I read up on this a bit more and Codemasters haven't been remotely consistent in justifying their decision. In an interview for the game reveal, they cite development resources, saying that spending less time on interior modelling allows them to insert more content elsewhere. But then, in the same feature, they say they're going for a 'less is more' approach, with a smaller amount of content produced at a higher quality. So cutting the in-car view doesn't actually add up to 'more other stuff' at all.
Then in an official statement on the GRiD 2 forums, they don't cite development resources at all but hardware limitations; apparently console hardware can't handle both the car interiors and whatever CM are trying to do with the tracks and exterior models. Elsewhere they boast about how in depth they're going on the physics engine, which will run at 2x the cycle speed of Forza etc etc... So one minute they're saying 'we're doing more than ever before' and the next they're saying 'we're scaling back because 6 year old hardware can't handle it'. They conveniently don't discuss the fact that PCs could handle this easily.
Finally, the '5%' thing seems like a classic case of statistical misinterpretation; they've checked a metric and decided that it justifies whatever half-baked decision they make off the back of it. As mentioned by IO software, probably less than 20% will complete the next Hitman game - but that doesn't justify anything. The game still has to be a complete game. Most features in most games are only utilised by a small percentage of the player base. They don't even take into account that the server metric which gave them the '5%' number was from online games, where people are more competitive - the cockpit cam is for people who willingly trade visibility for some immersion, and is therefore more likely to be used in single player games, by players not registering on the metric. But really, I don't think Codemasters even believe their '5%' thing - it's more than likely just a piece of BS to make it look as if they're considering things carefully, when actually they're just half-arsing the game like they half-arsed DiRT: Showdown.
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