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Gran Turismo 5 'XL Edition' pops up on retailer sites
We're going to go out on a limb and assume that Gran Turismo 5 XL Edition, a mysterious new version of GT5 that's recently turned up on Amazon, Newegg and Buy, isn't a DLC-packed Game of the Year-esque compilation re-release, but rather a literally extra-large version of the original. Bigger cars, bigger tracks, bigger disc, bigger box ... it probably even requires an extra-large PlayStation 3 to play it. If you're a market analyst looking to make safe predictions, we guess you could infer that GT5 XL Edition is actually the stateside title for Japan's upcoming Gran Turismo 5 Spec II rerelease, but we prefer living on the edge and thinking outside of the box -- until Polyphony Digital makes an official announcement, of course, at which point all knowledge of this post will be disavowed.
Gran Turismo 5 gives away a Toyota, releases new DLC Pack 2
Don't you hate those "car as a gift" commercials this time of year? If you're in the US, you'll probably know what we're talking about: There's a certain car company that shows commercials during the holidays with an actual car being given as a gift, as if there was some world out there where it was completely appropriate and practical to buy a whole vehicle, put a bow on it, and give it away as a gift. Whatever, Mr. Moneybags. That said, Gran Tourismo 5 is breaking all the rules, and recently released not only Functionality Update 2.02 with some "community-inspired" improvements, but also the gift of a virtual Toyota 86 GT '12 vehicle (above) for all users. You don't have to pay insurance or registration on it, which, unlike a real car, makes it totally appropriate as a gift. And Polyphony Digital has also released DLC Pack 2, which brings four new models to the game, including a Nissan GT-R, a Mini Cooper, and a VW Golf, and is available for $3.99 on the PlayStation Store. Four cars for four bucks is also a great gift. An actual vehicle and all of the responsibilities and payments that come with it? Just put the money in a gift card and we'll figure things out ourselves, thanks.
Gran Turismo 5 2.02 update and DLC lands Dec. 20
You probably wouldn't guess it by talking to one of us, but petrolheads do have the ability to get burnt out on a specific vehicle. It may take a long time, granted, but eventually we'll get bored with our current ride and wish that we had some new iron to tool around with. It's called "Gear Acquisition Syndrome" (GAS), and GAS can be devastatingly expensive if left unchecked. Thankfully though, the GAS methadone clinic known as Gran Turismo 5 is here to keep those urges in check with a title update and several new sets of wheels, all of which become available on December 20. Car Pack 2 will set you back $3.99 and will furnish your ever-growing garage with a 2012 Nissan GT-R Black R35, a 2010 Volkswagen Scirocco R, a 2010 Volkswagen Gold VI R and the 2011 Mini Cooper S. Additionally, anyone who has purchased GT5 DLC in the past will also receive the Gran Turismo Racing Kart 125 SP, which is go-kart for some reason. The (free) 2.02 title update also includes a set of wheels: The recently revealed 2013 Toyota GT-86. Beyond that, the update boasts a slew of interface improvements and even nets you 10 oil change and car wash coupons (in-game, of course). Hopefully this will keep our greasy little mechanic hands busy enough to prevent us from taking out a second mortgage and buying that Thunderbird we've been eyeing.%Gallery-142045%
Sony: GT Academy round two ruined by cheaters, won't count
Sony's GT Academy competition, which was intended to provide the world's best Gran Turismo 5 players with a chance to win a spot as a real race driver using their virtual driving skills, has hit an ugly speed bump. The game's publisher has announced that the second round of the five-round tournament is being stricken from the records -- and the third round delayed -- because some participants were taking advantage of flaws in the game in order to achieve seemingly impossible lap times. Specifically, cheaters were able to cut corners on the Rome and Madrid courses without being penalized by the game for doing so. Rather than reward the cheaters or end the competition entirely, Sony has decided to allow everyone who participated in round two to proceed to round three. Developer Polyphony Digital says that it's working to fix any potential exploits before conducting the third round of races, but can't put an ETA on the completion of the patch. That being the case, the planned start of round three on February 14, 2011 has been delayed indefinitely. We're glad that the competition is (hopefully) being made fair for everyone, but have to admit that it would have been pretty funny to see one of the "winning" cheaters cutting corners on a real race track.
