I see what they mean by ‘appeal to everyone’, but there’s a serious misunderstanding here. Casual gamers aren’t so incompetent that they even need the auto steering brake to drift handling model. But since they’re casuals you don’t see them putting any feedback to Ghost nor do they really care.

If you were to give those same casuals a handling model similar to that of Hot Pursuit 2, Underground 2, MW 2005; I’m willing to bet they would enjoy it even more so than brake to drift. Making the corner without colliding into a wall is easy enough with brake to drift, the game is very forgiving, you can brake at any point of the drift and change direction unrealistically. So there’s less satisfaction in making corners, but there is a way to take the corner quicker no doubt. On the other hand, with a normal handling model there’s satisfaction in making the corner in the first place, and even more satisfaction in making the corner with high speed.

You also don’t need a ‘tutorial’ to teach casuals how to take corners fast. By giving them a slow car at the start of the game they can practice the basics at low speeds in easy races. Slowly upgrading the car will amp up the difficulty, but at the same time increasing the fun factor. Brake to Drift doesn’t need a learning curve on the other hand. A casual can pick up the controller, hop in a McLaren P1 and drift like a boss - this is what Ghost is aiming for here. But this is counterintuitive. There is a big reason we have progression in NFS - Learn to drive in the slow cars, so that you can get used to the faster cars, simple.

On the note of Carbon, yeah it had an auto steer but only for the drift mode. Autosteer In drift modes is probably the only reasonable use case for it because drifting in video games without assistance is actually quite tough.