Gran Turismo 7’s microtransaction scheme went live over the weekend and fans aren’t happy. Specifically, the main complaint is with Polyphony Digital’s decision to make players purchase credits, which effectively means that drivers will have to spend around $40 to buy just one car, which is absurd when Gran Turismo 7 is neither a free-to-play title nor a live-service game. If you check out the four credit packs available for Gran Turismo 7 on the PlayStation Store, you’ll find that Sony is selling them in the following denominations: 100,000 credits ($2.49), 250,000 credits ($4.99), 750,000 credits ($9.99), and 2,000,000 credits ($19.99). Although not every car in Gran Turismo 7 will cost you millions in credits, the high-performance ones do, and owning them is pretty much the goal of the game. Not to mention, every car in Gran Turismo 7 comes with upgradeable parts, which costs credits as well. Microtransactions are a key part of the gaming industry for many reasons, one of them being that they provide developers with enough funding to continue supporting a game. However, adding such a feature to Gran Turismo 7 is downright wrong, especially when its main competitor, Forza Horizon 5, had problems with making it too easy to earn in-game currency. With some “legendary” cars costing up to 20,000,000 credits, as revealed by the GT7-centric showcase last month, players will have to spend a lot of time and money to fill their garage with the cars of their dreams. To make matters worse, purchasing new cars and upgrading them in Gran Turismo 7 is a necessary part of the game as the races become difficult. If it’s any consolation, Polyphony did design the game so that players can grind their way through millions in credits without a lot of playtime invested. The only problem is that Gran Turismo 7 also encourages spending credits to buy cars. Eventually, players will have to choose between spending hours grinding or whipping their wallets out to gather enough credits to get the cars they need to progress further in Gran Turismo 7. As we’ve already mentioned, Gran Turismo 7 is not a free game. The base version for the PS5 already costs $70 and there’s no free upgrade from the PS4 version to the PS5 version. It’s just a huge shame that microtransactions could potentially sully what is an otherwise stellar outing for the Gran Turismo series. The good news here is that players can still enjoy Gran Turismo 7 with minimal to no cost - it’s just going to take a while to get a chance to drive all the fancy cars the game has to offer.
