PCM15 Gameplay Trailer + Analysis

Cyanide has released it's first actual gameplay trailer for PCM15. Watch the full trailer on Youtube. But here's a run down of what we can learn from the trailer.

BMC are once again COM. There's visual change to in-race HUD, nothing major just an altered style for the same information. 200 competitons across Road and Track, so a good number of races included with the game to begin with but probably not 200 real life routes. Plus in-race it's as pretty as usual.

We get a look at some of the new Career screens. Completely new layout to the Rider Info screen which should be much easier to navigate around. The "Scout Report" button is new as is the display of Potential, which i think is cool. Equipment Sponsors are back in the same set-up as PCM14, hopefully it works this time around.

Still no return of the "7 day" calendar we lost after PCM13 but the general Career UI is cleaned up and looks very nice to me. The background color now matching your team colors is a nice touch and i think is very nice. Functionally nothing seems to have changed much just the way things are laid out.

The Fitness Curve system doesn't seem to have changed. You'll still pick rider objectives that define their fitness for the season. Also Etixx are not licensed. The next in-race shot shows a zoomed in climb profile which is new and a great little addition. There's mention of an updated progression, training systems and scouting but we don't get a good look at them so not much to say. There's also mention that we can now have a Development team, but that will probably be locked to WT teams, again we don't see anything.

Confirmation that you can alter a riders trajectory will be in the game from the start, and not just patched in later on. Nice feature that will be useful for the "Be-a-Pro" mode. And speaking of Be-a-Pro we get a look at some of it! Name, region, height, weight, skin color, picture, age and specialization are changable options so now you really can put yourself in the game. You'll get to pick between three teams, and we see what one of the Dev teams might look like in the form of an Ag2R jersey. We then get a look at training properly and it is a lot more detailed, at least in Be-a-Pro.

It finishes off a brief mention of multiplayer. Up to 16 players in Road Races. And it doesn't end with an image of the Yellow Jersey sprinting on the Champs Elysees!!!

There's quite a number of changes this year and the focus has been put on Be-a-Pro mode and Career modes. It's what we as a community have most strongly been asking for for several years and Cyanide have listened. I think it looks great and we are just a few weeks away from finding out!

More TDF/PCM 15 Announcements

We're at that stage of the year where Cyanide/Focus is putting out new information a couple of times a week in the final run up to the releases of the games. To keep right up to date follow @PCyclingManager on twitter. Every day they confirm a fully licensed team.

On Friday we got 4 new screenshots. The usual fare really, a couple of peloton images and a couple of Elysees images, including the standard Yellow jersey attack on the Elysees.

Most interestingly was a new DevBlog about Pro-Team mode in the TDF console game. Here Cyanide detailed a lot of new information about one of the big games modes of the game. The biggest bit of news is the inclusion of not just the Crit Int and Dauphine as standard, but that all three races (Int, Dauphine and TDF) come with a variant route as standard!

For the Crit Int this is a flat stage, no ITT variant, and a cool looking stage up the Mont Ventoux. Not exactly realistic but should be pretty fun. The Dauphine has a mix of stages including a hilly stage on Corsica, realism apparently not important, and a stage finish on the Alpe d'Huez. The Tour de France variant is actually the 2014 race route, beginning in Yorkshire and heading over cobbles and onwards.

Giro All Over

For the last three weeks the Giro d'Italia has dominated the site's cycling section. Today it came to another surprising and dramatic finish with Alberto Contador crowned race winner. The weekly discussion threads have regularly been the most popular threads on the site as this most action packed of Grand Tours delivered something new every day. Now we've got just enough time to recover before the Tour kicks it all off again!

PCM.Daily's Favorite Cyclist

The 6th(!) edition of the competition is scheduled to make its return tomorrow. Again it will be run by Mresuperstar who does a terrific job each time. Last year Marcel Kittel just edged out Vincenczo Nibali to the title. Previous winners include Gilbert, Voeckler, Voigt and Nibali. Can the Shark podium for a third year in a row? Will we get our first repeat winner? Is it going to be an easy walk for Bakari?

Thread of the Week

Just like the last couple of weeks i refuse to select the Giro thread. You can tell summer is here as there's more going on than ever on the site. There's a whole range of community activites i can chose from. The Man-Game pre-season events come close. The Daily Song Contest comes close as well. But my thread of the week goes to the CX:ND Game Thread! Ian Butlers reports are some of the best writing on the site, and the players mimic that with incredible responses. By far the highest quality thread of the last couple of weeks!

Tour de France 2015 Gameplay Trailer

Last week we had a "teaser trailer" which had some nice cinematics but told us nothing new about the upcoming games. Well Cyanide/Focus have now given us something genuinely interesting with a Gameplay Trailer for the TDF console games! Watch it on Youtube here.

Nice looking graphics and a re-designed HUD. Tons of official and licensed teams and riders, but still without a few here and there (Sky, Etixx, BMC and Trek missing). But it's got all the stages of the 2015 Tour.... plus the Criterium International and Criterium Dauphine! Gotta say i'm excited by ProTeam mode as well as the Descent Challenge mode.

All told it looks very good with some nice advances and additions compared to previous versions. Even if they are still obsessed with the thought of Pinot in Yellow and him sprinting on the Champs-Élysées.

