mobile gaming industry’s first runaway hit in a ten years. The recreation has identified a specialized niche by bridging the traditionally disparate subcultures of horse racing and females pop stars recognised as “idols.”

Players educate and race female figures dressed in school- and armed service-encouraged costumes, with the addition of horse ears and tails. Race winners accomplish a pop live performance.

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The final results have been unequivocally impressive: considering the fact that it was introduced in February, the video game has generated hundreds of thousands and thousands of dollars for its creator, Cygames, and the developer’s mum or dad, on the net advert company CyberAgent (4751.T), generating it 1 of the world’s top rated-grossing mobile game titles inspite of its Japan-only release. At occasions its person foundation has rivalled megahits this kind of as Tencent’s (0700.HK) “Honor of Kings”.

“I was preparing to obtain a motor vehicle but figured I will not seriously want just one and, due to the fact I have price savings, why not place all my energy into ‘Uma Musume’?” stated Daiki Minakawa, 25, a application engineer who has used a lot more than 2 million yen ($18,000) in-game. “I cannot get a motor vehicle anymore but I never have any regrets.”

The breakout good results of “Uma Musume” – which translates to “horse women” – is a shot in the arm for Japan developers, whose cell current market share has been eroded by an inflow of more and more polished Chinese titles.

“Gacha,” a prevalent mechanic in Japanese titles in which genuine-entire world income is made use of to gain specific merchandise and electrical power-up figures, is what has made the activity so beneficial.

Whilst “Uma Musume” is totally free, a lot of consumers shell out on gacha – comparable to “loot boxes” in Western game titles – to obtain figures and advance.

Yohei Tatsumi, 36, a labour and social stability lawyer, plays in moments of down time and spends 10,000 yen-20,000 yen every month on the title.

“I have no strategies to halt,” he mentioned.

LED BY Gamers

Cygames’ assault on gamers’ wallets began with the 2018 launch of an “Uma Musume” animated demonstrate, which rapidly grew to become a hit.

When the game arrived in 2021, industry observers said it was unusually polished for a free-to-play cellular title.

“A lot of leaders in cellular video game businesses have no