Shift 2 dev slams Gran Turismo, Forza

As the battle of the simulation racers heats up, one developer has revealed exactly what he thinks of his rivals.

That developer is Shift 2: Unleashed's lead designer Andy Tudor, who had some choice words for Sony's Gran Turismo 5 and Microsoft's Forza 3 when Eurogamer interviewed him to discuss his upcoming game.

"Those two games are on pedestals at the moment," he said. "When we're thinking about what we want to do in this game, it's not a numbers game. We're not going to add a thousand irrelevant cars.

"Both those games, to me, are almost like encyclopaedias. You've got a thousand cars, a thousand tracks, whatever, and basically the game is about earning cash to get another car, earning cash to get another car.

"It's like a grind. It's almost like stamp collecting."

Gran Turismo 5, released to sales success last week, features over 1000 cars. 1031 to be exact. Eurogamer listed all of GT5's cars earlier this month.

And of course Forza 3, the latest in Turn 10's Xbox 360-exclusive series, doesn't shy away when it comes to the car count, either.

For Tudor, though, cars, cars and more cars make for a boring racing simulation experience.

"That's not where the fun is," he said. "The fun is behind the wheel, feeling you're on the edge, pushing it to the limit, putting in the cars that are relevant and cool to drive, allowing you to completely customise those from factory to the works level we had in Shift 1, and giving you the chance to then play against your friends in a social way.

Developer Slightly Mad's approach is, in Tudor's own words, in opposition of "just adding five variations of the 1986 Toyota Corolla or something like that".

Tudor reckons most of the cars in Polyphony Digital and Turn 10's efforts go unused. Instead, gamers collect between 10 and 15 cars.

"They certainly don't fill their garage up with every single car there is in the game – all 500 of them."

Patrick Soderlund, the man in charge of EA's racing and driving games, has been clear in his intentions for the Shift series: he wants it to kill Gran Turismo and Forza.

"We think we can compete and ultimately become market leading in the simulation authentic motorsport segment," he told Eurogamer.

"One of the strongest points we have is, apart from the fact we have a very talented developer working with us and we now have an established brand underneath the NFS umbrella in that segment, we also have the advantage of being a multi-platform offering.

"Forza can only be bought on Xbox and Gran Turismo is only available on PlayStation. We're the only one right now that is of a significant weight that can offer something up on all those platforms."

Aggressive? For Tudor and Slightly Mad, Soderlund's goal is music to the ears.

"It's a different way of thinking, basically. We want to take those guys on. We want to make a more authentic experience."