I understand a game needs to sell enough, but I don't know if I want all these extra (casual) gamers online in a game like this.. It's hard enough finding a decent game where people race seriously and not ram you of the track in the 1st few corners (yes I know you can turn of collisions, but that's lame imho).. In the end it won't matter though, it just takes time, then most of the casuals will move on to the next 'hot' game for them, and the real racingfans will remain (same with FM2 where I find it easier to find lobbies with good serious racers now then in the beginning when the game was still relative new)..

Heads will roll in the form of Turn 10 receiving an instant greenlight for Forza 4 with just as big a budget. We should all know that to be a fact.

Yes but lets not forget the difference in install base. 4 million copies (FM2) across 30 million 360s is better than 10 million (GT4) across 140 million PS2s.

but the saturation point is there to be considered too, not 140 mill userbase is racing/sim fan, it consists of all sorts of folks from around the world. its the GT franchise that has truly shown the number of racing/sim fans that exist at one time in the entire world and not any other such game. PS2 has the biggest demographic in terms of games, that serves all sorts of users, from rpg fans to action/adventure to sim to RTS.

And yeah GT is the most famous and appreciated franchise too for when PS2 was like 20 mill worldwide, GT3: A-spec sold over 10 mill even then, without question. That 10 mill mark is maintained as always.

GT4: Prologue was sold 1.4 mill while the final game GT4 sold yet again: 10 mill

GT5: Prologue has sold 3.6 mill(outselling even GT4 Prologue 1 to 2.5) even with a 40$ price point...a game demo with such a high price, and even then it outsold 2 PGRs combined, and nearly the Forza 2 full game AWESOME!!! So, its your wild guess how much GT5 is gonna do when its released as a full game with a PS3 userbase less than 360 got it? ;)

GT is as console defining to the PS as Halo is to the Xbox. Prologue is no indicator of how the finished product will sell, and I don't expect it to sell more than 10 million like many think it will.

Besides I can't think of a single reason why we need to discuss sales of FM... or even better, sales of GT here. MS can't afford to drop the ball with FM, even if it sold shit, they'd still pump up money since it's the only real competition to GT.

Who cares how much each game sells exactly.. I'm sure FM3 will sell enough to make MS a profit..

And GT sells well because of it's name.. It was the only serious racinggame to get on the consolemarket (which was totally dominated by the PS for years).. Times have changed though..

Lighting and shading in the new screens look great, much better than the LCE batch which I thought looked really average.







d/l all 30 screens here: http://edelmanadmin.psni.com/public/Forza%20Motors...

vspectra, i thought the last batch was poor aswell, deleted a comment on them cause it was becoming overly harsh, but it certainly made the game look more akin for F2 than anything. These new shots are stunning.

Yeah these new screens look amazing, the best and most realistic looking screenshots so far. Its definately from a new build as there are lots of little improvements. The texture resolution in mind blowing!

I tested Forza 3 in MS Russia some days ago and it was fantastic! I wrote the preview on my portal http://www.gamemag.ru/news/42092/

F2 turned out to be somewhat sub standard compared to GT though, it was like pulling teeth for novice racers, inaccesable after a while, looked less graphically impressive than its rivals and lacked a huge range of features that its competitors enjoyed.
F3 is really where they needed to be with the last game, and unfortunately it has taken longer to catch up visually and usability with what was essentially a demo. It still lacks a huge range of features that PD are touting for GT5....but we know they have a habit of lying there too. Im still wary of how easy it will be to unlock/purchase everything though, if its the same as the last game im not even gonna touch it.

That said it is great having these 2 franchises go at each other, regardless of the costs incurred. Not having a first party racer of this calibre would be suicide for any console maker, it is a way of defining or proving that you can do just as well, if not better than the opposing manufacturer, and to lack a racer of this standard would just hurt the entire MS brand so much, the xbox would be a much less appealing console and a huge stream of revenue would be lost just from people interrested in the racing genre(they come for forza...they stay for gears and halo).
Plus they both drive each other on, GT had become incredibly stale and hadn't really evolved from GT1 - GT4 except visually, now theyre pushing so much further in every direction just to 1-up forza and vice versa. Im sure turn 10 would have been happy to reuse the same engine and models had it not been for the fact that GT5:P looks so incredible compared to F2.

Che says there are 240 more of these.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/100/1008721p1.html

Forza 3 career mode :)

New screens too.

Love this screen, the game loooks amazing!!

JAWWWW DROOOPPPPPEDDD

OMG

Sorry, but you may have some seriouse loss of reality. Forza 2 is a full game with lots of cars, career mode, massiv online integration (mp, auction house, forza tv), ability to customize your cars (+ custom paints), very good physics (even better than GT5) + lots of DLC. GT5P is a demo that provides nowhere near that feature set like Forza 2. So, then please look at the release dates: Forza 2 was released in May/June 2007 for usa/europe, GT5P was released a year later for usa/europe. Forza 3 will continue to raise the bar for physics/simulation and community features.

I said visually and usability, not feature wise. I know F2 had a lot of features in there...if you had the patience to fight the game to unlock them. Grinding out cash was the most painful thing in the damn game, there was nothing in there that paid well with little / reasonable effort that allowed someone like myself to progress. Not unless I wanted to turn dmg etc off, and then it would penalise me further by not paying as much per race, or use an AI driver and it wouldnt pay me at all. Think i have something like 40 achievement points from F2 after about 10 hours of play, that is just so offputting, I had basically got nowhere after putting so much effort in.
F2 was my first forza, i had loved GT1-4, they were wholly accessable to me, i could throw it in the console, do a couple of laps and end up with a chunk of cash, it was satisfying, then in the endurance racing i could let the AI do it and still end up with cash at the end, why not, it still eats up a huge amount of time just running the damn machine. Then into Forza and I couldnt just do a couple of laps and end up with a chunk of cash, a couple of laps would give me nothing, especially when damage was such a danger, 1 screw up at the end of a 8 lap race and i felt like lobbing the console out the window.

Thats why i hope F3 is a little more accessable for the much less enthusiastic driver, not that im bad at it, its just i dont have the patience and devotion to do dozens of laps in one sitting. I like my racing in much smaller chunks, but i still like my racing.

Incredible....

This has to be the most realistic looking photo i've seen in any racing game (excuse the awful compression), the new lighting system is perfect!



I'm genuinely amazed at how real this looks!!

The game does look pretty damn amazing.

Im just glad they realised that the lighting was the one thing that was letting them down. Im still not 100% on it, need to see all the tracks with the new model, but from what we've seen it is a huge improvement.

Apparently the cockpit view adjusts as you do things like speed up or brake.

That's pretty cool I think.