Finally! I hope its GTR, but a RACE is fine too. I always prefered the PC sims to the quasi-simulators we get on consoles. Im glad they don't work with the losers on THQ anymore. You don't want to be associated with a publisher that came up with Juiced and Stuntman.

Anyhow, terrific news. Something tells me it wont be as hardcore as GTR 2, but whatever they end up will still have more realism in its little finger than all of the console racers combined.

zlimness

Great news! Most racing games are rubbish, but I'vev heard nothing but good things about GTR!

Forza is the best of a bad bunch. Great tracks, handling, physics, options but boring career system.

IronsUK

This was going to happen several years ago, never ended up being for one reason or another.

If you want to check out PC racers apart from GTR, then RFactor is a good bet.

bondiinsider

GTR ftw.

fusilero

GTR is the best Racesimulation

FryDay

This is good news, as this is a game I would have never ever played if it remained in PC only form.

Zuiyo

I'd be happy for a new GTR designed for the 360. People who call Gran Turismo or Forza a hardcore racing sim need to play GTR, and that's exactly why I love it. The only thing that held me back from loving it on the PC is the lack of a good wheel. For some reason it didn't feel like working with my PS2 Logitech wheel, so it was extra difficult to control. Throw this on the 360, make good compatability with the Microsoft wheel that's been sitting in my closet since I got tired of Forza and I'll be extatic.

Nobuyuki

@Archaotic: GTR was kind of like the PC mascot driving simulation game.

Playstation: Gran Turismo
Xbox 360: Forza
PC: GTR

I can't imagine this will make many diehard PC fanboys happy though, they'd often insist GTR was the best racing game ever. However, it did tend to receive very good reviews ([www.metacritic.com]) so it'll be interesting to see how the next iteration ends up, though admittedly I'm not really into racing games.

Nirolak

Oh boy another racing game I'll never play!

Tietsu

Wouldn't be surprised

Trailnutz

GTR? Never heard of it. So...uh...interesting news, I suppose!

Archaotic

I don't know about everyone else, but I've certainly had my fill of racing games. Is there anything left to do with them but update the same old stuff?

MikoKeZ

Good luck doing 112 cars on the 360 version. Or user created vehicles. Or full weather effects. Sadly as this game makes many pc's with less than an 8800 cry then bleed to death with only 40 cars and medium detail. The 360 verison is more than bound to be gimped

NessD12

@NessD12:
I don't get your meaning on the 112 cars/40 cars stuff - does GTR let you have 112 or 40 cars in a single race? If so...whoa. If not, I don't get why it would in any way prove difficult for the 360 to handle - Forza has like 300 odd. And while no, of course it couldn't handle user created vehicles (other than in a tweaking settings and creating paint jobs way), I doubt thats really SO crucial to the game that a port/360 release would be unplayable "gimped".

reno84

@NessD12: thats going to blow considering how the community for GTR2 recreates race seasons all the time. hopefully the bring together some of the best of them.

they might want to bundle it with a wheel too.

i can't wait to here the console crowd bawwing over how sim this game is.

andrewmedina

@reno84: the problem is GTR is a simulation, hell they even have calculations for fuel in the cars tank relating to its amount and movement in transit.

It doesn't run on PC's all that well even now (it's quite an old game as it stands) so the idea that they will be able to get it optimised to run on console hardware without also removing or tweaking features is a little hard to swallow, if not impossible.

Furthermore I believe the guys who worked on the original GTR no longer work at Simbin?

Cigol

rfactor says hi

warxsnake

This game will be awesome on the 360. Seeing that Forza 2's engine makes thousands of calculations per second...the system will have no problem. Everything from tire friction points, tire flex, tire pressure, component temperatures, etc...etc..is calculated in real time in Forza 2.

There will be no problem bringing the wonderful GTR series to the 360.

woohoo

Shandy706

Didn't they have a GTR planned for 360 for a long time and then canned it? No matter, I don't really care.

Now, GTR:Evolution, that's what I can't wait for.

solar_tf

@zoompooky:
Because it's a super shit wheel. It's like one of the worst wheels I've ever gotten my hands on. There are countless wheels that are superior in every way.

Demaar

@Cigol: doesn't run that well?

