No F1 game this year

[Scotracer]

This is quite amusing. Sony had a five year deal to produce the official F1 game. The license fee was $15 million per year and the deal ran out with the 2007 version. But it has not been renewed yet so there is no 2008 version and with game development lead times there is unlikely to be a 2009 version.



The reason is that Bernie Ecclestome wants more for the license. He feels that $15 million per year is not enough, whilst Sony think that it is quite sufficient. Now maybe Bernie thinks that he can play Sony off against Microsoft. But Microsoft is an American company and Americans don’t have F1 as part of their culture, they prefer the rather crude NASCAR racing. Whereas Sony is a Japanese company and F1 is massive in Japan.

The funny thing about this is that Bernie has now lost $30 million by not having the game for two years. Not a lot to him, maybe, but he will have to sign a new five year deal at $6 million more per year just to recoup this loss. So that means he has to get $21 million a year just to be back to where he was before. Good luck to him.

In the meantime F1 suffers. The F1 game was an impressive marketing tool for the sport. Every year it got the message of F1 over to many millions of people. Some of those will be children who may well become lifetime F1 followers as a result of playing this game.

When I worked at Codemasters, Jim Darling, the chairman, always resented paying license fees to use brands in our games. He always thought that they should be paying us for the advertising they were getting. Now with in game product placement and in game advertising this is starting to come true. But I doubt if Bernie is going to pay Sony to make a game any time soon.

No F1 game this year — Bruce On Games

Well that's just a bummer. Looks like I'll have to hope more F1 cars are in GT5 or stick to my rFactor mods.

[Sir Charles]

I'm pretty confident there will be alot more F1 cars in the full version of GT5, or even some more added to the prologue. But thats just dream land.

[IIJoshIII]

Ftl!!!!

[axeman2008]

So on top of his already large fortune he was also getting an extra $15 mil a year. That is alot to anyone. He's just getting greedy.

[IIJoshIII]

It's called business. Maybe you've heard of it? ^^

[friedkarma]

There's a HUGE flaw in this analysis...MS and Sony are both GLOBAL companies, not US and Japanese companies. You would think someone that bills himself as "a veteran games industry marketer" would know this. Consider your source dubious at best.

[psuedohippy]

You can race some F3 cars in Grid :-) It may not be a sim but I expect it to be amazingly fun as all the Toca/Racedriver games always are, to me anyhow.

[axeman2008]

Originally Posted by IIJoshIII

It's called business. Maybe you've heard of it? ^^

Yes thanks i have, however i think he's being unreasonable instead of 15 million notes he's lost out on another contract.

[IIJoshIII]

He'll get paid one way or the other fo sho.

[Blasterpez]

this news has me pretty emotional. -_-