My thoughts are that Nintendo is rolling around in it's vault full of money at the moment....and will be for quite some time. We'll soon read an article about how the Wii is outselling both the 360 and PS3 combined 2/1 units.

To be honest, "If it ain't broke; don't fix it." completely applies here.

As for the masses owning HDTVs and all it really doesn't apply world wide. Sure getting a larger HDTV when you want one in the U.S. is fine, but other countries aren't having nearly the attach rate to HDTVs that the U.S. has. We're consumer ho bags like nobody would believe in the U.S. We get larger TVs "just because" over here, but look at our economy at the moment and realize that historically it takes about 3 years to get out of a recession. There are soon to be some killer deals on HDTVs only because people are starting to hang onto their money.

At the moment I would have to say that Sony's "mascot" is Sackboy.

I wouldn't go to say that Masterchief is Microsofts Mascot, but his character is easily associated with MS, much like Snake is easily associated with Playstation brand though both are neither MS or Sony exclusive.

Does the iPhone have games? Yeah, sure.

Is it a significant gaming platform? Not at all.

TapDefense, TapTapRevenge, etc etc for my iPhone (now iTouch because it's a crappy phone IMO) are fun and they do help pass the time, but it's nowhere near the focus that, and I really hate to say this, Nokia puts into their N-Gage line.

They didn't have the stock colour that my car was released in either. mofo's. and the lift off over steer was waaaaaaaay over the top. But that, if anything just shows how good the game is, they are getting soo close to what the RL cars are like, you start to notice and complain about the things that they got a bit wrong, rather than just accept them.angryfodder

I'm not talking about color options, I'm also not complaining about things they got the slightest bit wrong.

Redline, gears, shift points, powerband should be correct in a racing game IF you're trying to immerse the player.

In a racing game, the cars are fairly high on the tachometer, which means if ANYTHING they're focusing sound on, should be that instead of low idle sounds or transmission whining.

This is IF you're trying to immerse the player though. Fact of the matter is that Polyphony, Turn 10, etc... as much as they like their jobs, cars, making games blah blah, are just after the consumers dollar. I'll be renting GT5 through gamefly like I do most of my other games that I think about purchasing.

I've got a REAL car to spend money on playing around with.

Polyphony uses a different method for their engine sounds. Through the updates in prologue, they added more layers to the engine sounds such as the transmission whine at low speeds! :)

Watch this video. It shows a great demonstraion of the engine sounds in Prologue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDac24T5KvY

Rikusaki

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEFK0SJJofk

Tell me, can you hear the Transmission Whine in that video?

It's a racing game, not a drive around slow and hear things game, want to impress me with sound, get my cars redline correct #1 and create my engine sounds correctly at speed. I don't even hear Transmission Whining in my car, because it has a V8 which gets the slightest bit louder if I drop a couple gears.

True Gear/Petrol Heads, Marketing, Advertisements, Game Developers relationships with Car Manufacturers, Glowing Brakes or Not, blah blah blah.

If you take a look at my icon, then you can narrow down what type of car I drive. Hint: It looks like a gigantic catfish. And even being that it's brakes are stock, they glow red during roadrace events. Google "Trackmasters Racing" while you're at it Google "Word Class Driving"

To the OP, other people in the thread, whoever, whatever. Gran Turismo 5, Forza 2, GTR series, RFactor do not at ALL compare to driving a Sports or Muscle Car in real life. No sound manufacturing, telemetry views, amount of physics will compare to the real thing. You can't "practice" driving AT SPEED on a video game. You will have an idea of what the course looks like, but you will not be able to take the same car in a video game and produce the same results in real life.

With all of that said. Gran Turismo as a video game IS IN FACT behind other racing games out there. It's a video game, it's purpose is to entertain and excite me. I actually traded GT4 IN on the first Forza game I was so unimpressed. I'm not talking about amount of cars in the game, not sound, not visuals, not which console I liked better. I was NOT entertained with what GT4 brought to the table after playing, at length, what GT3 had to offer.

I do hope that GT5 delivers the goods as my Logitech G25 has been getting dusty over the years and I've done all that I've pretty much wanted to do with Forza 2.

Pay attention Polyphony http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP1Q6sxNJoY Grid was at least entertaining....and it's not even a "sim".

I want another Toca Race Driver already

I live in California and he lives in Louisiana guys, I didn't mean little like he's 12, he's just younger than my 26 year old ugly mug.

As far as the console bashing goes, the wife and I have all three consoles and 2 gaming PCs in the house. So, there's really no need to argue which one is better.

Over a recent deployment I visited Hawaii (Yeah, it's so hard being in the Air Force), Obviously through playing Test Drive Unlimited I kinda sorta knew my way around a certain part of the island, Ala Wai Blvd to be exact (anyone that's played the game knows why).

Have you visited a site that's in a video game? Be it a football stadium, baseball diamond, basketball court etc...

My wife, whom is a huge fan of the MGS series, said that it was great to play another MGS game, but felt that the cutscenes were way too much.

She's fallen asleep twice during cutscenes that I know of on late gaming nights. 

It's a great game sure, but best singleplayer game EVER? Hardly. GOTY? Probable.