Metacritic users rate Gran Turismo 7 the worst Sony game ever

GT7 Metacritic score.jpg
As of today March 22nd 2022, Gran Turismo 7 has a score of 1.8 on Metacritic. So far there have been 6377 ratings, 886 of which are positive, 155 mixed, and 5366 negative reviews which makes GT7 the worst Sony game ever.

Gran Turismo 7 scores started to plummet when the servers went down on March 17th, this was a scheduled maintenance that was extended for over 24 hours. You would think that this would only influence online play, as GT7 has a very strong single player focus, however Gran Turismo 7 requires an always online connection to play. Whenever servers are down, players cannot access their personal saves or garages, they cannot take part in licence events, customize their cars, or even hot lap. This means players are limited to an arcade mode and music rally mode.

So at this point the metacritic score was in freefall, then the new update landed.

The new update has reduced the amount of credits awarded for specific races, this means that players will need to spend longer to build up enough currency to afford the most expensive cars in GT7.

This reduction in payouts has come after criticism by many players of the micro transaction model in GT7, which was introduced after many reviews had already landed. Microtransactions were present in GT Sport, but cars cost at the very most in the region of £5.

In GT7 if players wish to purchase a car, they have to purchase credit packs, ranging from £1.99 (100,000 credits) - £15.99 (2,000,000 credits).
  • 100,000 credits: £1.99
  • 250,000 credits: £3.99
  • 750,000 credits: £7.99
  • 2,000,000 credits: £15.99
This means that GT7 players will often have to buy multiple packs or have credits left over from a purchase.

One of the most expensive cars in the game is the 1929 Mercedes-Benz S Barker Tourer ‘29, which is available to buy for 20 million credits. That means this car costs just shy of £160, which is an insane amount of money to spend.

The low score isn't just limited to metacritic it currently has a 2.7 score on Google, but interestingly the user score on Amazon is 4.1 out of 5. Could this be a lot of players jumping on the bandwagon or is this very low metacritic score representative of how players feel about the game?

What are your thoughts on this?
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About author
Damian Reed
Damian Reed
PC geek, gamer, content creator, and passionate sim racer.
I live life a 1/4 mile at a time, it takes me ages to get anywhere!

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Comments

BillyBobSenna
Premium
MJQT said:
Not necessarily. Monopoly power (or even simply concentration of power in the hands of a few firms) takes value out of consumers' hands into the firms' pockets. Can of course be mitigated with antitrust laws or competition policy. Or new entrants into the industry (especially if creating a new niche)... but I wouldn't say the current gaming industry seems ripe for this.

I agree with @Botmeister – games years ago were of course made with the intention of making money so developers could make a living, but they seemingly were made with a different underlying logic allowing more "passion projects" that were complete and carefully bug-tested to be released. Games would seem to have been more than only making money for the parent company like any other "cash cow" item on a (real or virtual) shelf like we see today.

Early Gran Turismo games are actually great examples of such "passion projects" that were more possible years ago. Now Polyphony seems to treat GT more and more as a cash cow to be milked, which is a shame.
Click to expand...
So what is the solution?
 
Richard Wilks
BillyBobSenna said:
So what is the solution? Don’t you think capitalism drives competition and innovation?
Click to expand...
As he said, and at least in the gaming industry, no it doesnt. It leads to the situation we are in now. The gaming industry is one of the best examples of free reign capitalism running unchecked by any sort of regulations, and the results are plain to see. I dont need to repeat his post, but all he said is true.

Its easy to say "we should not buy anything", and indeed if you dont agree with the micro Ts, you shouldnt. But if the industry at large actively wants to force you to do it, you will be left with a shell of a game that is for sure less enjoyable than the ones that came before, due to the contrived mechanics in place to assure that you have to pay to play.

That said, "simracers" are the last bunch that can complain about this, since they actively support paying DLCs for years for outdated and buggy games, and even the concept of paymods of dubious quality.

Still, in the end, i dont see what's the big fuss about GT in particular. I remember in GT3 some cars were just not for sale, and you had to grind some long races, and hope for the best that the car was the selected one in the lottery of prize cars that happened in the end of the race. GT was all about grinding, always.
 