Giro Week Three

The culminating week of the seasons first Grand Tour. The opening two weeks have been packed with action and talking points and even if Alberto now holds a sizable gap to Aru if we've learnt anything so far it's that this Giro is just ready to flip things on their head at any moment!

Keep abreast of it all in the 2015 Giro d'Italia - Week Three (24th - 31st May) thread. Every day members of the site provide some top quality stage previews and then everyone can discuss the events as they happen and long into the following evening.

ManGame Madness

The Transfer Period finished on Thursday evening and the dust has just about settled. The PT managers are busy planning their riders seasons whilst the PCT and CT managers will get started on those tasks in the coming days. WildCards have been given out and the pre-season Bay Cycling Classic series is setting up and becoming a real cornerstone of the season.

Story Game Summary

EPIC is currently running through Continental Championships. Taylor Phinney (BMC) won the American TT.  Chris Froome (Sky) won the European TT. Po-Ding Kim (CSS) win the Afrusian TT. The Road Race events should be coming this week.

CX:ND Season 2 is picking speed back up. Next up is the first NES event to showcase the "best of the rest" riders in Perth. There are still some excellent talents on show and it should be a great race before the circus moves onto the Americas.

Thread of the Week

The Giro thread would be the obvious pick, and by now you should know i don't do the obvious pick if i can help it. I also refuse to pick the Eurovision thread. I am still going to go with a Cycling forum thread though. The Giro is far from the only race hapening at the moment so my Thread of the Week is the Other Races 2015 thread!

PCM.daily DB team back in business for PCM2015
As you all may have noticed, the PCM.daily DB team hasn't been able to create a 2015 DB for PCM2014. The main reason for this was the fact that we didn't have enough team members available to cover the amount of work that needed to be done.

I haven't been able to do anything myself for a while too, because I've been busy with school. At the moment I've got a little spare time, before I have another few nusy weeks at school. In 7 weeks my summer holiday starts, so I'll have plenty of spare time to work on PCM.daily projects.

In the next few weeks I will gather with the current members of the DB team, so we can decide a few things:
1. Whether we will create a 2015DB for PCM2014
2. If we need additional members for the Expansion Pack for PCM2015
3. What will be the features in the 2015 EP added or left out compared to the 2014 EP

We will keep you posted on any updates right here!

haasje33
PCM.daily DB team

PCM 2015 Trailer

Speaking of PCM 2015, Focus have released a short teaser trailer for the next edition of the game.

Giro Week 2

Boy is the Giro delivering some great racing! Entering week two we've shifted over to a new thread for discussions here. Daily previews go alongside tons of in-race and post-race chat as we make sense of the action and share opinions. Good thing the race keeps throwing talking points at us every day!

ManGame Madness

The opening week of transfers has been rather nuts and seriously all over the place. The Wage record was broken and re-broken as teams took advantage of a possibly one-time opportunity to bag some of the single biggest names in the game. Another season of many teams changing divisions means it's still hard to get a read on how things have shaken out and we probably won't until Transfers finish on Thursday.

Thread of the Week

The Giro Week 1 thread would seem like an obvious choice, too obvious. This week i'm giving Thread of the Week to the surprisingly popular 2015 Tour of California thread. Cavendish vs Contador and the continued explosion of Alaphillipe has made for some great story-lines and the race isn't quite done yet.

Forza Giro!

The years first Grand Tour kicked off yesterday and the site has been hotly anticipating this event for weeks. You can play it in game using Eyolfur's stages whilst you watch it on TV. You can discuss the opening week in the Week One thread. You can follow the ever popular Velogames league (though it's too late to join now). SotD is giving us an all new Giro-Game that looks like a good bit of fun. And just incase all of that slips you by the Giro will be in our site banner until the end of the race. Don't say PCM.Daily doesn't do real cycling!

Man-Game Madness

If you are not a Man-Game manager the next couple of weeks are gonna be flooded with Man-Game action. The Transfer season kicks off today and all 80 managers are involved. Prepare for litteraly thousands of related comments and hundreds of related threads in the Man-Game section. Madness never quite described the Man-Game as accurately as right now.

Story Games Summary

EPIC finished Season 2 Part 1! The Volta Limburg, won by Kittel for Belkin, caps the Part 1 racing. Break 1 is a chance for teams to pick up one or two new EPIC riders and to upgrade their riders stats. We've also got the Conteintenal Championships to look forwards to there as well. Nice to the pace pick up a bit after the last couple of weeks.

CX: A New Dawn began it's second season proper with two races completed. The quality of the reports and responses are just incredible. The third race is due today and it's a game well worth following even if you arn't taking part.

Thread of the Week

You would think it would be a battle of the Giro related threads! Things like the Previews/Hype thread, or the Week One thread or the Giro-Game thread. But no you'd be wrong, mostly because i already mentioned them. I'm very much split this week between two Database related threads, so why not award two Thread of the Weeks? Calculated Stats Based On Final Results and Udoi DB All Time share the award this week. The first is a really interesting Stats idea by TankNL that has taken some big steps forwards recently. The second is an All Time DB by Udoi that looks really interesting.