Developers should make a sequel to Star Wars Episode I Racer. Problem solved.

games are an escape, people don't want to play things they can do in real life like drive. I don't care if I get to drive a Ferrari 160 mph, it's still not fun.

I need a new Formula 1 game ASAP plz & tanx!

I think the biggest problem behind racing games is that no matter how good they look or how physics-accurate they may be, they can never convey the sense of speed or the G-forces of ripping through a tight corner at 80MPH. Only in the arcadey games do you really get an idea of going super fast, but that's only because you're going at impossible speeds in a fantasy car.

I can't say I'm too worried. I have 4 PS3 games and 3 of them are racers. 3 of the demos I've downloaded are racers. Big anticipated titles like Wipeout HD and GT5 are racers. Everyone I know with a current gen console has Burnout Paradise. Even if this is supposedly a small niche, it seems to be a pretty well filled one.

What racing games need is GT5

@dunetiger : apples are red: And that's why I think that Arcade Racers are the future of the genre.

The reason I don't like a lot of racing games is that they are too technical. I don't really care too much about car specks, but I love to race. I'm not saying GT isn't fun, I'm just saying it takes too long to get started. You have to unlock so many tracks and cars. But in a game like Burnout, there just isn't enough depth to the racing mechanics for me. That's why I like Mario Kart. It's not stat crazy, you don't have to unlock many carts, it's fun all the way through, and underneath the simplistic appearance is a deep and and involved racer.

Arcade racers ftw, burnout anyone? It's the Forzas and GTs of the world that are turning into niches.

@dunetiger : apples are red:
I agree but that changed for me in GT4 when they added the G meter.

Not only do I find that you gain an appreciation for your cars' performance after driving the lesser classes and moving up, then learning how to handle the extra power, but now that the meter shows how many Gs you're pulling it's much easier to imagine what it feels like and handle the car more intuitively.

The more realistic the simulation, the more niche the market. That's my take on it, anyway.

My only problem with racing games is that mid-way through i just get so fucking bored that i just quit and move on to something else.

It would be a cooler idea if i could earn/win sponsorships etc etc etc. Which is what i always wanted in a "career" mode. Make it a career.

@Bulletkkake: Right I suppose that's why sports games are so unpopular. Because people can't play sports in real life. Some people.

I think that the issue is that Wipeout HD isn't out yet, and that Burnout Paradise was awful compared to Revenge.

Racing games need a gimmick, let's cut the crap, the last true mass market driving game was NFSU2. I mean, you went any where you heard people going on and on about the game.

Oh jesus, first fighting games and now this?

My Empire of Pwnage is crumbling T_T

I'm not going to play the shrink and try to figure out why some people like/dislike racing games (SHOCKER: not everyone likes every genre), but Forza 2 is incredible. IMO anyone that thinks racing games are on a downswing after a year in which that gem is released does not warrant my attention for a full article.

I'm always looking for that title that gives me that good feeling I had playing RC Pro Am or NFS: HP and HP2.

NFS seems to change up SO much that I'm turned off to it each iteration because there's a bunch of 'features' (I call them noise) that doesn't speak to me at all.

niche indeed, I just want something that's fun, with no blur effects, no tedious tinkering with upgrades, no dumjb story, no street cred BS.

Is it so hard to make a game that's just racing?

My search continues until I withdraw from the genre altogether. Not far off from that point.

True, back in the day I used to play every racing game that came across my way. Especially the PSX era, you had Need for Speed (and a billion spin offs), Test Drive, Road Rash 3D, Gran Turismo, Driver (the first truly interesting derivative on the racing game until they fucked it up by taking him out of the car, making it GTA-lite)

Now, all these franchises suck except for GT. I'm sick of all the new games being "Midnight Club" come up with a new idea, the free roaming city fad is in time for an oil change. Horrible analogy.

ridge racers are the best. ridge 7 was amazing

Oh, and BRING QUALIFYING BACK TO GT!!!!! How the hell to you claim to have a Real Driving Simulator when your races don't even have qualifying? This is why I still put the first GT as the best in the series.