RichardHessels
Sony just mistaken the new world order in gaming.
They been reading DLC's are making the most money now in the industry.
But they did not realize most of those games that live on DLC's are super cheap or free.
Than you start buying content, in the end mostly even more than the actual full game would have cost you.
 
BillyBobSenna
Premium
Richard Wilks said:
Regulation. It's high time that the game industry starts to be regulated. Specially considering that lately we are verging more and more into gambling territory.
Click to expand...
I disagree with the idea of regulation. I think competition will drive innovation. I am very happy with the cost and quality of the sims I enjoy. I don't think the sim industry has ever been healthier.
 
Richard Wilks
BillyBobSenna said:
I disagree with the idea of regulation. I think competition will drive innovation. I am very happy with the cost and quality of the sims I enjoy. I don't think the sim industry has ever been healthier.
Click to expand...
Well i dont know in what world you live in then. Haven't you noticed the releases lately? ACC took years to get to a "decent" state. iRacing has the price model we all know (and most hate), and has been riddled with exploits for years. The new NASCAR game was released in what can only be described as "unfinished mess". AMS2 is stuck in perpetual bug fixing, while they release DLC after DLC to fund it. rf2 if anything has gone backwards. And there are no new games in the horizon, apart from some vague talk about a possible AC2, and PCars4, but with no solid dates.

And thats exactly why we are here discussing GT7. And why it's a great example that regulation is badly needed, if anything, to save the industry from itself.

So if by "healthier", you mean "hanging on by the skin of it's teeth", then i would agree...
 
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Turk
graham123 said:
Was looking forward to playing this, my son has a ps5 and I had talked him into hooking it up to my rig....However he has now said he won't be buying this, due to the Car purchase/ Credit issue, And I'm sure as sh*t not gonna pay for a game, that's gonna take me forever or cost a fortune to get some cars I want
Click to expand...
Very mature decision from your son and it will take people abstaining to bring about change. Every time we give big companies money it's like a pat on the back to them. IT doesn't matter how much we complain, complaints are like water off a ducks back to them. If the money pile doesn't grow that's when they panic and grovel.

BillyBobSenna said:
I disagree with the idea of regulation. I think competition will drive innovation. I am very happy with the cost and quality of the sims I enjoy. I don't think the sim industry has ever been healthier.
Click to expand...
Regulation is necessary in a capitalist society because without regulation all that matters is money. Competition creates a race to the bottom as companies cut costs to make more profit, or cut costs just to keep their heads above water as bigger fish cut costs more aggressively.
Expecting competition to fix everything is like expecting the wind to blow your boat across the Atlantic while you do nothing. The wind has no goal, it doesn't understand or care about your needs, what's right, where your going or when you want to get there. It doesn't care if you get there. IT's the same with competition, unregulated it's like the wind blowing in all directions without any consideration for consequences and outcomes.
 
D
Hehe. That's what gaming is nowadays. It's developing since 2009ish. Well, ok. It started with Oblivion, and WoW pets and mounts, etc. I lost my passion for games and solely play AMS 1/2 and RBR for my simracing fix. I also play Diablo 2: LoD and Football Manager on/off during my gaming-career. Maybe I am getting too old for games, but I am sad it's all about DLC, F2P, MTX, 1 daypatches and cut-content. Where's the passion, the innovation, the thrive to create something creative. No? It always has to be safe, so people buy it anyways and then introduce the weirdest stuff to attract children, whales and whatever. I am happy GT7 is not received very well, and I hope gamingscene will change after all the stuff happened since 2020, like Cyberpunk etc.
 
Gevatter
Premium
RinusDirtRally said:
Where's the passion, the innovation, the thrive to create something creative.
Click to expand...
Indy Games. Independent developers create a lot of little games that are usually very creative, experimental and cheap. There's a lot of stuff out there.
 
