My hope for the years to come

[Radimov]

I hope that for years to come another company will be in charge of making a cycling game, ambitious with the desire to see reflected in the most realistic and fun way possible the world of cycling that we are so passionate about.

That wants to innovate, to improve version after version in a substantial way and to make the best game possible, to update to modern technologies and above all not to treat their customers as stupid.

Hopefully one day we will have an ambitious game, and not a turd with cologne on top to camouflage its smell. That day I will buy the game again, that year and every following year as I have always done with Pro Cycling, for my part it's over now.

[Dee-Jay]

Originally posted by Radimov:

I hope that for years to come another company will be in charge of making a cycling game, ambitious with the desire to see reflected in the most realistic and fun way possible the world of cycling that we are so passionate about.

That wants to innovate, to improve version after version in a substantial way and to make the best game possible, to update to modern technologies and above all not to treat their customers as stupid.

Hopefully one day we will have an ambitious game, and not a turd with cologne on top to camouflage its smell. That day I will buy the game again, that year and every following year as I have always done with Pro Cycling, for my part it's over now.

Slightly harsh, but also a bit unrealistic. I'm not convinced about the market being significant enough. I think that if lots of people give up on buying PCM the most likely thing is that they'll stop making it. Other developers would see the market failure by Cyanide as evidence that there's not much money to be made, and they'd avoid it. So the choice is essentially between PCM and no cycling management game. The best way to inspire other devs to compete is for more people to buy PCM - then other groups would want a slice of the profit, see the market and look at ways they could make a product which is more desirable than PCM.

To me it's clear that the TdF "action" game soaks up a lot of dev time due to the money involved in the console version, and funding wont be big on PCM- which of course is now split between the career manager mode and the pro cyclist mode.

I actually think the racing part of the game is really good (and has been for years, apart from a few notorious editions with awful AI). That would be very hard for another developer (with a small budget) to crack, or at least match in the short term. Some of the other sports management games by smaller devs have been absolutely awful.

My criticisms have always been into the depth of the general management (rather than the directeur sportif style 3D race play) - I'd like to see more. But I don't think the game is so poor each year that I wouldn't consider buying it.