news.teamxbox.com/xbox/19437/Black-Rock-...

They claim to all be fans of street racing, ha no wonder I didn't care for the later Climax titles....

Oh well, looks like we'll have to stick Mario in the game after all.

If that is indeed true then

a: the same could be said of any other genre (in regards to being stale) especially the sports genre.  I mean Madden is still "just a football game" when you take away all the team and player customization. So I really don't understand his comment

b: the direction racing games (bikes in particular) have gone or as is the case not gone.  Either you are into racing games or you are not.  I think it would be fair to say that the majority of people who purchase Mario Kart are mainly Mario fans and racing isn't really their focus.  but if you look at the most successful racing games of the past few years games like Gran Turismo, Forza and the SimBin GT games would probably be the biggest sellers. Those games have attempted to focus more on trying to give a realistic experience to the player.

c: What does he mean "racing genre". I personally don't consider GTA or Burnout pure racing titles as much as they are driving games where the main focus isn't so much the actual "racing" but destruction and exploration.

Speaking for myself and myself only, I'm not into driving games. I want a racing game where the main focus is what happens on the track during the race, be it time trials or head to head.  Unless I'm playing Wipeout, I don't need combat, or rocket boosts are any of that stuff to make the game interesting.