D
Gevatter said:
Indy Games. Independent developers create a lot of little games that are usually very creative, experimental and cheap. There's a lot of stuff out there.
Click to expand...
Sure there will be gems, but mostly those games are just same old, same old. I like JRPG's for example, but most of the indies are really cheesy storywise and made with RPG-maker, hehe.
 
BillyBobSenna
Premium
I think regulation has a place but not in the sim racing industry. I don’t play iRacing because I don’t think it’s good value for what I like. I have a long list of great inexpensive sims to choose from. Why would I want to change anything?
 
Turk
BillyBobSenna said:
I think regulation has a place but not in the sim racing industry. I don’t play iRacing because I don’t think it’s good value for what I like. I have a long list of great inexpensive sims to choose from. Why would I want to change anything?
Click to expand...
Your right in that sim racing doesn't need anything specific, but gaming over all does need some regulation on large corporations gouging customers and introducing gambling to kids under the guise of content. I keep coming back to the fact it's the kids that they target. I'm very capable of saying no and going without, I'm even spiteful that way in that I'll turn my back on a company if I feel like it for all sorts of reasons.

Kids and young adults who are still under the influence of peer pressure on the other hand are easy pickings for corporations, they don't have the experience to know when they're being taken advantage of and with easy access to online payments they can end up spending their parents money of frivolous crap.
 
MJQT
BillyBobSenna said:
I think regulation has a place but not in the sim racing industry. I don’t play iRacing because I don’t think it’s good value for what I like. I have a long list of great inexpensive sims to choose from. Why would I want to change anything?
Click to expand...
Despite my comment yesterday, I agree with BillyBob that in the realm of "100% proper sim racing" titles – i.e. AC, ACC, rF, AMS, iRacing – some sort of competition policy-type thing isn't needed. In my opinion, anyhow. It's a niche within a niche made by small companies and consumers have a number of solid choices. Don't wanna pay for iRacing, for example, even though lots of people do? You have options. Besides... what would the motivation and goal be of sim racing competition policy? I can't figure out concrete, defensible reasoning for it.

However, there could mayyyybe be a purpose for antitrust policy preventing anticompetitive behaviour by gaming megacorps like EA or Sony (e.g. predatory exclusivity agreements, mergers of behemoths to gain domineering market power) or consumer or advertising bureaus to punish companies for inappropriate consumer practices (e.g. in-game gambling, predatory microtransactions in games for kids) or misleading advertising. Still would need to review the evidence case-by-case, though! And all that sort of thing would be about megacorps like EA – not comparatively tiny sim racing devs.
 
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Botmeister
Turk said:
Regulation is necessary in a capitalist society because without regulation all that matters is money. Competition creates a race to the bottom as companies cut costs to make more profit, or cut costs just to keep their heads above water as bigger fish cut costs more aggressively.
Click to expand...
Regulation is necessary indeed. One of the fundamental parts of these business models is to take away competition. So eventually small gaming studio's are bought by large studio's (or publishers). And then only the large ones survive resulting in less need for innovation.
I'm not against capitalism because it uses the free market principe. But regulation is much needed to keep markets accessible to newcomers and to prevent monopoly positions.
 
Botmeister
BillyBobSenna said:
I think regulation has a place but not in the sim racing industry. I don’t play iRacing because I don’t think it’s good value for what I like. I have a long list of great inexpensive sims to choose from. Why would I want to change anything?
Click to expand...
Motorsport Games recently bought the rFactor studio 397. MG has not released any decent material yet, but they have 2 assets now:
1) A simracing studio with actual knowledge
2) One less simracing studio to compete with

So it's already happening. And I think the simracing market is very sensitive to take-overs. Most are small studio's, low capital positions, good knowledge, small number of employees. The Ideal mix for a large company to "invest" in.
 
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Richard Wilks
MJQT said:
Despite my comment yesterday, I agree with BillyBob that in the realm of "100% proper sim racing" titles – i.e. AC, ACC, rF, AMS, iRacing – some sort of competition policy-type thing isn't needed. In my opinion, anyhow. It's a niche within a niche made by small companies and consumers have a number of solid choices. Don't wanna pay for iRacing, for example, even though lots of people do? You have options. Besides... what would the motivation and goal be of sim racing competition policy? I can't figure out concrete, defensible reasoning for it.

