As I said many times before - cars have become a new tracks.
Cars are what sells DLC to mainstream audience, cars are recognisable in the mainstream, easy to promote and probably financially viable to developers in terms of cross-promotion revenues. Tracks are.. tracks. Mainstream audience does not care for tracks.
This is automotive genre, not architectural one. General public buys games for cars, they do not care about the tracks. They stop playing 2 months after release and they are perfectly happy with 20 tracks per game.
We are really living in the sad times for racing-genre, where having new Lamborghini, Ferrari or Whatever become more important than having tracks.
Cars have become the new tracks, cars are objects that sells DLC, what turns people heads and brings weight to discussion which game is "better".
We finally have everything we only dreamt of genre a decade ago technically-wise, but in the same time we suffered so much regarding tracks that it is becoming sad.
Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch'intrate.
Same here, if reports are true, I do not have high hopes for anything before GT6.
Prior to release of GT5 there were reports in German media about Hockenheim being done by PD and ready for GT5. More than one year later, no word about anything regarding Hockehneim. Same goes for the notorious RedBull leak regarding Pikes Peak which was taken down immediately after going mainstream.
They are probably doing lots of things at this point, but I sincerely think that after everything what happened with GT5 they went even more *private* with everything. Criticism that GT5 suffered because Sony was so eager to force PD to release the game in the state as it was in late 2010 was something that probably gave them all credit in the world to do their things their way from there on.
They pay for licenses, that is not the issue, Kazunori confirmed that in few occasions.
As for Ferrari, it is probably a matter of allowing the license to be non-exclusive from various standpoints important to Ferrari as company.
But as for Porsche, I think it is different story. Personally I think how they have some old-old agreement with EA, back from the days where things that matter today ("Cars are new tracks") weren't really so important - and EA is taking advantage of the situation.
Also, the current events regarding Porsche cars being finally included in Forza in big-style with fireworks is rising my eyebrow. It is a very, very interesting development where you first have a situation where one of the most popular brands is left out from initial rooster (
although allegedly included on the retail disc of the game, as some are reporting) with
vague reasoning and public stunts
on the verge of resignation.
Exactly 6 months later - in the same moment where actual license-holder for that brand does not have any new game in the genre in development and when actual promotional DLC-beneficial period for the initial-purchasers of the other game is expiring - the agreement is surprisingly settled.
PR machines in full-effect, everybody is happy and friends, money is not an issue (I will buy the Porsche pack too, to be clear and honest) and you can already feel the weight of the revenue sitting on your account. But having said that, I smell some conspiracy agreed in order to secure extra-funding after the initial release-window, but hey - that is just me.
If only we got SSR11 