Thrustmaster T500RS steering wheel unveiled: $599 of Gran Turismo perfection
First the tease, now the payoff. Thrustmaster has officially announced the full specs and price for its T500RS steering wheel and pedal set, otherwise known as the official driving simulator for Gran Turismo 5. The T500RS purportedly lets "users truly feel the emotions experienced by drivers on real racing circuits," though whether this includes feelings of unquenchable anger from being put into the wall at Daytona is unclear. A contactless magnetic sensor system known as HallEffect AccuRate Technology gives gamers sixteen-bit precision input that represents a significant upgrade over the twelve-bit version in the Ferrari Wireless GT Cockpit 430 Scuderia Edition. Additionally, 1080 degree wheel rotation gives drivers a half-turn more than Logitech's Driving Force GT, and the system comes with fully adjustable pedals configurable for floor mounted (F1-style) and suspended (GT-style) positions. Slated for a late December or mid January release, depending on your location, the T500RS has a hefty list price of $599.99 MSRP, but how else will you find out what a Bugatti Veyron really handles like on the 'ring? %Gallery-111939%
Thrustmaster teases T500RS steering wheel, the new official peripheral for Gran Turismo
GT5 is finally, finally out, but amazingly it seems to have beaten its official steering wheel to market. For a long time Logitech has maintained the honor of building the wheel that carried Gran Turismo branding, and indeed its Driving Force GT is still the first wheel in the GT5 options. But, Thrustmaster seems to have secured the license for the franchise now and is building a wheel called the T500RS which, if you go Thrustmaster.com, you can get a quick peek of -- or you can just look at the screengrab above. The wheel promises unrivaled accuracy and what looks to be the same sort of magnetic sensor technology used in the company's overwhelmingly beefy HOTAS Warthog controller. Rumors say it'll carry a similar price, too, a whopping $500 MSRP without the optional H-pattern shifter and, though our attempts to confirm anything were shooed away like so many fruitflies, we've been promised more info to come at CES.
Gran Turismo Anywhere brings the web, more features to GT5
At some point, Kazunori Yamauchi and his team at Polyphony Digital are going to be forced to stop adding functionality to the eternally in-development Gran Turismo 5. Until then, they continue to announce new features at every major press event. At this year's TGS, it's "Gran Turismo Anywhere," a new web portal for the racing sim. Features of GTA – actually, let's just call it Gran Turismo Anywhere – include My Home, which includes message boards, photo sharing, and the like, as well as Remote Races, which isn't real-time racing over the web, but rather a racing team management simulation. Yamauchi also announced the X1, a virtual super car in Gran Turismo 5 that seeks to answer the following question: "What would a racing car, freed of all technical regulations look like?" Because F1 cars, rally cars, NASCAR cars, and go-karts just weren't enough, now GT5 also has make-believe cars in its virtual garage. Some more pics of Yamauchi's presentation after the break, but first a poll! %Poll-52886%
Gran Turismo 5 Course Maker and kart racing unveiled
Leave it to the makers of Gran Turismo 5 to take all the "cute" out of kart racing. At Gamescom this week, Polyphony Digital is showing off the two newest features of the ever-expanding sim racer: incredibly realistic go-karts and a track editor (which were unceremoniously revealed a few months ago). The track editor, dubbed "Course Maker," is described by the EU PlayStation Blog as featuring "a dizzying array of settings to tweak" -- no surprise there! Actually, Yamauchi and company appear to have connected with reality just long enough to pare down the editor to four selectable themes for custom tracks. Of course, by not sinking resources into a more full-featured track editor, Polyphony Digital came up with plenty of time to expand GT5 in other directions. Did you know the Photo Travel mode you'll never use now supports 3D images through the use of technology you don't own? Don't worry -- you won't miss out on the complete "racing simulator RPG" that's been added. At least, that's how Yamauchi described the enhanced B-Spec race manager mode, which has you coaching up to six racers and their varying personalities throughout a simulated lifetime. "In GT5 we have been able to create what I originally intended," Yamauchi said of the updated B-Spec mode during his Gamescom presentation. The team's even created what was originally intended for GT6: kart racing. And why not? Gran Turismo 6 could be a while. %Gallery-99887% Update: We've embedded a few third-party videos of the kart racing filmed at Gamescom after the break.
PS3 gets Titanium Blue makeover for Gran Turismo 5 launch bundle; landing in Japan on November 3
Shock of all horrors, Gran Turismo 5 will actually, finally launch in Japan and Europe on November 3. Of course, being more concerned with hardware as we are, our excitement is focused on the rich blue hue that will adorn PS3 consoles bundled with the grandiosely delayed racing game over in Nippon this fall. The ¥35,980 ($421) Gran Turismo 5 Racing Pack will be composed of a Limited Edition copy of the game plus a repainted skinny PlayStation 3 with a 160GB hard drive. Time to give your old importer buddy a call, eh?%Gallery-99696%
Yamauchi: Gran Turismo 5 uses 80% of PS3's power
If you're someone who loves themselves some arbitrary console performance figures, Polyphony Digital boss Kazunori Yamauchi has you covered. Speaking to VentureBeat, the Gran Turismo creator reckons the latest game in Sony's flagship racing series taps "about 80 percent of the processing power" of the PlayStation 3," adding, "the PS3 hardware has a very high peak performance. The better you manipulate it, the better it performs." That last quote sounds more like it's about an engine than a console, which isn't surprising given the amount of time Yamauchi spends behind the wheel of the actual supercars from his oft-delayed game. We seriously hope he's not aiming to use 100 percent of the system's potential -- we'd really like GT5 to come out before a child born today is able to drive a real car.
