We're not stupid

Also I’m guessing as single player career modes and GP are what  atleast half the player base buy the game for.   Id imagine it would put off many developers as it would mean developing and adding an immersive career mode.  Despite the current games career modes have become stale.  They are still closer to reality and immersive  than any other racing game.  Then what I think really would scare off other developers.  Having to design a Ai that is atleast comparable with the current Ai.    No other game has come close… Sophy is the only Ai that is better and  is yet to be fully implemented in GT7.     

@ScarDuck14 Agreed. We used to have a nice progression on PC2, but a true career mode? Yeah, F1 2021 were the days 🫶

We were feasting on those modes!

On the AI note though... I used to go in sessions with the AI on iRacing only to practice race starts and the dreadful lap 1. But they've been slowly but surely working on it and I genuinely think it is the best racing AI out there. Tons of parameters to tweak to your taste, plus a believable and rich racing experience. From door to door banging to honest mistakes on corner exit, it's got everything.

The catch though, iRacing is absolutely not in the same segment as simcade F1. Totally different markets. Your regular iRacing client will never dish the service to dedicate to F1, and F1 players will never get the same immersive experience and esse of use on iRacing. And the obvious controller support.

've lost the count of how many times I've said this, but there's no other racing game with as enjoyable of an experience as F1 for controller users in my opinion 

Personally I could not stock more than 10h in F1 23 though 🙃

@Nellix82 you're comparing a simcade to a simracing title. A product for the masses and a boutique service. A family wagon to a Maserati.

I must have 60h between ACC and iRacing only in 2024.

They're completely different products aiming at different audiences. Yes, there's an overlap between players, but it is WAY smaller than what you suggest.

Apples and oranges. Which one would I like to have, a Toyota Corolla or a Porsche 911 GT3 R? Both, because I'd rather take the Porsche out when I want to have fun but would most definitely prefer to drive my wife and kids in the Corolla when going out to the supermarket.

Again, Codemasters F1 is failing in my opinion. But comparing then to ACC and iRacing makes no sense.

Doesn't make sense even to Kunos. Aris would frequently dismiss comments on why they do not make a F1 game during his live streams. 

A simracing F1 title? That would be a dream! But that is NOT what Liberty Media wants.

@Nellix82 Hey Nellix, just wanted to shoot some numbers here.

Kunos is not a publicly traded company per se but it is owned by Digital Bros Digital Entertainment. You can find their financial reports here.

From their latest quarterly report for the fiscal year 23/24:

So the whole Assetto Corsa franchise (AC + ACC) made € 5.3m in that quarter. Is it safe to assume that it totals around 20-21m per year? Well, I guess it does. From their consolidated financial statements for 2023:

  The revenue of Premium Games as of June 30th, 2023, amounts to Euro 92,319 thousand [...] with remarkable Euro 24.6 million sales coming from the different versions of the video game Assetto Corsa, created by the in-house studio Kunos Simulazioni

There's also some neat numbers for their player base distribution between console and PC as well if you dig around. In a nutshell, console grew up significantly.

Now, F1. Hard to gauge as EA bunches up all their sports franchises. And their quarterly revenue are in the billions. You can find it all here. But I've got this old Codemasters' financial report from before the acquisition by EA and it is fortunately still available online here. There are several things in that report that... well, one could say that aged like milk, but here's what it says about F1 2019's performance:

So in 2020, Codemasters had a revenue of £76 million (€89.8 million) driven mostly by F1 2019 + GRID, while in 2019 they accrued £71.2 million between F1 2018 + DiRT 2.0 + ONRUSH (€84.1 million). I guess it is safe to assume that F1 was the one doing the heavy lifting?

That's a bit higher. Even if it accounted for only half of 2019-2020's revenue, F1 games would have netted Codies about 45 million euros vs the 21-24m that AC + ACC made for Kunos. Adjust those 2020 figures against inflation and.. heh.

What about moderns games? Hard to say, there are some estimates online specially around Steam numbers, but they do not seem reliable enough. F1 very often makes it to the top of UK's and Europe's sales charts though. And there's no way to glimpse into the microtransactions revenue.

Edit: Nellix if you're on PC and miss having fun online, you should really look into iRacing. They're going heavy in open-wheel/formula racing this upcoming season (March). Their league system is top tier, plus their obvious online features and open lobbies.

The Super Formula car is crazy fun.

Sorry, if this comes off a bit scatterbrained as I'm going to answer a few different topics that cropped up because I had to go AWOL to deal with a few IRL things for a while.

@Nellix82 The game is going to come out in annual instalments because EA is a corporation. Employees would like to be paid and shareholders need to be fed end of story.

@mariohomoh I apologize if this is not why you were putting numbers up but for comparisons sake NBA2K## (search revenue for any game in like the last half decade) generates U.S. $1billiion annually. And that's just one game from 2K, who is much smaller than EA. The F1 license will belong to EA as long as they want it unless the FIA suddenly decides they no longer like money.

Yes, I know we all had our hopes up that F1 24 would be a massive step forward for the franchise, and the fact that it's still on last gen consoles probably puts a cap on what can be achieved, which is disappointing. But if an underwhelming F1 24 ruins your year your either living a spectacular life or your priorities are in straight reverse. Not to mention most of the doom posting is based off of what a 31 second promo clip that hardly reveals anything?

@TheRagebeard not sure I follow?

NBA 2K? Published by 2k which is owned by Take Two?

That's 5bi vs EA's 7bi dollars yearly revenue.

Not to downplay 2bi, but there's... quite a lot of IPs under Take Two. Including Rockstar's GTA.