As SMS team manager Pete Morrish indicated to Andreas Nie: pC was never intended to be a full-blown simulator, at least as far as the physical driving experience is concerned. This should be no surprise.
When I look at the "roots" of each racing game, I find a distinctive link between the game developers' attitudes and their final products. With Kunos, we see a very "niche" kind of team, small, low budget until recently, clean cut, professional in the traditional sense. It does not surprise me that their aim is to provide a technically advanced simulator as a training tool and instructive game about what performance driving is like behind the wheel. With SMS, I see a large group of game fanatics, the gamers we all know/knew who stayed up all night to master that one level of WWC or Assassin's Creed. Everything is big, bold, they are funny, light-hearted, and charismatic in a different way. It also follows that their game is a PC-based Gran Turismo-like experience. It makes sense that they've focused on graphical realism, are multi-platform based, and push the future of technology. They are not about providing an accurate racing game, but a FUTURE racing game. Simulation is a kind of sport: the studios and groups are small, close-knit.
There is a reason why NFS chose SMS to model their Shift series, because like NFS, SMS is not sold out for one thing, i.e., accurate driving simulation. They realize that is a very small market, and they have bigger aims. Most people are only interested in casual driving, and to these players, pC will seem like AC does to a full-blown sim racer. Most people who drive virtually play other game genres; sim racers are unique in that they tend to prefer one or two game genres. Most of my many steam friends on AC don't play many games besides AC...that speaks volumes! The pC friends...racing one minute, then back to Call of Duty. SMS is very smart, and know that the way to increase the driving genre is to market a slightly (no pun intended) more serious title to get those who aren't already driving to be more serious about it. SMS' latest title is like a gateway experience that leads to games like rFactor, AC, and iRacing. That is a role that few games have properly filled until pC.
, because typically these types of threads can get pretty heated as gamers tend to have deep rooted allegiances to their chosen game.
