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Sony announced today that the cumulative worldwide shipment of the Gran Turismo franchise has exceeded 50 million units as of April 30, 2008. This sales figure was achieved over the past 10 years and 4 months since the launch of the first title in the franchise - Gran Turismo, in December 1997.

The Gran Turismo franchise, from the original Gran Turismo to the latest Gran Turismo 5 Prologue has received high regard not just from game fans, but also from professional racing drivers and people in the automobile industry.

The seventh installment, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, has recorded strong sales since the first launch in Japan in December, 2007, followed by North America and Europe in Spring of 2008, with more than 2 million units of cumulative shipment worldwide and contributing to the further expansion of the PS3 platform.

Title Release Dates in North America

• Gran Turismo - May 12, 1998
• Gran Turismo 2 - December 23, 1999
• Gran Turismo 3 A-spec - July 10, 2001
• Gran Turismo 4 - February 22, 2005
• Gran Turismo 5 Prologue - April 15, 2008

Via: Press Release

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Gran Turismo 5 Prologue has been a huge success, particularly in Europe, but Sony has told GamesIndustry.biz that it expects LittleBigPlanet to outsell the first significant GT game to come out in over three years. (Sorry, Gran Turismo HD simply doesn’t count.) I don’t think anyone is doubting the success of LBP, but outselling Gran Turismo is no small task.

“We’re hoping sales will be higher than GT5 Prologue,” said SCEE prez David Reeves. Kaz Hirai also spoke at this week’s PlayStation Day, and was quite high on the game.

“These are genre-defining titles, something we’re very proud of, and just one facet of the rapidly growing world of PlayStation,” said Kaz Hirai, president of SCEA.

“[LittleBigPlanet] will completely revolutionise the way gamers interact with their games, especially through the community functions and the ability to interact with LittleBigPlanet lovers around the globe,” he added.

So, anyone want to place any bets? How many sales do you expect to see LBP sell in its first few months at retail?

With Gran Turismo 5 Prologue now in gamers’ hands, Sony and Polyphony Digital have their sights set on really taking the online aspect of Gran Turismo to a whole new level. While online play was an important step forward, we’ve been playing Forza online for years. So what’s so different about their plan for Gran Turismo? How does social networking for car enthusiasts sound?

“Our goal is to become another medium for car companies, like magazines and TVs,” Taku Imasaki, the US senior producer for Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, told Reuters. “We’re the perfect game for that and ideally we could become the MySpace or Facebook for auto enthusiasts.”

I know a few friends who would love something like that, but I’m not sure how a social network could sustain itself on a single game system. If that was expanded to work on PCs, then they might be onto something, but it’ll really come down to execution and hoping that people aren’t suffering from social networking fatigue.

via GameDaily

Def Leppard’s Guitar Hero III outing and the obligatory weekly dose of Rock Band tracks (now finally with a full album!), there’s a ton of great new content now available on the PlayStation Store. The biggest release is certainly the Variety Map Pack ($10) for Call of Duty 4 which naturally includes four new multiplayer maps.

A new PS one Classic was also released today with R-Types ($6), ending that particular drought. (Even though you and I both know we probably won’t see another Classic for weeks.) There’s also the Biolith Rebellion 2 expansion set for The Eye of Judgment, whichs adds more than 100 new creatures, spells and abilities, so that sounds like a must-buy for fans of The Eye.

There’s also plenty of videos, demos of both echochrome and Iron Man, a map pack for Army of Two, downloadable songs for Karaoke Revolution, and more. So hit the break and check out everything now available for download.

Read the full article

You would think that, with no updates to the PlayStation Store for PC other than a cosmetic update to match the PS3’s update, this week would be a fairly significant. But you’d be wrong.

All there is this week is basically a message that says, “You should envy PlayStation 3 owners,” in the form of two new videos of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.

That’s it. That’s all. Maybe next week will be a little better.

