Porsche has said that they are now on a two track strategy. There is the maximum performance strategy and there is the driving enthusiast strategy. The 918 and GT3 fall into the maximum performance strategy track.

As much as some folks like rowing gears and such, if they don't have a car that can compete with the upper end of the sports car market (and of course up in the super-car market), then they have a problem. The Turbo can't really be the sports car contender, fast though it may be, so it falls to the GT3.

For the enthusiast driver, they have the Caymen GT4 and the like, which still has a manual.

The GT3 is one of the queens of the track day event (from what I've heard, I'm not so lucky as to be able to be involved in such things), if not The Queen. Without a DCT, it would likely not remain competitive. As much as some folks like to row gears, probably most of those folks who go to track days want to be competitive.

Though, I have to say that I can't imagine that the new 991 is remotely disappointing in the driver satisfaction area. Of course by the time I can afford a real sports car, there won't be anything really left that's serious and that has a manual. So I'll never even experience the manual shifting world (other than in my daily driver car which isn't quite the same.) Maybe that makes it easier for me to accept, though I can understand the John Henry aspects of a manual transmission on a track. I whine about how technology cheapens the value of mastery in the musicianship arena, so it's maybe a bit hypocritical not to do the same in competitive driving.

Still, it's not like having a DCT suddenly makes you a hero. You could put me in that RS, and a really good river in a Golf, and he'd probably toast me. There's still a lot of skill involved.