It’s pretty common to see a new generation of consoles launch with a racing game. The Xbox One has Forza Motorsport 5 and both next-gen consoles will be getting Need for Speed Rivals and The Crew. Sony is going to try a little something new this year, however, by launching the PS4 with a racing game while launching an entirely separate racing game on the aging PS3.
At its Gamescom conference, Sony dedicated a little time to both Gran Turismo 6 and DriveClub for the PS3 and PS4 respectively. Both titles will launch within a month of each other, and presumably feature similar gameplay.
Of course, Sony is going to be putting a lot more marketing muscle behind Gran Turismo 6. It’s only one of the best selling racing game franchises of all time after all. It’s also on an already established console with millions of fans just waiting to pick it up come December 6.
Sony may be throwing lots of love at Gran Turismo 6, but it doesn’t mean that it has completely neglected DriveClub. In fact, Sony has made it one of the big launch titles for the PS4 by offering a free edition of the game to all PlayStation Plus subscribers. Polygon reports that DriveClub PS Plus Edition will offer a few of the game’s tracks and cars for free to subscribers, and then charge players to either unlock the full game or buy content piece by piece.
Racing games are a great way to kick off any next generation system because they can be used to really sell the power of a system. It’s a little strange, however, to see Sony essentially competing with itself by offering two racing games, albeit on two different consoles, at the end of the year. How many racing fans that buy a PS4 will skip on DriveClub and just pick up Gran Turismo 6 on their PS3 in December? Sony may soon wish the infamous delays that usually strike Polyphony Digital would have materialized during the development of Gran Turismo 6.