When ever i see an Aston Martin, there is one question that came back to my mind. And so it was with the iRacing-Announcement of the DBR9. In the beginning, when R3E was Released, there was (if I remember right) an announcement that R3E will add some Aston Martins. In the early Teaser from R3E before the Release, there was a picture of an Aston Martin Vantage already shown . The Installation of R3E already has directorys for an Aston Martin Vantage and the Aston Martin DBR9. But since then Aston Martin is Missing. What had happened with the Cars?
I fear the same; the V12 GT3 car was included in the 'licensing teaser' along with the Ginetta. This list has been fairly accurate though and things are still being released that were in this photo collage from a couple of years ago (for instance, it contained a hint for the Greenwood Corvette), so maybe there's still hope?
it would be the most difficult license theyve gotten i think. kunos doesnt have it (despite AM being a candidate/voted in on the dream pack, & no mention of the later-signed lamborghini) pCARS got it late, iracing only got it just. idk if theyre a bit 'difficult' or simply cost more than some ppl find worth. and ofc none of the devs can or do talk, so its just guesswork. for ex iracing seems to be quite savvy; i think if AM was close in price to ferrari, for example, they def wouldve chosen the latter. but its not surprising to me given the above companies (iR excluded; it was just a surprise there) that s3 would have issues coming to terms w/ AM.
I'm assuming getting Aston Martin costs a fortune, which would be why you don't see it anywhere. Sort of like why no one (in the sim racing world) except Kunos seems to be licensing Ferrari.
I see a licensed DBR9 and DBRS9 in Race07, which is not a super-old sim. It seems that Aston Martin has strongly raised the price for licensing. This is quite disappointing. The Vantage V8 would be an awesome car for the GTR2 class in R3E.
Some of our licensing (or almost licensing) partners have changed their strategies to a more "(upfront) profit". With for us very high upfront investments besides time and resources, which means for us we do have to pass on certain cars/manufacturers. Maybe in the future this will change
At least for now, Aston Martin Racing appears on Project CARS which made me doubt it will be pricey, considering the developer is fairly reluctant to spend a huge fortune for licenses. Aston Martin also appears in various other racing games in iRacing, Grid, Drive Club, and so on. As far as I know, Aston Martin licensing is broken up into 2 parts, Aston Martin and Aston Martin Racing so Sector 3 could license Aston Martin Racing which probably save some licensing fees for it. R3E has Mclaren, Nissan and Honda which are some of the toughest manufacturer to license from, I expect seeing an Aston Martin in R3E is something that will happen eventually. Circumstances might change so it is hard to say at the moment.
Sony, Codemasters and even iRacing are big players compared to a small company like Sector3. It's not surprising that the big ones have also bigger pockets to license cars & tracks. Hopefully R3E becomes a major success to get the money for licensing the "lost brands".
How much to license the entire Blancpain series? Maybe we could use something like "Kickstarter" to help finance it? lol
SMS isnt much bigger than S3 and yet they managed to get Aston Martin Racing. I guess it is up to how S3 does the licensing negotiation with Aston Martin.
SMS might not be very big (based on staff numbers) but they have had a lot of "mainstream" games, NFS Shift, Shift 2 and Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends to name a few, all sold for PS3, Xbox and PC, they also have the backing from EA, so I doubt they're short of a few pennies. lol. Sector3 have come out Simbins of bankruptcy/restructuring, I may be mistaken but, R3E is their first title is it not? Edit: Just doing some further reading about SMS, some sources say that they worked on GTR -FIA GT Racing Game... Did SMS break away from SimBin or something?
SMS does NOT have EA on their back, thank god. Actually, WMD exists exactly to avoid said companies like them. We all (many of us) know what EA did to them regarding Shift2: Unleashed. Just stating a fact here to avoid confusions. Continuing on the OT Kunos also has Ferrari and Lamborghini but the reasons might be because italian??? And Kunos did had a partnership before with Ferrari because of Ferrari Virtual Academy so this one might've helped there. But Lamborghini, I hear, is very hard to get due to price figures and Porsche (with their stupid move of exclusivity with EA which seems to still be in effect) I suspect would've been the same price wise to get. But this is me speculatingg, ofc
I believe currently, SMS isnt working with EA. At least not anymore, which is why they went off to do their own thing, and partially crowdfunded their own project, which turned into the aptly named PCARS. I think there was a division between EA's philosophy, and the trouble with Shift 2, so SMS didnt want to do another Shift (3) and make it a bummer. Now, they are being published by Namco Bandai... a fairly huge japanese publisher. So they certainly have a lot of backing. Also, as I recall the series of events, the original guys at SMS, whom few may remain, were actually part of SimBin back in the day. Making the FIA GTR games, and then splitting around the time Race 07 was being started. That split turned into SMS and they began working on a few of the titles you listed, with support of EA. After that time period and up to current time, I dont think SMS has the whole group they used to. At least not the same group that made the initial split after working on the FIA GTR games. As for the modern Sector3, I would imagine you could call R3E their first game. Im not actually sure how many people from the SimBin days didnt move onto to S3, but I imagine a few didnt come along. S3 picked up the pieces where SimBin left off development and carried it on to what we see now, making lots of improvements along the way. Of course, S3 was already the company working on the game, just under a defunct name. It's a shame that SimBin became defunct, as I really enjoyed all of their older titles, but I certainly enjoy R3E plenty, as well as the other offerings on the market too. I feel that the other games certainly help round out the gaps left by any one game. So I end up playing most of the sims out there, many to a lesser extent than others though. Anyways, I find this fairly interesting, but it's mainly just banter anymore. S3 is what is before us, not SimBin, and they seem to have things under control, and certainly in a pleasing way. So that makes me optimistic for things to come. I may be off on the past splits of the above teams, so correct me if I am wrong. But I think that is a decent very basic 'timeline'.
Licenses seem to be getting more expensive and inaccessible. The whole thing gets on my nerves to be honest, not just in the racing genre but sports games as well. Luckily there are still a good number of manufacturers that see the value in getting their brand out in as many places as possible.
Bandai is just publisher. SMS "use" them for marketing and distribution purposes BTW, Nissan with all its marketing and innovation should really be more keen to appear in games. Seems logical to me. It shouldn't be that hard to license in this case :\