What happens with Aston Martin in R3E?

Thanks for clarifying guys.
@RomKnight Your quite right, I was mistaken.

 

FYI, Nissan is far from hard to access or to work with.

The bigger "problem" (for small studios) are the brands labeled (or that labeled themselves) as premium brands that are easy to access, but primarily hard to afford. Other studios are able to set a precedent in being able to afford the higher fees, which makes it harder for the small fish int he pond.

Licensing is turning into a profit department, until a few years ago licensing was more extension of marketing, but now for a lot of manufacturers/licensing agents it is purely profit driven. There are several ways to afford the bigger brands by for example giving them a large cut of the sales, but most solutions are a path we decide to avoid, as we do not want to set a precedent for future bussines/games/projects. Having said that, I don't know how Marco from Kunos achieved it, but i bet being Italian has really helped

 

I remember a post by a model car manufacturer mentioned that licensing had changed drastically since the early 90s. Back in the early 90s, manufacturers used to approach companies to give them their brand license for free or low price to the company to produce merchandise for marketing. Then, things started to change to what we see now when manufacturers are turning the whole brand licensing for merchandises into a part of their business because it generates a lot of money for manufacturers.

I heard that Marco obtained the Ferrari license with lower licensing fees as Kunos had been working with them for a game but for the Lamborghini and Alfa Romeo, I guess being an Italian company really helped them in that aspect.

For those who are interested, here is an interesting article where I saw a while ago about brand licensing: http://www.forbes.com/sites/dalebus...t-1-5b-business-licensing-blue-oval-products/

 

And i'm always thinking, that it should be the other way around. I mean that car manufacturers should have to pay for getting their cars in the game/sim. Especially because the new graphics engines are powerful to show the cars in its full glory. As an example, look at the last pCARS car trailers. The cars look almost real and so it's pure advertising for car manufacturers, and they also get paid for this. It's quite paradoxical.
Car manufacturers pay millions of dollars/euro for advertising, and strangely for games they get money.

Hopefully there will be a day, that a car manufacturer like Porsche or Lamborghini knocks on the door of a sim developer and says "Here are 5 million dollars. We want our cars in your sim!"
(Yes i know ........ very very optimistic thoughts)

 

Even rF2 has Nissan.

 

its a very skewed bussines at the moment, in my opinion. One one end studios pay fees to get cars in the game, and on the other manufacturers pay publishers (not the studio!) to get their car on the cover for ridiculous amounts of money for the extra exposure on tripple AAA titles.....

 

That actually happened to SMS during it's early days. One manufacturer actually approached them then offered them a cheap license for their cars because they want their cars in their game.

Not for free, sadly.

@JayEkkel

Any idea what is happening with the Porsche license? At least based on what you can reveal about the licensing of that brand.

The lack of Porsche in many games had sort of pushed many developers towards Ruf where it felt like Ruf had gain a lot of market exposure in many games.

 

@Jay Ekkel

Do the manufacturers have any stipulations as to how their cars are represented in the game for example performance compared to other brands, crash damage etc?

 

They expect their cars to be performing and to be presented as well as the other cars in the game. For damage there are some general rules like, the safety cell of a race car may not be damaged, a car cannot be on fire completely, and engine can and may fail but no smoke/fire in the cockpit (or fire on the outside).

In general the manufacturers are looking for equality, and a good representation of their IP's. and leave it to the developers to ensure they performs equal'ish

 

@Jay Ekkel so why is the Lada WTCC so bad compared to the others then? lol.
Is there anything the community can do to help "acquire" new licenses?

 

Interesting about what damage done to the car....that is just insane to me, lol.

Thanks Jay.

 

For the life of me, I can not understand Porsche's stance on licensing. They've been one of the most successful brands in motorsport for so long and they are still just as relevant today. They ought to be pushing their legendary cars in every racing simulation, not locking themselves down with arguably the worst company in gaming. It blows my mind how someone in there thinks that makes sense.

 

Porsche's issue is tied to a contract they signed a while ago with EA and haven't been able to get out of, I believe. If so, I can imagine they're looking forward to getting out of it.

 

Correct on all accounts

 

I believe the EA-Manager is still rolling on the floor laughing after he saw the signature from porsche under that contract...

 

Well I had no idea it was like that. Thanks for the info info.

 

Good for RUF which even let the cars be modified for, say gt2 specs

 

I'm guessing not, but I'll push my luck

Are you able to say whether the rumours of it being a 15 year deal signed in 2000 are true?

 

NFS: Porsche did anything not under EA umbrella had Porsches after this one?

 

@Jay Ekkel
While we are talking about licensing.
A brand that should be easy to get, do to its current state, is Saab.

Would be so awesome to have a Saab 900 T alongside battling with the Volvo 240 T in Touring classics!!