Gran Turismo 5 Definitely Coming to PS3

Kazunori Yamauchi, father to the Gran Turismo series, has been speaking out lately (at least in bits and pieces), about what we can expect from the next installment and what system it will play on.

According to Yamauchi, a team at Polyphony Digital has been hard at work for months on the tools and code that will one day become Gran Turismo 5. These include graphical tests and early track demos. Some of you may be surprised to learn that GT5 isn't being produced for the current PlayStation 2 or PSP consoles, but for Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3 console--which is set to debut at this year's E3 and ship sometime in 2006.

The PlayStation 2 will eventually see an update for Gran Turismo 4 that includes online play, while the PSP handheld will get it's own variation of GT4 sometime later this summer.

Some of the features Kazunori and his team are working on for GT5 are custom car modifications, realistic damage modeling, and improved crowd and driver models (including reactive spectators).

No specific date for Gran Turismo 5 for the PlayStation 3 has been set yet. Mr. Yamauchi will only say that the game "will be done when it's done," though our sources within Sony suggest that the pressure is on to have it ready in time for the console's Japanese launch, which could come as early as Christmas 2005 (although Q1 2006 is more likely).

3/1/2005 Frank Provo

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