Formula One Racing Games Exclusive To PS2

Thanks to GameSpot for posting a story indicating that Sony have exclusively licensed the Formula One racing license for the next 4 years. There's some additional information via the press release hosted at GameSpyDaily, including info on the Formula One 2003 title for Playstation 2, to be released in Europe next month - is this now the biggest worldwide sport to have an exclusive game license?

Comments

An opinion on racing games.

[bkedelen]

As a hardcore gamer, I have always found that the best part of racing games is a feeling of liberation. Because of that, I feel that racing game developers in general should focus not on making games more realistic, but on making them less realistic, open-ended, and with wildness packed into every crack. I loved GTA not for the realism of the driving experience, but because I could jump over a bay when the dishes are piling up in the sink. I am much more interested in Midnight than I am in anything Formula 1 related or otherwise grounded in reality!

Re:An opinion on racing games.

[PainKilleR-CE]

You are absolutely right. I think I misrepresented my opinion. I was in fact attempting to suggest my preference, not condemn the opinions of those who enjoy more simulation-oriented driving games.

I probably misread it slightly, as well. My main point was that being a 'hardcore gamer' is pretty much meaningless in terms of racing game preferences. The most hardcore gamers in the world are probably the guys that play ultra-realistic flight sims or massive turn-based games via email anyway. Some of those people can be freakishly obsessive about their games ;)

I do, however, believe that there is more profit to be made (and more fun for me to have) in making unrealistic (fantastic?) racing games than in spending money to license the name of a real racing franchise and then simulating it.

According to actual sales data, the most profit in racing games is made by being the developers and publishers of the GT series. The least money is most likely made by whoever holds the F1 license. The Nascar license tends to do well in the US, but probably doesn't do so well elsewhere. The arcade games seem to be a pretty tight market to be in (since the best selling games in that market don't really make the best-selling lists very often and probably don't outsell all other games in the category for very long), and the more unusual racing games tend to come along fairly rarely. The only one I can think of recently that did pretty well would probably be something like Twisted Metal, assuming you don't count GTA.

Personally, I think GT3 is more of an addictive style of gameplay for me than anything else. They could trash most of the realism and I'd probably still like it, as long as the ability to make plenty of upgrades to each car was available and the game had tons of locations and cars. I liked Project Gotham Racing, too, but I didn't play it nearly as long because there weren't many cars and locations, and you couldn't upgrade the cars in any way.

Lately the most important thing for me has become a combination of gameplay and the amount of time it can keep me playing. I don't think I'll ever knowingly buy another game like Max Payne that I can blow through in 6-8 hours and then never care less about playing again. Luckily, I bought that one from a friend for $20 after making sure my system didn't show the same problems with it that his did.

Re: F1 popularity in the US

[Lars T.]

Days of Thunder was also more popular than Driven here in Germany - and that had nothing to do with the mostly unknown NASCAR vs. big-time F1.

Re: F1 popularity in the US

[Textbook Error]

F1 is like soccer - it's absolutely massive everywhere but the US, and the US equivalents are pretty much ignored everywhere else.

The US may/may not be the single biggest market in the world, but realistically it's just one of the top three territories for videogames (North America, Europe, and Asia). Games that sell well in the US (e.g., Madden) can easily bomb everywhere else (e.g., Madden) - games that sell well everywhere need to hit at least 2 of the 3 big markets.