Quote :

Ford reports these in-game advertisements are extremely worthwhile to their brand. In research conducted by Interpret, they discovered that participants of an in-game Ford ad exposure saw:

36% increase in brand rating
28% increase in purchase consideration
39% increase in brand recommendation
45% more gamers agreed Ford Focus is fun to drive
30% more gamers agreed Ford Focus is good value for the money

How Do Real Cars End Up In Vid ... Does It Help The Brands?

And yet the manufacturers request big sums for licencing,even if it's an advertisement for their product...

Quote from Eclipsed :

And yet the manufacturers request big sums for licencing,even if it's an advertisement for their product...

Yeah. That and they get really antsy about in game damage too. And something tells me when physics coding gets better and you have more realistic game play, they're going to be picky about how their cars HANDLE in game compared to the other cars. They're not going to want the cars' real characteristics used as opposed to a super code or something that will give their modeled cars better handling and performance than what the real ones ever could have.. Think of a ford focus with a top speed of 220mph and a vice like grip with tires.
That was one of the things that I liked most about LFS. Made up cars that are made very well.

IIRC the promise of no/low damage was why Porsche went exclusive with whoever-it-was, which is why no other games could have a porsche, which is why they all had RUF instead (RUF upgrade more than 50% of the parts, which loopholes through the exclusivity or something). I'd have thought that was a shot in the foot though, as I hear kids who race game talking about RUF more than I hear them talking about Porsche.

Quote from Racon :

Porsche went exclusive with whoever-it-was

It was Electronic Arts - that's why Porsches were featured in most games from NFS series,if not all. I believe,I read somewhere,that this contract is over already.

Quote from Eclipsed :

And yet the manufacturers request big sums for licencing,even if it's an advertisement for their product...

Who cares for big manufacturers. LFS should and could have even better cars and bring new ideas on the market so that big manufacturers want to copy LFS.

New designers and engineers could leverage LFS to promote their ideas. Just imagine!