I think the factor of faster tumbling game prices, hardcore gamers who buy a lot of games having more and more on their backlog really makes review scores much less relevant. Probably double so if the game isn't polished at release and actually might become better over time.
So, - and I didn't see that coming either - coming out first with high review scores but a buggy game probably hurt their overall profit because of the lower day1 sales. Had thy gotten rid of at least the bugs everyone experiences like the "simulate rest of qualifying" ai times thing, the setup and HUD saving (it's definitely on PC too for me), gotten the LOD for shadow flickering fine tuned etc., then an early December release after quite a few people probably were not all that happy GTS's online for example might have served SMS better sales wise. They are also double-known for delivering really buggy games.
Also everyone talks about the bugs online and much less about the few amazing experiences that they couldn't have had in any other racing game.
@Danowat, I absolutely believe you that the bugs are much worse on console, especially some menu stuff and the crashes seem much worse than on PC, but it's definitely really buggy on PC too.
- the HUD doesn't save the different HUDs right when you tab through them
- the HUD forgets the delta bar setting (I want "best", most of the time i get "potential" and have to button through it and I don't have enough buttons on my wheel to keep that assigned all the time)
- the time it takes to save a setup is very inconsistent, sometimes it's half a second, sometimes it's 6 seconds (I'm on a fast 1GB SSD with really nice read and access times).
- the minimum shift times make H-Pattern shifting the older cars impossible (or at least so annoying, I just have to steer clear of that)
- the default setup for some cars has slick tires instead of "weather dependent"
- the tires of some cars are impossible to get to temperature, some won't go over 50C(/120F) even if you drive them really hard on a sunny day, even with setup changes, I couldn't get over 62C, which is too cold for a racing slick.
- some bright LCD dash screens are almost unreadable at night because of a bad exposure setting
- On "authentic" assists, I can't turn on/off an assist with the assigned button, it says "ABS N/A", even though the car has ABS and it's already on (worked in pCARS1)
- some curbs count as within track limits, others don't... the ones you know from F1 that are "everyone goes really wide there, it's fine" are most "50% car off" => invalid lap time ...for me so far at least
Do I regret buying it? Honestly? Not one bit. And I even bought deluxe with season pass.
The FFB feels actually better than I hoped it would and Live Track 3.0 looks awesome, I really like the diversity of the car roster and the AI is ok for doing just races without qualifying, after a formation lap without first corner carnage, they are much better at having a race with them than in pCARS1. That's what I want to do anyway, not keen on the pCARS-type of career at all. Mostly I want to do quick 10-20 minute races and practice different car/track/condition combos. Worth the price for me.
The constant crashes on PS4 would make me see that in a different though too. Shame.
I think that, pretty quick sharp, they need to come up with an official list of issues, and a critical path showing the order in which they'll be fixed.
If that list is really really long and comprehensive and they got their priorities straight, maybe give an educated guess outline, that could really help their sales for the rest of this year, I think.