• * GT5 Prologue Friendly Fires Video
• * GT5 Prologue Beyond the Apex Trailer

It’s been two weeks now since there’s been a real update to the PlayStation Store, so much of what’s been released today is catching up for missing out on the past few weeks – Rock Band songs, videos, and a UEFA Euro 2008 demo.

Of course, the big news is that Gran Turismo 5 Prologue has been released. I’ve spent some time today playing it, and I think it’ll be a fine holdover for diehard Gran Turismo fans.

The new Warhawk Broken Mirror pack is also now available for $8, as well as a bundle with both the Broken Mirror and Omega Dawn DLC packs.

Hit the break for the full list of content. Read the full article

Finally. It seemed like this day would never come, but you can finally head to the PlayStation Store and – right now – download Gran Turismo 5 Prologue for $40. As of this moment, PSN seems to be handling the load well enough; the download is going fairly quickly for me considering it’s 1.9GB. If it manages to hold up for the rest of the day, I think that’d be a pretty big knock on Xbox Live for it struggling when a major download is released. It’s a win-win for Sony fanboys.

Earlier this week, two developers from Polyphony Digital participated in a chat with members of the PlayStation forums. While they didn’t go into much detail on any of the subjects thanks to time restraints, they did reveal hit upon a lot of key points – like the omission of all movies from the PSN version of the game. They can all be downloaded from the PlayStation Store, though, with the exception of “Beyond the Apex” which is the one difference between the Blu-ray and PSN versions of the game in terms of content.

You can check out the full transcript of the chat here.

The Chinese gaming market is huge, so it’s only natural that game companies should want to take advantage of that. With development costs getting larger and larger, companies want to find ways to compensate for that by releasing to larger audiences. And, according to Polyphony Digital head Kazunori Yamauchi, that might just be the case with Gran Turismo.

Yamauchi claims that Gran Turismo 5 has cost 50 times as much as it took to develop the original Gran Turismo for PC. “A model required 180 days,” Yamauchi told German site derStandard (and translated by Develop). “For comparison: For a car in GT2 needed only one day.”

Gran Turismo has been long thought of as a brand you’d only see on a PlayStation platform, but that might just change. Yamauchi said, “It is very, very improbable that GT will comes out on another consoles.

“But perhaps it comes to the PC. Particularly [for] the Chinese market.”

If piracy is so rampant on PCs and in China, it seems like Polyphony would be walking into a world of trouble. But, if handled properly, this could help to dramatically increase the horizons of a series that already sells insanely well elsewhere in the world.

via Game|Life

If you’ve followed the Gran Turismo series in any more depth than simply playing the games, you’ve no doubt heard Kazunori Yamauchi’s name mentioned. He’s the series’ creator and rarely will you read something about him that doesn’t mention his obsession with perfection – nothing is ever good enough, which is why his games are frequently delayed (‘sup, Gran Turismo PSP?) and things like vehicle damage have taken so long to be included.

He’s embedded in car culture and his obsession means you’ll be getting a super-polished, ultra-realistic game, even if it did take a long time to finally get into your hands. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue isn’t meant to be a tease for what’s to come, but it is, as Yamauchi describes it, “[I]t’s not really a teaser of things to come. This is the best we can provide at this point in time. It’s just that we don’t consider it up to par, in terms of volume and things like that, to be called a full game by itself - by our standards, not by other people’s standards. That’s one thing we want to make clear for people.”

In an interview with Eurogamer, Yamauchi also once again admitted that he tends to create games in a vacuum, not paying attention to what the competition (e.g. Forza Motorsport) is doing.

“We don’t reference any other games when we’re making Gran Turismo - it’s purely based on what we want to achieve as a game.

“Actually, I have difficulty playing other games for over five minutes. A lot of the low-level quality just stands out so much in other games that I can’t stand them!”

That seems rather harsh, but what do you really expect from a perfectionist?

For those of you who already have your hands on GT5 Prologue, what do you think of it?