You can't have a truly competitive race when you know you are going to start in last place every time, it just makes me overcompensate by using a better car than the competition, which makes the game boring.

New twisted Metal for the PS3 + Motorstorm 2 + GOW VI: Racing extreme = Phoenix down for the racing industry.

@push eject: Yey another Ridge Racer fan. Ridge Racer ftw (although I played RR6 instead but it's basically the same game as far as I've understood..).

Burnout games are kind of fun, but I didn't get Paradise because I never even finished Revenge or whatever the last one was. I do kind of wish they had real cars in Burnout as opposed to fake ones.

I think part of the reason I don't really care for non-arcade racing games is because I really suck at them. It's hard for me to transfer real driving ability over into a game where your only feedback really is what you can see, not what you can feel. I gave a shot at playing the Forza 2 demo and it felt like I was driving on ice. I'm sure it's realistic/accurate physics, but when you spin out on turn one several times in a row, you know it's not the game for you :P. Now I will say I DO have the full version of Forza 2 now, but not because I bought it. I still haven't opened it, though.

The second problem I have is to be honest, I really don't know that much about cars, so doing all the tweaking of gear ratios and all that, I have no idea what that does and it's not terribly rewarding.

@Bulletkkake: There is a HUGE difference between just driving, and racing. And racing is something a lot of people can't do in real life. Be it for financial reasons, or they lack the skill. Granted to someone who is not interested in the sport, there isn't much of a difference anyways.

But by your logic, other sports games(Madden, MLB, NBA) shouldn't be selling that well either, but they are. Why though? If it's something people can do in reall life instead.

@ckranger11:
I don't think they're saying that racing games are getting worse. They seem to be saying the the genre isn't increasing in popularity.

@Dresarius: There are sims, and then there are "sims". Simulating football doesn't require you to have the reflexes and abilities of a real-life player. Racing sims can and do, especially if you're using a wheel.

Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsports are the racing games i like.

but after awile they start to get stale.

like someone said before if they had a sponsership winning or something a little less repeatitive than it would hold my intrest.

but i take what i can, cuz i love the racing games.

What always bothers me is that people take any game that features a car going from A to B and slams it in the "racing" genre when in fact there's a huge amount of other things to consider. For me, racing games are things like MotoGP or Forza or Gran Turismo, as in a game that simulates the sport of racing. It pisses the hell out of me to see articles saying "Gran Turismo doesn't have car damage while others in the genre like Burnout have featured it for years." I wouldn't even consider something like Burnout as a racing game, honestly, it's more of an action game than anything resembling real racing. I think people need to look at these racing sims, like Gran Turismo or Forza, and realize that they are sims and not just games about cars. If you don't like racing you'll probably think it is boring and repetitive but it's not really a game for you, in the same way that a person who doesn't care about aviation wouldn't care about Flight Sim.

Kotaku like their Edge stories lately.

Any game where the goal is to move from point A to B fails. I think the evolution of games has shown us that.

I still havent read this months EDGE (still finishing latest issue) but im curious to read what they have to say about racing. Im a bit sad, I have seen all of my childhood favorite genres (schmups, 2d run & guns, etc) becoming extinct and the racing type, altought it has matured, I have yet to see F-Zero GX and Burnout to be beaten by anything else. Real drive sims are very boring (to me, my dad loves them) and if the evolution of technology and photorealism is the pavement (ah, racing pun!) for the future of realistic sims, like GT5 and unlike Burnout Paradise, I think this is another game type that will loose appeal. Well, there will always be Topg Gear for SNES and Lotus Esprit on the amiga, I guess...

@Forkball: Oh man the pop up on that game playing head to head... It still gives me nightmares.

Me... I don't like racing games. The last non-Mario Kart one I actually BOUGHT instead of rented was Burnout 3. We just don't see eye to... headlight.

