‘Need for Speed’ Calls Toyota ‘Nerds’ For Not Including Supra
Before Toyota deleted their tweet: pic.twitter.com/wIwFskNjKn
— James (@jacoja06) August 20, 2019
A lot of people are looking forward to the 2020 Toyota Supra. However, if you’re also a gamer in addition to gear head, you won’t be finding the Supra – or any Toyota for that matter – in the “Need for Speed Heat” game scheduled to come out in November 2019. Instead, you’ll have the option between 13 BMWs, 13 Nissans, a Polestar and even a 1975 Volvo 242 DL.
When asked why the automaker wouldn’t be represented, Toyota UK said that “you can find our cars in ‘GT Sport,’ which doesn’t promote illegal street racing”. They followed it up with this thread:
We love that you want to see our cars in all your favourite racing games, and honestly, we want the same thing. 1/5
— ToyotaUK (@ToyotaUK) August 21, 2019
Most of us in the Toyota GB social media team fell in love with cars through games like TOCA, Daytona and Gran Turismo. One of us even has fond memories of Pole Position on the Atari! 2/5
— ToyotaUK (@ToyotaUK) August 21, 2019
When you challenge us as to why Toyotas don’t appear in your favourite racing games, we don't want to reply to you with a generic message, but we're currently limited in what we can say and yesterday we got our response wrong. 4/5
— ToyotaUK (@ToyotaUK) August 21, 2019
We'll be really excited to share our future plans with you as soon as we're able to. In the meantime, whether it's Gran Turismo Sport, Forza or Need for Speed, keep on racing. 5/5
— ToyotaUK (@ToyotaUK) August 21, 2019
Although the actual conversation and thread turned into legalities and phrasing, it boils down to the fact that Toyota doesn’t want to promote illegal street racing.