Gran Turismo 6 Launches to Low Sales
Gran Turismo 6 Launches to Low Sales
Gran Turismo 6 was released a week ago and, somewhat surprisingly, the newest edition of the massively-popular franchise has generated somewhat disappoint sales numbers.
In the past, Gran Turismo releases where among the biggest things to happen in the world of virtual driving as GT is/was considered to be the de-facto king of the genre, despite being confined to one single platform.
All in all, Gran Turismo has sold more than 60 million copies accross three generations of Playstation hardware with Gran Turismo 3 marking the franchises heyday at 14 million copies sold.
It looks like Gran Turismo 6 has a long way ahead to get to those numbers as first sales numbers suggest the title is only selling 1/5 of what Gran Turismo 5 has sold during its launch period.
As Eurogamer reports, GT6 only ended up being the 8th most selling title in the UK, despite being the only major release that week. While the numbers are a bit distorted by the fact that digital sales via Playstation Network aren’t being accounted for, it is pretty safe to assume that the new title is pretty far off the numbers generated by its predecessors.
The low interest in GT6 could be due to various reasons. In hindsight, the decision to release the title for the aging Playstation 3 platform may have hurt sales as the Playstation 4 launch has generated a lot of hype for new platform. Other factors may be the long-running shortcomings of the GT series, especially the title’s subpar audio experience.
Another theory is that time is just catching up with the Gran Turismo franchise. After all, Gran Turismo still follows the core gameplay concept that was first introduced in the mid-90s, a concept that is based on doing random races to earn money and collect cars. While this gameplay experience has helped Gran Turismo to become a dominant force in the world of virtual racing, many players seem to be growing tired of the trusted routines.
It will be exciting to see if GT6′s numbers rebound during the next few months and if not, which consequences Polyphony Digital will draw from this. The plans of having a GT title for the Playstation 4 ready wihtin 2014 might indicate that the studio is working on leaving the trusted PS3 platform behind rather sooner than later.