Hyuk hyuk hyuk. Tip your bloggers.

@Bulletkkake: That's why every GT's sold over 10 million copies then?

Look. Racing games are nowhere near dead. They've just been sorted out into about 5 franchises that get it RIGHT. Gran Turismo, Forza, Project Gothem, and the colin mcrae series. Racing games are fine

I am getting a ps3 for the reason of Gran Turismo

that or bring back bump&jump from coleco

i prefer racing simslikeGT, Forza, GTR over Fast and Furious garbage like Need for Speed, Midnight Club, Juiced.

@push eject: At last, another fan.

The problem with racing games, as they touched on in the story, is the feedback. Sure when you're shot in Halo you can feel it, but you don't get that feeling of whipping around the first hairpin at 80 mph in this super-expensive hypercar, or going in to this corner at a crazy angle at 75 with tire smoke in you eyes and the steering wheel kicking back against you all the time. If we can get more realism into the games, I would put money on them doing better.Hell, even a force-feedback weel would be better than just putzing around with a controller.

The problem with racing games is they need to be even more realistic (I'm talking about the sim games, not Burnout). GT and Forza need to make the cars drive like their real life counterparts. I drive a '03 Eclipse and it kills me when the car is able to accelerate far too quickly in the game. For some people, this isn't a big deal, but for me, it only removes all the realism they tried so hard to add. An example would be that in my real life car, shifting out of 1st gear is done at about 20mph. In games like GT, shifting out of 1st is done at 40+mph. I mean, that would destroy my car in real life!

I've been spending time with Test Drive Unlimited on the 360, and I have to say that the "lifestyle" aspect of it is pretty fun. I honestly would like to see more of that aspect vs more of the same.

The comments on that page is stupid. Who the fuck calls NFS/Rush/Fallout a Racing Sim?

Those are not racing sims. If you want racing sims play Live for Speed, GTR, GT... NFS is not a SIM its a Arcade Racer. Totally different genre of games.

@fuchikoma:

Even with the G-meter, I still find something about the racing sim lacking. It's insanely evident if you play the super-accurate F355 Challenge (arcade or Dreamcast, your pick). It's near impossible to really understand what the car is doing because while it's crunching numbers, you have absolutely no feedback. Even the visual feedback doesn't make sense, no matter how photorealistic it gets, because there's just something not correctly reflected in most views that you can only get in bumber-cam view.

Let me make it clear that I totally love Forza and Forza 2, so I'm not hating on the genre. It's just easy to recognize the flaws with it, even for auto enthusiasts. Like I said, no matter how physically accurate they make it, something feels like it's missing - that driver's seat feedback. It takes a lot of practice to acclimate your senses to perform well in the racing sim, but after you put enough time into something like NFS Underground, where the car handles the way you expect it to (as opposed to the way it ought to), you have to re-acclimate should you come back to the big-league sims.

That curve of training your hands and/or feet - depending on your control choices - is daunting to most people. They'd rather go to Underground or Burnout or GTA or Ridge Racer because while the physics may not be physically accurate, they're mimicked well enough in the way that people expect them to work in translation to the game. That is to say, stuff moves like you expect it to. With visuals as your only cue, and the occasional rumble feedback, if you rip around a turn and don't go into the wall, people expect to be able to slam on the gas and just go, not slam on the gas, spin their tires out and boff the turn. Even PGR turns out to be a hell of a lot more fun to play for most people because it's got that delicate balance of mimicry to fake physics, but still do the things that people expect them to do.

@Forkball: I loved that game on the N64. Using 2 controllers for 1 pod was awesome! Please somebody make a new pod racer with dual stick controlls.

My taste in racing games is still pretty much the same today as it was back when all i played was outrun and mario kart. I like TDU as well mainly because I can explore almost anywhere and if there were SUV's in that game it would be perfect. Also I'll buy any "rally" game over a forza type game because driving only on pavement gets old pretty fast for me. :p

The key to any game, regardless of genre, is good level design. Yes, there are other important aspects like graphics, sound, AI, physics, but level design makes or breaks a game regardless of what the other aspects are.

