Gran Turismo 7’s successful launch hasn’t exactly been without its fair share of issues, most of which has stemmed from the game’s monetization, and how its player base has reacted to it. When the game’s in-game online shop went live, it listed prices for vehicles significantly higher than what’s still found in Gran Turismo Sport on the PS4, while recently, an update also lowered the in-game currency rewards given out for several races, further slowing down the progression and pushing players to spend real money.
There’s been plenty of deserving criticism for the game’s monetization over the last few days, and finally, its developers have addressed the issue in an official capacity. In a recently published update, director and Polyphony Digital boss Kazunori Yamauchi responded to microtransaction-related concerns.
After explaining that the pricing of cars in the game reflects their real world prices and that the developer lowered event reward payouts to encourage players to not keep replaying the same races, he went on to say that though the developer has plans for upcoming tweaks, additions, and changes to respond to players, feedback, right now, no details can be revealed- so, you know, sit tight.
“In GT7 I would like to have users enjoy lots of cars and races even without microtransactions,” Yamauchi wrote. “At the same time the pricing of cars is an important element that conveys their value and rarity, so I do think it’s important for it to be linked with the real world prices. I want to make GT7 a game in which you can enjoy a variety of cars lots of different ways, and if possible would like to try to avoid a situation where a player must mechanically keep replaying certain events over and over again.”
“We will in time let you know the update plans for additional content, additional race events and additional features that will constructively resolve this,” he continued. “It pains me that I can’t explain the details regarding this at this moment, but we plan on continuing to revise GT7 so that as many players as possible can enjoy the game. We would really appreciate it if everyone could watch over the growth of Gran Turismo 7 from a somewhat longer term point of view.”
Recently, Polyphony Digital discovered an issue in the game that forced them to shut down servers. After remaining offline and unplayable for over 24 hours, Gran Turismo 7 has now brought its servers back online.
