Quotes from MotoGP’07 creative manager Craig McCracken in a conversation with Eurogamer seem to indicate so. First, he talks about the handling of the bikes quite extensively:
MotoGP has historically been as quite a simulation-heavy title, and we’ve sought to bring it more mainstream a little bit this year…This game is about easy access for people who are new to the series – people like me, actually, because I came from a background of working on four-wheeled racers and I was new to it when I started on this one. MotoGP ‘06 was a great game, but like a lot of people, personally I found it quite hard. You had to invest a lot of time and effort to get rewards. So I thought it was quite important for us to improve the entry point a little bit, to make it a bit easier to get into.
He goes on to say that the circuits that make up the MotoGP season “aren’t particularly interesting in real life,” calling them “ribbons of concrete set out in fields in the middle of nowhere.”
It seems that anyone who thinks tracks like Donington Park, Laguna Seca, and Mugello aren’t interesting has no place leading any aspect of any videogame that wants to have anything to do with MotoGP. Spin the “Extreme Mode” off as its own game series and let him run that into the ground, then let someone with a clue bring the MotoGP franchise back inline with reality.
In my opinion the MotoGP series has always been very arcadey anyway. I’m not quite sure how this guy considers doing 100mph on the grass whilst leaning at 45 degrees and not falling off to be ’simulation-heavy’.
I agree about the circuits too, this guy clearly has no idea what he’s talking about :p
Yeah, you’re right it was certainly never exactly hardcore. But, given that, where’s it going to go from here?