PS3 Fanboy

You thought you'd have to wait until 2008 for some Gran Turismo fun, didn't you? Well you can stop thinking that right now as the latest piece of news to come out of the PlayStation Premiere event in Tokyo is an announcement that GT 5 prologue will be available in Japan in October. What is effectively a demo for Gran Turismo 5 will feature full online support as well as some cars which will be featuring in this year's Tokyo Motor Show.

Whether it will be available in the US or EU in October is up in the air, however it's fairly safe to assume it will be out before the end of the year. There is no word yet on what the price will be for the download, considering the current PSN offering is downloadable for free.

At Sony's E3 press conference, Sony showcased the stunning Gran Turismo 5 Prologue trailer. At first, we thought that some parts of the game were pre-rendered. We overheard one Sony developer telling us, off the record, that if any developer can make a game look that good, it's certainly Polyphony Digital.

Check out the new screenshots in our gallery:

The creator of the Gran Turismo games, Kazunori Yamauchi, has confirmed that there will be an in-car view in Gran Turismo 5 -- a first for the Gran Turismo series. Speaking to French motorsports TV show Turbo, Yamauchi said:

"To translate the real car into 3D, we use data and assets provided by the car manufacturers, but we also use a scanner that completely digitizes a car. Here's a scoop: We're also modeling the dashboards because you can drive from the interior view in the upcoming Gran Turismo 5."

The in-car view is something that fans have been requesting for a long time, so this should make quite a few people happy. It seems like Polyphony Digital is really pulling out all the stops this time around; this combined with car damage, shows that the Gran Turismo series truly is going next-gen (sorry GT HD -- you don't count). Makes you wonder how many of the changes are because of Microsoft's driving games though. PGR 3 has a great in-car camera, and Forza 2 has damage modeling already and they both have online play. So the Gran Turismo series definitely has some catching up to do in some areas.

You heard right -- this Fall (or Autumn, if you want to be really specific) Sony and Polyphony will be releasing a sort of demo Prologue to the upcoming Gran Turismo 5. It's rumored to feature several cars and circuits apart from what we experienced with Gran Turismo HD. Not to mention some online network play via the Gran Turismo Network.

Well, since this comes out in the Fall and the next full iteration of the GT series is due out in the Spring of '08, we've got to wonder if this will follow GTHD in some respects. Namely, will it be free to download? We're going to vote 'yes' because the Gran Turismo series is pretty much Sony property. Sony wants to keep their network free and there's no reason to charge us for that. For third-party games there'll probably be a fee once demos start rolling out. What do you guys think?

[via Joystiq]

There's got to be a way to get our grubby American hands on this demo! Japan gets to download the free GTHD demo on December 24th, we know, but what does it include? New details have surfaced and the available cars and track are known. The track is Eiger Nordwand, available in both normal and reverse racing modes. The cars are thus:

• Suzuki Cappuccino '95
  
• Mazda Eunos Roadster '89
  
• Honda Integra Type R'04 (yes, the Integra is a Honda)
  
• Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IV GSR'96
  
• Infinity G35 Coupe
  
• Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX GSR'05
  
• Lotus Elise 111R'04
  
• Nissan Sky Liner GT-R V Spec II '94
  
• Toyota Celica GT-FOUR Rally Car '95
• Ferrari 599'06

You start with the Cappuccino, just like every day of my life (har, har), and by completing certain criteria, you unlock the next car. So on and so forth. No online play, but you can post your scores online and the top-ranking fellows even have the race itself up for download. Pretty snazzy! Hope we can get into it, also.

That was fast! Right after some amazing screenshots were revealed, Sony and Polyphony decided to cut the crap and halt production of Gran Turismo HD, focusing solely on Gran Turismo 5 due out in 2008. GTHD is, however, going to come out as a demo on December 24th, offering a little less than a dozen cars and two variations of one track. It's supposed to be a Japan-only demo, but they couldn't possibly keep it away from everyone else. Could they? Now... while this is pretty sad news (even though people were complaining about the microtransactions idea and people will know complain about a free demo... go figure), we have to think... could this demo truly be more of a lead-in to Gran Turismo 5 instead of the resignation of GTHD? A taste of what to come, one may say. Leave us your thoughts.

A new site has opened up in Japan called PlayBeyond. Think of it as a site for the PS3, where some of the biggest game talents have lengthy interviews about the new console and pretty much flatter the heck out of it. While IGN did a good job of summing up the interview with Gran Turismo producer Kazunori Yamauchi, we can at least tell you what each nine-minute segment is about.

1. Graphics (resolution jump, HD) will surprise gamers with finished products
   
2. Real life physics can be worked into games, along with hundreds of bystanders watching a race
   
3. Online network or networking... will turn into something new the whole world can understand and get in on
   
4. Viewable distance -- able to see hundreds of meters ahead in a race now instead of thirty or so
5. Gran Turismo will change and evolve, sending new car data across the network almost daily
6. Not only able to race against others over the network, a community of sorts will form
7. PS3 as a television revolution, changing what is meant when we ask "what's on tv?"
   
8. Games and movies are on equal ground with the PS3 -- no more excuses of "it's just a game"... finer details and programming are necessary. (So this weeds out the shoddy games? Hmm.)
   
9. Yamauchi closes by saying he wishes to change the world with his games and the PS3 is the tool to cause such a revolution

Wow! Now that's flattery. We'll have to see how Gran Turismo's latest incarnation turns out and if any of these points are realized. Surely some will, but a revolution? Wasn't there another system claiming to be a "Revolution"? That's different, but hey. Check out the story on IGN if you want a little more detail on any of the points, though there's not too much else to scrape from it unless you understand Japanese and watch the PlayBeyond interview.

Imagine you're in one of the most premier developing houses around, and you've suddenly been asked to ensure the showing of a historically impressive franchise at the biggest videogame gathering in the world. And you've got three weeks to do it.

This is what was going through Polyphony Digital's Kazunori Yamauchi when he was personally asked by Ken Kutaragi to have something ready for E3 concerning Gran Turismo. So with three weeks to go before the big event, the staff set to work. The magic happened thanks to hi-res car models from the Photo Mode in Gran Turismo 4.

Now if only every developer had that kind of work ethic (Duke Nukem Forever anyone?).

Dubbed Gran Turismo HD, it is actually considered to be in prototype-phase as opposed to a GT product. The idea is to show off the muscle behind the PS3, and anyone would be hard to argue that these fall short of doing just that. Of course what would a next-gen Sony console be without some sort of Gran Turismo installment? This statement should give fans of the series something to look forward to: "The wait for the next generation of Gran Turismo, post launch of PS3, may not be as long as you think."