Automobilista 2 V1.3.4.0 RELEASED!

In the history of most gaming software take-overs, the acquiring company wants the talent from the acquired company so they can redeploy them in the way they see fit to benefit their goals. You can read about this elsewhere as it's not the topic here, but I think the number of take-overs that saw the original/acquired company's product and goals blossom is pretty rare.

 

And Ian Bell (founder and lead of SMS; who made the deal with Reiza for the use of the engine) left the company moments after EA bought it (cause he didn't want to work with them again; which they did for NFS Shift 1+2)... so who knows what's actually even left of SMS in current state.

 

Your're right, but with that kind of money in the bank after the deal I woudn't work anymore too. hahaha

 

One could say that the worst part of SMS has left the company. And the actual great engineering talent who created a very good engine may actually be there still. Also, for all I've read about the gaming industry, actually working for EA seems to be very good, in general (good offices, benefits, compensation, etc), despite what you may think about their games.

Also, the Codemasters/SMS/EA deal happened very close to PC3 release and these big transitions take months, sometimes more than a year to actually take effect. People blaming EA for PC3 are just spitting the usual internet uninformed gamer bull****.

 

Ngl I would pay for an ‘arcade mode’ with this and mario kart style powerups

 

Until you don't meet their projections and they close you down. See Bullfrog Games and Westwood Studios.

 

The people who you'd think of as "SMS people," rather than "Codemasters people" or "EA people," had control of PCars3 throughout its entire development.

SMS decided to make a simcade game and call it "Project Cars 3." That decision wasn't made by the people who acquired the company later.

 

Look at what happened to Blizzard after Activision.

 

Part of what makes Reiza so special is the independence from conglomorate game publishers

 

That's very naive

100%
SMS lost credibility after releasing the pile of crap that is PCars3. If they were to make PCars4, sim racers would I am sure come back to them if PCars4 were to be any good. But after EA acquired Codemasters (who by then had SMS) EA won't waste their time developing a niche game
for the few of us when they can make buckets of money from F1, Call of Duty, Fifa, etc. So yes, SMS is (probably) dead because of EA acquisition.

 

They aquire the talent, the IPs, the engines, publishing rights to prior games and so on. Whatever's "great" might be used semi-independently or just be incorporated into some other project that already exists.

 

At least SMS have given Codemasters plenty of assets to recycle for future games, look at the sudden influx of PCars content in GRID Legends

 

I don't think SMS and Ian Bell had the right strategy with PC2 (they way the abandoned it) and PC3 but for sure the big corporations are after much bigger ROI than simulators can provide. That is why I said what I said, not because there is any technical shortcoming at EA or Codies and whatnot, rather because there isn't a satisfactory business case for them to financially back a true simulator.

 

this strategy was more driven by Bandai Namco than SMS themselfes.
This is the + side for Reiza.
AMS2 is NOT publisher driven.
Lower money, but totally free (more or less) in the descissions they make

 

Throwing money at things doesn't solve issues. See the big budget releases released in such a sorry state.

Money can, in fact, help you reach certain places faster and eaiser - but without coesion, a solid leadership and vision on the project, you'll get nowhere.

AMS2 was always meant to be both a passion project from passionate sim racing developers for a small team located in Brazil, but also a long-term project meant to encompass all corners of Motorsports, with a little bit of everything on offer.

In the imaginary ideal world, everything would work perfectly! The physics would be fantastic, the licensing for cars and tracks would be easy to acquire, the sim-racing community would be rational to understand AMS2 for what it wants to achieve (not for what they think) and everything would be absolute seamless.

But real-life called, and it wants hundreds of small unexpected issues/challenges to be solved.

 

To Reiza:

Tough times come and go, for every team. But never lose passion! (as a developer myself, I feel for all of you - the devlogs really hits home)

Passion is what drives the best projects, and it's what keeps AMS2 alive (and [lack of passion] it's what killed PCars and future sequels)

 

SMS didn't have a lack of passion, I used to love reading the developer posts about physics, tires, sound, etc. Their car/track list also shows a strong passion for motorsport.

I think it just happened too fast. They asked for money to acquire content they felt would best help their product and that money must've come with conditions (like release a game every 2 years and stop supporting released titles after 1 year). They were forced to branch out to other projects to make money (world of speed, pcars go...f&f crossroads) and ultimately tried to appeal to a different audience with PC3 in the hopes it would be successful. I'm sure they would've loved to bring back the missing sim racing elements from PC2 at some point.

It's a shame really. A PC3 more along the lines of AMS2 would've been a huge success during the initial lockdown's sim racing boom that seemed to benefit ACC the most.

 

Speaking of ACC, the Challengers pack DLC coming 23rd this month will keep me busy and away from AMS2 and this forum for a while.

 

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