I race with GTR 2 on my laptop, with no HINT of slowdown of any sort. I don't get how you can say there are performance issues with GTR 2. Race 07, and rFactor also work fine.

I have a "preview" code sitting here for iRacing--that online game from the old Papy devs. Haven't signed up for it yet however. But I don't have any issues with requirements for that either, just waiting to see how it works out before I plunk down money to play it by the month.

homerj

YAY! Now we just need a 360 racing wheel with a clutch and a real h-gate to play with. (Ex: Logitech G25 on PC GTR)

Matt B

GTR almost had me, I thought it was Gran Turismo...with a r...

Anyway, whatever Microsoft is planning, I don't think it's going to be good to the players because of all these videogame companies are coming from PC rather than other normal companies, but let's see how good this is

ultimate920

@Nobuyuki: Why don't you use your 360 wheel on the PC?

zoompooky

Well, GTR is a step above GT and Forza, imo. If 360 gets a GTR game, and it's done right, the fact that Sony has GT won't matter much. This is the king of the hill on PC, and all racers IMO, so it doesn't surprise me that another quality PC developer gets sucked up by MS. I myself wouldn't mind playing it on the ol' 50" hdtv and onkyo sound system though.

dozerking

@homerj: hey it runs perfect for me as well - particularly good in the rain with its (patched in) dynamic weather - I'm just generalising on forum discussions which suggest we are in the minority, or at least we used to be, my point was that even today it pushes PC's on the highest settings & resolution.

@Shandy706: FORZA was designed for the XBOX, there's a difference as all decisions were based on getting it running on that particular system. That's not the case with GTR.

Cigol

More PC games coming to the 360 ... shocking!

EnigmaNemesis

@Demaar: I wouldn't know, I've never used the MS 360 Wheel. The reason I mentioned it is because Nobuyuki already has the 360 wheel and seems to like it, from his comments.

zoompooky

GTR on the 360 will sell like crap because console gamers don't want real simulations, they want stuff that looks real but plays like an arcade game.

And don't even TRY to tell me that Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport are simulations. Compared to GTR, they might as well be the Need for Speed series. GTR is realistic, hard, adult-level stuff.

It's all well and good that they try to expand their audience, but the game will not sell well on consoles. And like others have said, it will be extremely gimped. Consoles just don't have the flexibility of PC's.

mva5580

The problem with GTR for the 360 are several things. Its a serious simulation, and wouldn't be much fun with a controller (which will be the primary form on control for most players), it looks VERY dated compared to the contemporary console racers, and the game really makes no attempts at being fun or strike a gameplay balance like Forza or GT (its as fun as MS Flight Simulator X) and I'm not sure who its being targeted to that isn't already playing this on the PC. Also, the greatest strength of the GTR on the PC is the huge amount of mods that are available (ie the F1 mods),the Xbox Live doesn't have the best history with PC mods.

Scaramanga

GTR is the ONLY true racing game.

Chosen1

GTR 360 just needs updated lighting model and some HDR and it will look just a good as GRID. I was playing around with settings and I disabled HDR in both GRID and DIRT and they look like the SimBin games/X Rally. I also did this on Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and it looks exactly like the PSP version without any HDR lighting or shaders. So if they can implement the graphical goodies it will look pretty good. Don't care if it looks as good as Gran Turismo, becuase the sim model blows it out of the water anyhoot.

sovietspartan

GTR is excellent, this is good news for all.

TearsandScreams

Heh... MikoKeZ and Tietzu seem to have clicked on this story by accident. :P

Leathersoup

@homerj: I highly recommend using that invite code for iRacing. I managed to finagle one a few days ago and it is absolutely glorious. GTR2 and rFactor (especially the Power & Glory and the new HistorX mods) are fantastic, to be sure, but iRacing is the next major evolution of the genre. The physics are just astoundingly great, and the recreations of real life tracks are leaps and bounds beyond anything I've seen up to this point. Still missing things like day->night->day kinda things, and no weather changes yet, but what they do have so far is well worth the price of admission.