Gran Turismo 5 dev says Sony targeting a 'Summer 2010' North American release
At a recent press event held for Gran Turismo 5, associate producer Chris Hinojosa-Miranda let slip that Sony is "eying" a Summer 2010 for the game on this side of the Pacific. Destructoid reports that Hinojosa-Miranda wouldn't confirm the possibility of DLC for the upcoming title, nor would he commit to there being any difference (content-wise) between the Japanese release this March and the eventual North American release. Allegedly "details are coming soon," and there's always that demo coming to PSN -- but we were really hoping for the early 2010 release that GT5 head Kazunori Yamauchi had teased a few months back. [Via Kotaku]%Gallery-71410%
Gran Turismo 5 cost roughly $60 million to develop
At the annual SEMA car show in Las Vegas this week, Gran Turismo 5 creative lead Kazunori Yamauchi was on-hand demoing his game for showgoers and talking to the press. Amidst a torrent of questions from Autoweek, Yamauchi roughly calculated the cost of creating Gran Turismo 5: a cool $60 million. That's what five years of development on a single game has cost Polyphony Digital thus far, an amount Yamauchi says was totally justified in order to "get it right." "We threw away the legacy code from GT4 and started from scratch ... It's been five years from [the release of] GT4, and that's the same amount of time it took to develop the first GT4." And rather than dodging the reasoning behind the lack of a solid GT5 release date anywhere outside of Japan, Yamauchi flatly offered, "That's more depending on SCEA marketing decisions." Allow us to venture a guess – first half of 2010, perhaps?%Gallery-71410%[Via VGChartz]
Gran Turismo 5 making-of video reveals mysterious packaging [update]
It's quite clear to us that Gran Turismo 5 creative director Kazunori Yamauchi knows way more about cars than we do. Take, for instance, this latest making-of video discovered by GT Planet (embedded after the break), where he gets down to the nitty gritty on the inclusion of Mercedes' 2011 SLS AMG in his game. Before he delves into the possibility of the car appearing on the game's cover, he's shown with co-workers handling a box with three disc cases -- one blue, one red, one black. Though he makes it clear over the course of the clip that this isn't the final packaging, he doesn't exactly spell out what these mysterious cases might hold. Millions of cars? Top Gear episodes? Micro Machines?! Our best guess is that it's a Collector's Edition of some sort, though we'd love for such a thing to include a miniature SLS AMG (just sayin'!).Getting back to the SLS AMG, Yamauchi says that the to-be-released car is in the running for a starring role on the game's cover. "The foremost reason is that the SLS AMG will probably be the most exciting car in the world when Gran Turismo 5 is released ... Also, in terms of styling and driving performance as well, it's probably the hottest car around right now," Yamauchi teases. We've asked Sony for details on the mysterious three-case box and will update this post when we hear more.Update: Sony has responded by declining to comment. And now we play "The Waiting Game."%Gallery-71410%[Thanks, Sean]
TGS 2009: Interview: Gran Turismo 5's Kazunori Yamauchi
During Tokyo Game Show last week we crashed Polyphony Digital's studio and chatted up Kazunori Yamauchi about ... Gran Turismo 6? Wait -- what? Just watch the interview.Selected excerpts below:Joystiq: Are there any plans to bring Gran Turismo PSP's "Party Mode" to GT5?Yamauchi: I'm glad you noticed that. What we really worked hard to make the PSP portable fun and interesting is in those types of details. Obviously, these are ideas we worked hard on and they will be carried over in some form into GT5.In Gran Turismo, with its ten years of history, the people that who good at playing the game are really, really good at playing the game. Of course, there are a lot of first-time players that want to get into the game, and it was a major theme for us to develop the game so it would be easier for them to get into it. With the party races and these game modes we've developed for the PSP, we've come to one solution for that aspect.
