Car sales & wealth demographics

[mx5marc]

Hi,

I'm wondering whether you know yet how the demographics will work within the game for car sales?
For example, will there be a higher number of high income earners and therefore people with a disposable income in USA as opposed to Africa for example? And if so, will that have an impact on car sales and the company success?

I ask this because, since having my appetite wetted for this game, I've been forced to dust down my copy of Car Tycoon and tolerate the many bugs to satisfy my craving. In my last game I decided to build very low volume sports cars, with each new design I'd only build 2-3 cars, but price them at 1.5m - this being in the 1950's, I'd still sell them all in a year. So whilst I may be selling 2 cars a year, I was pulling in such great profits compared to the AI companies.
A car selling at 1.5m in the 50's would never sell, and it's only been recently that we are seeing production cars selling for that price.

I'm sure it will, but I'm really hoping the sales model in Automation will be a great deal more complex and realistic in Automation than Car Tycoon!

[zeussy]

Yeah, I made a working prototype for this close to over 18 months ago.

Basically there are demographics, such as gender, income, family type, main driver type (city, highway, rural etc), which feed into various wants and desire to determine car sales.

[hesitated]

Am I right in assuming you are also calculating some factors about the car, like sportiness and comfort, which would make it possible to successfully sell Hot Hatches and Sport Sedans? Or is there a "perfect" sedan and sport sedan wouldn't sell because it's not really as good as sedan or as a sports car?

[Killrob]

Yes Sir, you are right in your assumption, sportiness, comfort, luxury and such are calculated and do affect customer opinions. There will never be such a thing as a perfect sedan as all customers have varying preferences within sedans...