It's a system identical to that used in Evolution's 2012 PlayStation Network game MotorStorm RC, "and there were no complaints," Rustchynsky said. "If anything people said, 'that's a great way to access this content immediately.'" Vehicles in MotorStorm RC can be bought for as little as 21p.
"The important thing about micro-transactions is, if they ever influence the game design or the progression then yes, there can be a negative influence," Rustchynsky added. "But that's absolutely not what we've done with DriveClub. Progression is quick. You unlock cars rapidly. If you're part of a club you get access to those things super quick."
DriveClub does not include £40 cars or the like, Rustchynsky insisted, as some driving games with micro-transactions do. "We don't want players to feel like we're nickle-and-diming them. That's not our intention. We want players to play the game as normal."
Indeed, it sounds as if Evolution would prefer players ignore DriveClub's micro-transactions and unlock cars through the natural course of progression.
"We don't want them to use them really," Rustchynsky said. "We want them to play the tour and naturally progress through the cars. We've got everything from hot hatches to hyper cars, and we don't really want people jumping into hyper cars immediately because they might not be tooled up. They might not have the skills they need. By all means, you can do that, but we'd prefer players to play with the cars we intended to be first.
"The proof will be when people play DriveClub. They'll see it's a non-issue when they get their hands-on and start to play the game. It's not intrusive. It's almost invisible. It's something we actually kind of hide a little bit."
