Shift 2: Unleashed Dev Attacks Rivals Over "Irrelevant" Cars

Logan Westbrook

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Feb 21, 2008
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Shift 2: Unleashed Dev Attacks Rivals Over "Irrelevant" Cars

You can add hundreds of cars to your game, says Shift 2: Unleashed's lead designer, but people will ignore most of them.


Andy Tudor, Shift 2: Unleashed [http://www.amazon.com/Shift-2-Unleashed-Limited-Xbox-360/dp/B00488PZ1E/ref=sr_1_3?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1291299639&sr=1-3] developer Slightly Mad Studios' lead designer, has joined EA VP Patrick Soderlund [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105558-EA-Calls-Gran-Turismo-5-Sterile] in bashing the competition ahead of the release of their rival racing sim. Tudor attacked Gran Turismo 5 and Forza Motorsports 3, saying they were more like encyclopedias than games, and featured hundreds of "irrelevant cars."

Slightly Mad's focus, he said, was on making the driving experience enjoyable, rather than including every variation of the 1986 Toyota Corolla. He thought that titles like Gran Turismo 5 encouraged people to grind races over and over to earn money to buy a new car, and then to go back and do it again for a new car.

Tudor said that most people didn't tend to collect all the available cars in games like Gran Turismo or Forza. What actually happened, he said, was that most people had between 10-15 cars in their garages, usually made up of the first car they had, a car they have in real life, a dream car, then specific cars for different tiers or licenses and cars they just wanted to try out. For that reason, Slightly Mad wasn't going to include hundreds and hundreds of cars that people would never use. Instead, Shift 2 would have a smaller and more focused selection that covered the various types of car enthusiasm, like American muscle cars or Japanese tuner cars, without going overboard.

EA has an uphill struggle with the Shift series, as its rivals have had much longer to go at it, but while it's refreshing to see a developer being so candid, Tudors comments about his rivals seem like they will do as much to harm Shift 2 as help it. There will be people - and considering we're talking about in-depth simulation games, there's likely to be a lot of them - who like the fact that GT5 and Forza 3 have a huge variety of different cars, and enjoy collecting them. Suggesting that there's something wrong with that probably isn't the best way to win them over.

Shift 2: Unleashed is scheduled for release on Xbox 360, PC, and PS3 in Spring of next year.

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-11-30-nfs-shift-2-we-wont-add-1000-irrelevant-cars-interview?page=1]









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JourneyThroughHell

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Sep 21, 2009
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True that. Keeping a ton of cars managed is hard. Really hard. Still, you know, car enthuisasts enjoy that sort of stuff.

We'll see what garage you have to offer, Slightly Mad.
 

Marter

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Oct 27, 2009
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Logan Westbrook said:
Andy Tudor, Shift 2: Unleashed [http://www.amazon.com/Shift-2-Unleashed-Limited-Xbox-360/dp/B00488PZ1E/ref=sr_1_3?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1291299639&sr=1-3] developer Slightly Mad Studios' lead designer, has joined EA VP Patrick Soderlund [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105558-EA-Calls-Gran-Turismo-5-Sterile] in bashing the competition ahead of the release of their rival racing sim. Tudor attacked Gran Tursimp 5 and Forza Motorsports 3, saying they were more like encyclopedias than games, and featured hundreds of "irrelevant cars."

Slightly Mad's focus, he said, was on making the driving experience enjoyable, rather than including every variation of the 1986 Toyota Corolla. He thought that titles like Gran Turismo 5 encouraged people to grind races over and over to earn money to buy a new car, and then to go back and do it again for a new car.
Proofreading? Just sayin'. :p

OT: The only thing that attracts me to games like GTA5 is the fact that there are a lot of cars to choose from. I'm not a fan of racing games to begin with, so that is what needs to keep my interest. Looks like it'll be that much easier to ignore Shift 2.
 

Rusty Bucket

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I have to agree here. GT5 has a Toyota Prius in it. Yeah, that environmentally friendly hybrid car. What's worse, th Prius is a 'premium' car which means it's got a cockpit view and they spent months making certain every fine detail is absolutely perfect. Fucking Prius. The Buggati Veyron, however, is just a standard car, no cockpit view, lower res model, just generally worse. That makes no sense, no matter what way you look at it.
 

Feystar

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Hmm, well I hated the first Need for Speed: Shift and love having mountains of cars in Forza 2, Forza 3 and Gran Turismo's 1 - 5, including prologue versions and GT PSP. So I'm guessing I'm not in their target demographic then.

Frankly if their best tactic is to try and insult other games I think they need new P.R. and Marketing staff.
 

unacomn

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One of the reasons I loved NFS5 was because it had a ton of cars, even though they were all Porsche. It felt like an encyclopedia, a history lesson in living, interactive color. One that also had excellent gameplay. It also had a proper game structure, unlike Shift.
 

Celtic_Kerr

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This reminds me a bit fo games like Split/Second, where you can't tune your cars, so once you havea car that very obviously outmatches the others, you'll never use them again. In a decent sized roster, you end up using 6 cars
 

Scops

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Feystar said:
Frankly if their best tactic is to try and insult other games I think they need new P.R. and Marketing staff.
I wonder if this is the same PR/Marketing staff that decided to put an unskippable ad in NFS: Hot Pursuit. I completely ignored Shift 1 because it didn't have any evasion/pursuit elements to it (I am an unrepentant arcade racer fan. To heck with sims) Thanks to that ad, I think I will be actively avoiding Shift 2.
 

Something Amyss

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JourneyThroughHell said:
True that. Keeping a ton of cars managed is hard. Really hard. Still, you know, car enthuisasts enjoy that sort of stuff.

We'll see what garage you have to offer, Slightly Mad.
And people do like variety to some extent, so it's not JUST car enthusiasts. Though for GT, it probably is. ;)

dogstile said:
Gran Tursimp 5?

Think you may have a spelling mistake there sir :p
Yeah, I can't believe they got Gran Turnip wrong.
 

Outlaw Torn

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RhombusHatesYou said:
dogstile said:
Gran Tursimp 5?

Think you may have a spelling mistake there sir :p
What are you talking about? The Gran Turnip franchise is the very best in vegetable simulation on the market.
It has over 1000 varieties of real world, fully rendered turnips.
 
Oct 18, 2008
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Logan Westbrook said:
EA has an uphill struggle with the Shift series, as its rivals have had much longer to go at it, but while it's refreshing to see a developer being so candid, Tudors comments about his rivals seem like they will do as much to harm Shift 2 as help it. There will be people - and considering we're talking about in-depth simulation games, there's likely to be a lot of them - who like the fact that GT5 and Forza 3 have a huge variety of different cars, and enjoy collecting them. Suggesting that there's something wrong with that probably isn't the best way to win them over.
Logan nailed it right here, I was considering picking up Shift and Shift 2, but after this, I am not, and neither are any of my friends, who all have Forza 2 and 3. We probably will be picking up Hot Pursuit because Criterion doesn't seem to want to alienate their customers.
 

Unrulyhandbag

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Oct 21, 2009
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Shift2? what happened to the NFS part of the name?

Still shift is the only arcadey racing game that managed to hold my attention in years barring GT so I'm not going to knock them, I hope that shift2 does well.

That said I loved racing my road version MX5, vx220, and 350Z in GT4 so to say they weren't worth having is simply untrue. We all love hammering race cars around a track but starting with an everyday car you might own yourself is a pleasure unto itself.

When I get GT5 I fully intend to drive the in game counterparts of my own Vauxhall VX220 and the wife's Prius.