CVG sat down with producer Ahmed Boukhelifa to learn more about what inspired Test Drive Unlimited, its comprehensive approach to persistent online racing, why there's still plenty of single-player content to get your teeth into and where it sits amongst the Test Drive series' illustrious heritage.
Test Drive Unlimited Dev Hits Back, "It's not representative at all"
I wonder how much Horizon 5 impacted that since thier are very few aracde racing games on the ps5 and While I loved Unlimted 1 and 2 solar crown has been a dumpster fire for me.
Very few arcade racing games? So Xbox has how many more? 1? Wait Forza is on PS so the same amount. Also it’s there, not thier, which is actually their.
I don't understand this comment. No body is talking about Forza at all and even if Forza were to outsell this game how would that change the story (Steam concurrents compard vs PS5 community size)? Its like Tourette Syndrome for Xbox fanboys.
I mentioned this SO much, people who put more weight on steam concurrent players but ignore consoles is weird. Or using steam drop offs as if no one’s playing something on multiple systems and has cross play. It’s just not the best metric for the complete story
And every time someone makes this argument, I'll always go back to the response: we can only use the data available to us. It's the same with the weekly UK physical game sales charts. Do we know they aren't perfect/complete? Yes. But should we ignore the available data just because we don't have all possible data? No. And that's particularly true when we aren't going to get the rest of the data because the other platforms are hiding it.
You say people focus on Steam but "ignore" consoles, but that implies that the console player data is available, which it isn't. Usually when people say this, what they actually mean is that think people should assume, based on no evidence, that a game they happen to like is performing radically differently/better on PS5/Xbox than it is on Steam. I'm willing to entertain that theory if the dev provides sales numbers, or even if you can make a colorable case that a specific game's primary audience is historically tied to console rather than PC. But I'm not just going to randomly assume that a game that bombed on Steam has a huge PS5 and Epic Game Store audience just because fans of that game wish that it had sold better.
@JEECE, you make of the data what you wish to, but big giant gaps in the information available to you should limit what conclusions you draw from it.
@derek
Yeah, I mean I'm never going to try to estimate exact lifetime sales based solely on launch weekend Steam concurrents. But I will use the information I have to make educated estimates. Like if a game completely underperforms similar titles in terms of its Steam numbers, I'm going to assume it is underperforming on console too, unless there is some rational reason not to (i.e. game launched on GP, the game is from a series that is closely associated with PlayStation and doesn't have a strong history on PC, or the PC port is widely known to be buggy ahead of of launch, etc.).
@Nacogi
I guess you are trying to contradict me, but you are just supporting my position of using whatever data is available to make estimates. If I have Steam concurrents, I'll use those. When the UK physical sales come out, I'll factor that in. When the Monthly PSN charts come out, I'll look at those. And when Circana (NPD) puts out its monthly and yearly charts, I'll look at those and use the games I do know the sales totals of on those charts to estimate the sales of others above and below.
What I won't do is ignore every piece of information I get that points a certain way and just scream that "it's not the full worldwide picture on all platforms so it doesn't matter." Which is what most of these people who get sad about Steam concurrents (or the UK charts) do.
But we know steam data and have free access to check how many players are playing while on consoles we don't. I hope in the future we will get consoles player access too
Not every game is big time on consoles and same for pc. As pc gamers we just have more options on how we play but it seems consoles are starting to offer more freedom likes mod support
it's not that people put more weight on it. It's the only platform that allows the tracking of player numbers unless the game specifically has it built in.
Steam can highlight trends but you're 100 precent right its not the full story far from it games that have more traction on console show drops on steam and vice versa
Well yea, we don't have access to player statistics on other platforms freely compared to steam. It's up to devs to release that information.
This. If I have some data available, and the people who could provide me with full data elect not to do so, I'm going to use the data I do have to make educated estimates on the full picture. I'm not just going to assume that the hidden data paints a completely different picture than the available data.
Again, if there is some logical reason to go against the Steam data, I'll consider it. Like if a game launches on Gamepass, I'm not going to compare its steam numbers to games that didn't launch on Gamespass; instead I'll compare it to the steam numbers of other games that launched on GP, thus accounting for that variable.
Replies(1)As we gear up for an all-new third Test Drive Unlimited instalment, Solar Crown, now is the perfect time to look back and discover why the 2006 original was so revered.
Team VVV writes: "We’ve known for almost two years now that BigBen Interactive has the rights to use and develop future Test Drive titles from Atari including the Test Drive Unlimited brand".
Whoa! Have'nt played one of those since my old IBM with CGA monochrome monitor....