However, there could mayyyybe be a purpose for antitrust policy preventing anticompetitive behaviour by gaming megacorps like EA or Sony (e.g. predatory exclusivity agreements, mergers of behemoths to gain domineering market power) or consumer or advertising bureaus to punish companies for inappropriate consumer practices (e.g. in-game gambling, predatory microtransactions in games for kids) or misleading advertising. Still would need to review the evidence case-by-case, though! And all that sort of thing would be about megacorps like EA – not comparatively tiny sim racing devs.
Click to expand...
I will argue that simracing does need regulation, but more a wide consumer protection regulation that should be enforced onto the gaming industry as a whole, and would trickle down to the simracing genre. Something that would put an end to these massively buggy launches of supposedly "ready" titles, that will only be "ready" years later, lacking promised features, and using their costumer base as testers during that whole period.

Let's not kid ourselves. ACC was NOT ready for launch, nor was AMS2, Nascar Ignition, etc, and the trend is for this "pay us first, we will go about maybe fixing it later" to actually increase, unless something is done.

Now again, one can say "well don't buy it". And yes, i agree, but still its easy to fool enough people with empty promises and shiny roadmaps that lead to nowhere, while the genre drags on from patch to patch.

When the costumers wake up, more than 5 years have passed, these studios made a living out of vaporware, and then they quietly move along to the next thing (or continue milking the same one), because people are starved for content, in what some keep saying is the "golden age" of the genre...
 
Gevatter
Premium
Richard Wilks said:
Let's not kid ourselves. ACC was NOT ready for launch, nor was AMS2, Nascar Ignition, etc, and the trend is for this "pay us first, we will go about maybe fixing it later" to actually increase, unless something is done.
Click to expand...
So what would you have done? Force them to hold the game back until it's finished? When is it finished? Who determines that, and how? What's the metric? Will the company be able to afford holding the game back? Because if they can't afford it, you won't have a buggy game, you'll have none at all.
 
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Richard Wilks
Gevatter said:
So what would you have done? Force them to hold the game back until it's finished? When is it finished? Who determines that, and how? What's the metric? Will the company be able to afford holding the game back? Because if they can't afford it, you won't have a buggy game, you'll have none at all.
Click to expand...
What happens if you go buy a washing machine, and the thing doesnt work as advertised? You go and ask the company whats up with that, and they tell you that maybe in 6 months they will have the advertised drying function out. Then when it comes out, you find out that it is bugged, and you wait a further 2 months.

Does this sound like something reasonable, or doesnt the law allow you to return the thing at any point for a refund no questions asked, or even for the brand risking being hit with lawsuits, and having a tap on the shoulder from the authorities for basically scamming their clients?

I find amazing that in things that are actually much harder to get right, people are all up in arms, but with this, the studios get a free pass to scam clients as much as they want. Of course, their victim culture and passive agressive threats (oh we are just a poor dev, if you dont help us you dont get any game at all) is much to blame here, but again, thats why most consumer products have laws guiding whats acceptable and whats not.

Sure gaming is an "entertainment" industry, but unlike cinema, you are promised specific things and features, just like a physical product.
 
P
I hear all you guys talking about regulations. Oh boy. Don't worry. The regulations are coming. And they will regulate YOU. A free system is always the best. If you want it. Buy it. Don't want it? Don't buy it. Just look at iRacing. I think it's very predatory. Cars that you buy become legacy. Sure, they're still yours, you just can't hardly use them for anything. You have to buy the newer version. Then each series has staggard tracks schedules. You can run this series, but not that series. And that's this week, but not next week. Want to race regularly? iRacing has arranged it so that you must buy EVERYTHING if you want to race different classes every week. Hate that? Then don't subscribe. Stop asking for regulations. Everyone's best bet is to vote with their wallet. A product lives or dies by the demand for it. Regulations? NO. Certain people in the world love regulations. And they will be the ones to regulate us all.
 

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