Speaking in an interview, Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi has stated that Gran Turismo 4 for the PSP will most likely not be released this year or finished for that matter.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Yamauchi stated:

“We had been developing the PSP version, but the problem was that the PS3 version took much more time and effort than we had first imagined. So that’s been delayed - I don’t think we’ll be able to make the end of this year for the PSP version, but we are working on it.”

He also elaborated on the PSP version being influenced by the online aspect of the PS3:

“Once we experienced PS3 online and went through all of that, we came to the conclusion that PSP should not be a standalone product - it should be linked in to the world of Gran Turismo, linked with the PlayStation 3.”

The Gran Turismo series has shipped over 48 million units worldwide since the first version appeared on the original PlayStation and the recently released GT5: Prologue not only entered the chart over in the UK at number one but within a week became the fastest-selling PS3 title. Plus, thanks to the GT series, Yamauchi was invited by Nissan to help design the multifunction display for the GT-R, which is so bloody gorgeous it makes me swear like a sailor every time I look at it.

You can read the full interview with Kazunori Yamauchi by clicking through the link below.

Source: Eurogamer

Mr. Gran Turismo, series creator Kazunori Yamauchi, said vehicle damage was coming “very, very soon” and at least I just assumed he meant it would be coming with the full version of Gran Turismo 5 next year. Turns out it’ll be even sooner than that – Gran Turismo 5 Prologue isn’t even out worldwide yet, and there’s a “major update” planned for later this year that will add, among other things, vehicle damage.

In an interview with CVG, Yamauchi said the update will also enhance Prologue’s online modes and will add “community building features,” whatever those might be.

Those sound like some nice additions, but it really furthers the theory that Gran Turismo 5 Prologue really is an incomplete game. Assuming those additions are free, though, GT5 Prologue should be a fine holdover for the real GT5.

Normally I’d be writing about the new demos/games/videos/downloadable content that’ve been released on the PlayStation Store today, but as per part of the ongoing store upgrade, there won’t be any new content added either today or next Thursday.

Look on the bright side: this is a rocking month to be a PlayStation 3 owner. Aside from the new PlayStation Store, there’s also Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, DualShock 3, Warhawk’s second expansion and the 1.3 patch, the Metal Gear Online beta… it’s a flurry of awesomeness on PS3.

Glorified demo or not, Sony has to be mighty pleased with the early performance of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue in the UK. The game has debuted as the top selling game in its first week, breaking the record for fastest weekly seller on PS3, previously held by Resistance: Fall of Man.

The chart also has Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games in the number two and three spots, and Call of Duty 4 comes in at number seven, proving that the game isn’t only selling like crazy in the United States.

Hopefully this doesn’t lead to an onslaught of releases of incomplete games at slightly discounted prices; the last thing we need is for the games we buy to no longer include all of the features we’ve come to expect from a retail product.

These numbers are courtesy of ELSPA, as compiled by Chart Track.

via Next Gen

You might see Gran Turismo 5 Prologue as a glorified demo, as many do, but if you want any new Gran Turismo action it’s going to be your only option for at least another year. As Eurogamer points out, associate producer Chris Hinojosa-Miranda replied to a comment on PlayStation.Blog claiming that Gran Turismo 5 is “still about a year away.”

On the bright side, series creator Kazunori Yamauchi has revealed that we should expect vehicle deformation in his games “very, very soon.” It’s about time.

“We really, really want to put damage onto our vehicles,” he told GamerTV. “We’ve had a lot of discussions with the manufacturers and, although at the beginning they hated the idea of deformation, now they’re slowly coming around to it.

“We’ve still got a few to convince, but we will. Expect deformation in the very near future: very, very soon.”