It's the only game so far I can think of where I've been happy running an underpowered Solstice over and over again and not even been worried about the fact that I can't race any other cars yet. For once I haven't just been itching to get into a new car, though I am looking forward to getting into that Skip Barber car. It's also the first game where everything I've learned from actual driving and from the Skip Barber "Going Faster" book really do apply. Hell, it's the first one where I can actually save a pretty lurid slide by winding out my counter-steer as soon as the "pause" shows up.

It is good, good stuff.

Swervo

iRacing == 'Papyrus' ??? interested!

...checking RSCNET it still looks like it's early in development but I dig the approach. What's the community and competition aspects like? Is it like having a profile and entering competitions or just a glorified server chain?

Cigol

Also, the ps3 will always be the console of choice for sim racing games, not because of the software but because of the input hardware. Even the 60$ MOMO racing wheel is worlds better then that crap wheel MS is selling. I'm not even going to mention the G25 ... Common MS support some 3rd party wheels and then maybe, i might just pick up an xbox come froza 3.

220

Awesome!! I can't wait;)

Acute Gamer

This game is based on the aging ISI engine, so don't expect anything revolutionary in terms of graphics and physics. I alot of people here are mistakenly thinking that GTR is the top dog of pc sims. Currently, it's iRacing holding that trophy with Live for Speed coming in second.

220

@Cigol: It's out beta and into the release candidate phase, they've started inviting folks who are signed up for the mailing list and people who got invites from the beta testers.

The community aspect is basically what you'd expect. You've got your own profile (where you design your helmet, racing suit, and paint your car) that keeps track of all the races, practice sessions, and qualifying sessions you've run (it does not keep track of test sessions). Anyone can look up anyone else's profile and see everything they've been doing. It keeps track of your start position, end position, position-by-lap chart, average lap time, fastest lap, number of incidents, etc.

Incidents, btw, are the biggest thing in it. You get 1 point for going off track, 2 points for losing control completely, 3 for hitting a barrier, and 4 for heavy contact with another car. The points are "no-fault", so if someone comes plowing into you, you get 4 points for it. Since it's the same for everyone, however, people who drive more consistently will end up with fewer incident points than others, and you don't get penalized particularly badly for a few incidents. All of those points go towards your "safety rating", which is what defines what license you have and which series you can compete in. After that, there's your "iRating" which is how fast you go, and it uses that to try to match you up against similarly capable drivers in your series.

At any given time there are multiple series running, and you can join as many as you like as long as your safety rating qualifies you for them. You can run as many races in a race week as you want, it then averages your point results for those races for your final week tally. Then your top 8 of 12 weeks are used to determine your total points for the entire series.

It's not as much a community as something like MySpace or Facebook, but moreso than most of the racing communities so far. You can keep a list of friends that you keep track of, and a list of drivers you want to "study". Unfortunately, no replay downloads right now, apparently replays take up multiple gigs of disk space right now, so they're working on compressing them.

And yes - the Papyrus influence is very much there, the interfaces are a lot like NR2003's, same buttons do the same things (the old shift-R), it feels a lot like coming home to the new GPL.

Swervo

GTR > Gran Turismo

mx5

It's a shame it'll be wasted on the 360 since there's no good steering wheels to play it with.

Reiji

I love racing games, and have played most on the PS2/xbox/360, and welcome any more. Forza was legendary, but dull, because it was a sim first, a game second. Its a far far better sim than the GT series, but suffered because it wasn't much "fun", and looks pretty average (especially compared to GT5P).

GTR2 (advertised ages ago on 360) sounded very much the same, if not more hardcore. Unfortunately the majority of next gen gamers think about graphics first, fun second, simulation third. As such im not sure GTR will be a console success, in exactly the same way Forza2 was a technical masterpiece, but a sales loser.

Mr_Ed

As several people have stated, GTR was announced for the 360 a long time ago. There was a trailer up on marketplace and everything, I think I still have it. Good to see the project has been revived.

Asaron

@Swervo: thanks for the synopsis, sounds like my cup of tea so I've signed up for the mailing list and I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Cigol

I seem to remember EGM having an article about this a few months back. Consider my interest piqued!

Nitsuj82

This is the wrong time to make a racing game, IMHO.With big hits like GT5, PGR4 and Grid, It will have to do something new to shine...

TheTitan0