When you find yourself facing the wrong direction in a racing game, you might see the U-turn prompt on screen. It seems Sony is taking its own advice with the troubled Gran Turismo 7 launch.
The company is responding to the criticism of the price of cars within the game – which are difficult to come by through the in-game credits without spending real money – and is switching course in an effort to get back on track.
A forthcoming update will give gamers a million free credits in the short term, while a forthcoming update in April will increase rewards for some races. That will make it easier to earn credits to buy the cars through tearing it up on the track, not by tearing up the contents of their wallets.
Later on, developer Polyphony Digital will also enable gamers to sell the cars they’ve purchased for additional credits, something players have been requesting in recent weeks.
The company’s president Kazunori Yamauchi apologised to gamers over the recent patch that caused much of the criticism over the last couple of weeks.
In a post on the PlayStation blog, he wrote: “Thank you for your continued support and feedback on Gran Turismo 7, your voices have not gone unheard. I would like to apologise for the frustration and confusion caused last week with our patch updates which resulted in, not only a server outage but also adjustments to the in-game economy which were made without a clear explanation to our community.”
He explained that the initial change was designed to fix a bug that saw World Circuit Events pay out too many credits, but says that “to re-establish the intended equilibrium and provide more accurate rewards based on time investment and completion, it was necessary to recalculate the rewards system as a whole.”
The updates planned in April are as follows:
- Increase rewards in the events in the latter half of the World Circuits by approximately 100% on average.
- Addition of high rewards for clearing the Circuit Experience in all Gold/All Bronze results.
- Increase of rewards in Online Races.
- Include a total of eight new one-hour Endurance Race events to Missions. These will also have higher reward settings.
- Increase the upper limit of non-paid credits in player wallets from 20M Cr. to 100M Cr.
- Increase the quantity of Used and Legend cars on offer at any given time.
The rest is planned for the “near-term”:
- Increase the payout value of limited time rewards as we develop as a live service.
- Further World Circuit event additions.
- Addition of Endurance Races to Missions including 24-hour races.
- Addition of Online Time Trials and awarding of rewards according to the player’s difference with the top ranked time.
- Make it so cars can be sold.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.