Yamauchi is well known for his unapologetic obsession with perfection, so I’d expect the wait on vehicle deformation in the Gran Turismo series to be worth it.

via Eurogamer; videogaming247

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue will launch in North America on April 17, and Europe this Friday. If that isn’t enough to get your motor running, Sony has released the soundtrack for the NA edition and here are the tracks you can expect to be drifting to:

• Weezer - “Automatic” (LA Riots remix)
• The Mars Volta - “Goliath” (EL-P remix)
• Justice - “Let There Be Light”
• SebastiAn - “Dolami”
• Kavinsky - “Testarossa Autodrive” (SebastiAn remix)
• DJ Shadow - “Love Love”
• Does it Offend You, Yeah? - “With a Heavy Heart (I Regret to Inform You)”
• The Earaches - “Not the Kind of Man I Am”
• Thin Lizzy - “The Rocker (Richard Evans Mix)”
• The Klaxons - “Golden Skans”
• Friendly Fires - “On Board”
• Pride Tiger - “Let ‘Em Go”

Artists Nittoku Inoue, naomee, and Goose will also be included. No confirmation has been given for the European or Japanese releases or whether any of the above songs will be included in those versions as well. I am sure we will find out soon enough though.

Thanks: Videogaming247

SCEE has confirmed that pre-orders for the European version of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue have almost reached the 1 million mark. With a week to go, it seems likely that GT5 will be the first PS3 title to break 1 million sales, going Platinum before launch.

Sony’s GT series has sold more than 48 million games to date. GT5 releases on Blu-ray in Austrailia and for digital download in Europe March 27, 2008. The Blu-ray will be available in Europe March 28th and will hit North America April 17th.

via GamesIndustry.biz

We’ve heard the complaints that Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is nothing more than a glorified demo; a half-assed version of a game that was lacking in more areas than GT fans would like for me to recount here. The $40 price tag only added salt to the wounds.

But it turns out the North American release of the game is going to see a number of features that the Japanese release didn’t, including drift mode, new events, 2-player split-screen, and – most importantly – car tuning.

The simple addition of car tuning goes a long way to making that $40 seem a lot more doable, and now Gran Turismo fans shouldn’t have too much of a qualm with picking the game up next month from retail stores or the PlayStation Network. Even as somehow who isn’t a diehard sim racing fan, I think these new features make the game something I’ll definitely be purchasing.

PS3 Fanboy also has a complete listing of all the cars and tracks you can expect to see in Prologue. Keep your fingers crossed that your favorite car made it into the list; I know my V12 Vanquish is nowhere to be seen.

April is set to be a huge month for gamers; especially PlayStation 3 owners. Not only is the PlayStation Store being updated, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and and Grand Theft Auto IV are both releasing, the DualShock 3 will finally make its way to the United States, the Metal Gear Online beta is starting… it’s going to be incredible, to say the least. Adding to that lineup will be the next expansion for Warhawk, as confirmed by John Hight.

He didn’t go into any specifics on what the expansion is, but I’m guessing it has something to do with the v1.3 patch that Dylan Jobe talked about last month. It’s adding several new items, new VoIP options, Home integration, and new paint schemes – that’s certainly a substantial amount of content for a free download.

Or the expansion might be something altogether different and unrelated; either way, Warhawk fans have plenty to look forward to.

PS3 Racing fans can officially start their engines on April 17, 2008 according to a blog posted tot he Sony official Playstation Blog as that will be the date that the latest in the long running Gran Turismo racing simulation series hits retail with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is the first commercial game in the series to reach the HD generation consoles and there are high expectations from gamers regarding its release. Gran Turismo HD was one of the first live demonstrations shown at the announcement of the Ps3 back in 2006 and the stunning graphics have been making gamers lose control ever since.

Featuring 50 cars and a preview of what the final Gran Turismo 5 title will have in store, this retail Blu-Ray title will also be downloadable via the Playstation Store, both at the discounted price of $40.

Will it be enough to hold over fans of the series until the full GT5 makes it out of development?

source: Playstation Blog

Gran Turismo was once the grand champion of console driving games. It’s a shame that the series took a serious dive after the 3rd game on the PS2, but it’s back or at least slightly back now. GT5 Prologue may not be the most dominating racing game ever, but it’s a good start on the PS3. The above trailer is an interesting “Season’s Greetings Video” that shows off some of the game’s graphics. Enjoy!