The racing genre is suffering from a lack of good creative tracks. Look at Forza, Need for Speed and GGR. They have very few tracks. Even when a game boasts a multitude of tracks, a lot fo them are very similar to each other or variations of just a handle of tracks. I want to race in cities, in exotic locals, in all weather conditions and times of day.

I think racing games need a deep track editor and have the finished maps be shareable online. I think that would extend the life of racing games immersely. Also, custom cars are a must. I want to take car parts from different manufactures and make them into the car of my choosing. I want a Honda Civic with monster tires. I want a Ford Focus with Nitrus, just for the fun of it.

I enjoy Rally and MX/ATV games a lot because they give a variety of tracks and a numer of diferent vehicle types.

I think a lot of racing games are heading towards the NASCAR outcome. Boring, samey cars and boring, repetitive, lifeless tracks.

@dunetiger : apples are red: I think your spot on.

There is one thing i need to add about racing games buy could also apply to any game out there. Why do developers feel the need to lock the button layout to a couple of choices?

Most racing games have the same controls... E brake, shift up/down maybe a nitro boost. Its so anoying going from game to game and having to relearn the button layout when all the games pretty much have the same options. Freedom in that area of setup would help out alot.

@DarkGildon: Any game where you shoot the same targets over and over again fail. Right?

Idiotic.

Seems to me that the greatest problem with the genre currently is a fixation on amazing graphics and (in many cases) simulation over actual fun. A lack of diverse quality titles will just continue to make racing games less appealing.

The last racer that I truly loved was F-Zero GX. It was fast, challenging, and ensured you never had a dull moment. Sure, the graphics were solid as well, but the focus was almost always in the gameplay, and that's what makes it great.

Today, it seems that every racing game I play seems to lack that same rush. Simulation games like Gran Turismo 4 and Forza 2 are now so realistic that they become stale very quickly. Open-ended games like Burnout Paradise remove one of the key parts of racers, great track design, and so races never play out quite as well as closed-circuit tracks do. Even PGR4, a game I was certain I'd love due to the amazing PGR2, suffered from a surprising drop in quality of tracks and events that ruined the crucial career experience.

In the end, it's hard not to turn back to the racing games of old because today's titles simply aren't as fun. I think designers should take a step back and simply perfect the brilliant racers of the past. Why continue to try to fix something that was never broken when you really need to learn from those previous successes?

I have a feeling that racing games will be born again with 3 games this year...gt5, midnight club LA, and (perhaps less noticeably) wipeout HD. gt5 is the ultimate sim racer. Midnight Club LA is the ultimate arcade racer, in my opinion, as it has a perfect balance of realism and arcade-style racing. and wipeout HD will provide the best in weapons based (and 100% arcade) racing. These are just opinions, of course, but i also know that racing games wont be dead for a long, long time. Its too big of a genre...for now. Long live the racer!

I say we need a souped-up, MMO Midtown Madness style game.

Hundreds of players in the same city, driving a multitude of different and hilarious vehicles, creating ad hoc mini games and races all across the city with all the great brands and great graphics everyone wants to see.

THAT would be awesome.

IMO, I believe racing games should take game players through a beautiful scenic route, which is just one long stretch of road (sort of like an Alpine route, or a mountain road), instead of getting players to go around the same circuit over and over again.

Personally I do like racing games like GT, but nearly every racer out there is about going in circles.

Holy crap! How did I ever miss Test Drive Unlimited? That game looks fucking awesome. Too bad I don't have a 360.

This game almost makes me wanna run out and buy one... almost.

Anyone know how hard it is to find used for PS2 or PSP, or is it still being sold?

@ArmyofJuan: "Make it a career."

Ever hear of TOCA Race Driver 2?