Polyphony Digital and Sony certainly didn’t expect the International Motorsports Federation (the French acronym for this, hence we’ll use it: FIA) to expose the Gran Turismo filter…
The FIA first held the Motorsport Games in 2019, with Gran Turismo Sport used by the organization as an eSport. Then came the coronavirus pandemic, the program regressed in 2020 and 2021, but will return in October of this year. But in the meantime, Polyphony Digital released Gran Turismo 7, but it wasn’t as eSports-centric as the GT Sport. In fact, the FIA-approved Gran Turismo Championship is there for Part VII, but the Enterprise brand is less present than it was in the previous part.
Planet GTB note The FIA Declaration. According to the FIM, the Gran Turismo 7 will not be launched by eSport pilots this year, but the Assetto Corsa Competizione. Players in the tournament will be able to drive GT3 cars, and Kunos Simulazioni will make a unique copy of the chosen course (Paul Ricard) so that none of the players can benefit from the training. The final match of the tournament, which begins on October 27, will be held on the 29th of this month.
With this, the partnership between FIA Motorsport Games and Gran Turismo ended, with the FIA choosing a completely different game and franchise for this year’s championship. In fact, Polyphony’s Digital IP also has its own official eSport series, but this is a kind of failure for the Japanese studio and Sony. (It doesn’t matter whether eSport contestants will play on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, or PC…)
So the bar is up to Gran Turismo 7, where the cars in the game are much more expensive for real money, the game, which can be enjoyed as a single player but requires an internet connection due to Sony, became unplayable for a day and a half after the 1.07 update, and who knows what? These are the monetization traps that may still lie ahead.
source: PSL
