PLAYSTATION’S LATEST GAME HAS FACED HEAVY CRITICISM FOR DOWNTIME AND MICROTRANSACTIONS
At the time of publishing, the PS4 and PS5 racer has a user score of 2.5/10, which appears to put it below every game in Metacritic’s 27-years of tracked games from PlayStation Studios, Sony Interactive Entertainment, SCEA, SCEE and SCEJ.
GT7 claims its unwanted record from PS4’s World of Warriors (2.9), PSP’s NBA 10 The Inside (3.0) and Cool Boarders 2001 on PSOne (3.3). However, while those titles only have a handful of user reviews, Gran Turismo 7 currently has over 3,600.
Despite the all-time low user score, Gran Turismo 7 has a strong metascore from critics at 87 on PlayStation 5.
The vast majority of GT7’s user reviews were posted on or after March 17, when developer Polyphony Digital released a controversial patch reducing payouts from the game’s races, thus making it harder to unlock new cars without spending on microtransactions.
GT7 was also offline for more than 24 hours between the 17th and 18th, which made it nearly unplayable due to the significant amount of content it requires an internet connection to access.
Even before the latest patch, VGC reported that some of Gran Turismo 7’s cars cost as much as eight times what they did on Gran Turismo Sport, if purchased using real money.
Now, a new analysis by fansite GTPlanet suggests GT7 takes far longer to earn credits than its recent predecessors. According to its analysis, it could take players nearly 20 hours of grinding in order to earn enough to purchase just one of the game’s most expensive cars.
Understandably, the combination of slow in-game payouts combined with expensive microtransactions has led to widespread criticism from the game’s community.
One prominent presenter, who has featured on official broadcasts, publicly condemned what he called the “stupid amounts of time” it takes to earn credits in GT7. The tweet has been retweeted and liked thousands of times, including by professional Gran Turismo players.
At the time of publishing, the world champion GT esports player Valerio Gallo has even liked multiple tweets criticising GT7’s microtransactions, including one message calling the game “the real credit card simulator”.
Currently, GT7’s “most useful” Metacritic user review voted by other users points out its requirement for an internet connection in order to access single-player content. The vast majority of the other ranked reviews criticise its perceived aggressive microtransactions.
“Was a [big] Gran Turismo fan,” one review reads. “I’ve played this game since GT1 on PS1. Yes the driving physics are superb, yes the cars are gorgeous. However this is all pointless given an extremely short career mode and of the most obvious cash grabs with their micro transactions made so much worse after they nerfed payouts for single-player races. GT was always a grind but it was never this bad.”
Another adds: “It pains me to give me this a 0. Game feel is fantastic and so is the controller support. Graphics are great. Initial content is there, but the microtransactions… $38 of real money to buy a single Ford GT?
“And also reducing the amount of money you get by just playing the game with the most recent patch? And the loot boxes are rigged so you always get the lowest reward. Will change this review to a 10 when it’s actually possible to buy cars with money earned in game.”
Addressing the microtransactions controversy in a statement on Friday, series boss Kazunori Yamauchi claimed that the situation would eventually be resolved with further content due to be released at an unspecified point in the future.
“In GT7 I would like to have users enjoy lots of cars and races even without microtransactions,” he claimed. “At the same time the pricing of cars is an important element that conveys their value and rarity, so I do think it’s important for it to be linked with the real world prices.
“I want to make GT7 a game in which you can enjoy a variety of cars lots of different ways, and if possible would like to try to avoid a situation where a player must mechanically keep replaying certain events over and over again.
“We will in time let you know the update plans for additional content, additional race events and additional features that will constructively resolve this. It pains me that I can’t explain the details regarding this at this moment, but we plan on continuing to revise GT7 so that as many players as possible can enjoy the game.
“We would really appreciate it if everyone could watch over the growth of Gran Turismo 7 from a somewhat longer term point of view.”
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