Gran Turismo 5 international release likely early 2010
Sony announced a March release for Gran Turismo 5 at Tokyo Game Show last week, a release window that was specifically targeted for the Japanese market. However, don't expect a surprise 2009 release (sorry Amazon!). "I don't think it's going to be that different for US and Europe," Polyphony Digital head Kazunori Yamauchi told journalists at a GT5 event last week. "Marketing is still discussing their issues," which is the reason why a specific date hasn't been pegged yet for those markets.Yamauchi then went on to list a befuddling list of features that should ship on the disc next year. GT Mode will return with all the features of classic GT games, like the garage, the car dealer, the tuning shop, and license tests. However, more exciting are the new features, such as a brand-new physics model that includes damage and deformation for all "normal" cars. Hybrid and electric cars are going to be added to the livery, too, with over 950 cars available on the disc. There will also be over 70 variations of over 20 locations to race through.The online features have been expanded to include both text and voice chat, with support for lobbies and private rooms. There will be online photo albums and online replay albums as well; with the ability to export replays to YouTube. Gran Turismo TV, the video service introduced in Gran Turismo 5 Prologue will also be expanded with a brand new UI, progressive downloading (so you can watch the video content while it downloads), and the ability to export these videos to PSP. While this may seem like the kitchen sink of features, Yamauchi teased, "we have much more planned."Considering it's been five years since the release of Gran Turismo 4 on PS2, fans of the franchise are expecting only the best, if not more.%Gallery-71410%
Overheard@TGS: At least someone's happy ...
While rushing to make an appointment to get hands-on time with Crackdown 2, we overheard two Microsoft exhibitors discussing the reception of the recently released Forza Motorsport 3 demo.Microsoft Rep #1: "Seems like a lot of people like the demo."Microsoft Rep #2: "Yeah, well we really like that GT5 release date!"With Gran Turismo 5 launching in 2010, it looks like Forza Motorsport 3 won't have much traffic to contend with when it launches this October. And boy, is Microsoft happy about it.
Gran Turismo 5's cars caught getting crunched on video
The Subaru Impreza that's zipping around the track in a GamesCom video captured by Gamersyde has certainly seen better days, but its suffering is our reward: we actually get to witness the yes-it's-finally-happening real-time car damage taking place in Gran Turismo 5. Sure, it still might not look quite right (there's something about the cars seeming really lightweight) but it's a good start. Of course, there will always be those who won't be satisfied until "The Real Driving Simulator" lives up to its name and features drivers being thrown from their cars during crashes.Head over to Gamersyde to view the video.[Thanks, Colin!]
Gran Turismo 5 will (finally) crush, flip those lovely cars
There have been some big PlayStation-related announcements today: the PS3 Slim, a PS3 price drop and now the Gran Turismo series is really, seriously, finally incorporating visible car damage. On the official Gran Turismo 5 site, the latest spec sheet for the game touts that its physics model "completely renders deformation from crash." Not scratches, not scuffs, but deformation. (Backing up what we saw in the E3 trailer for the game.) The site also reveals that, in what seems to be an attempt to make up for the absence of spectacular crashes, cars will flip and even land upside-down in reaction to collisions. Of course, all of this will be for naught if a simple bump -- the kind that, in GT5 Prologue, pushes cars aside like they're made of balsa wood -- instantly totals other autos and sends them flying to the moon. We don't think we can wait until GT7 for that to be fixed. [Image]
Logitech presents in-game Gran Turismo 5 Prologue challenge
Players of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue are being asked to "take the Logitech Challenge." It may sound like a soft drink marketing gimmick from the '80s, but it's actually a three-week, in-game competition that could net you some sweet Logitech gaming gear.Beginning tomorrow, March 18, the Logitech Challenge is a series of three lap time based events set on specific courses with an equally specific car selection to choose from. At the end of each week, Logitech will record the top three lap times; third place will win a Logitech Driving Force Wireless wheel and V470 Cordless Laser Mouse; second place will receive the wheel and a set of Logitech Z-5 speakers; come in first and you'll get the wheel, mouse and Logitech Audio Hub speakers.Additionally, five random participants from each week will be selected to receive Driving Force Wireless wheels. Full contest rules can be found here; Logitech is extending a 10% offer at its online store for the duration on the event -- type in coupon code "challenge 09".
GT5 Prologue update now available, adds 3 new cars
Or, as SCEA producer Taku Imasaki puts it on the PlayStation Blog, "NEW CARS!!" He's very excited. Wouldn't you be too, if a free update to Polyphony Digital's Real But Not Real Enough To Crumple Up Your Ferrari Driving Simulator enabled three new rides and a host of gameplay tweaks? When you next load up Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, you'll be able to download the "GT by Citroen" concept car (pictured), the Ferrari California and the Lotus Evora. Gameplay enhancements introduced by the update include alterations to the penalty system, race difficulty levels, wireless controller responsiveness, sound volume balance and Drift Trial races, which will now feature a rolling start. A word of caution, however: "Rankings, arcade time trial times, drift trial records, as well as vehicle-specific quick tune settings and custom key layouts will all be reset with the new update. Replay data created before the second update will no longer be viewable after this update." That's the price of Prologue progress, we suppose.
