Gran Turismo Director Kazunori Yamauchi Talks about PS3 Development Struggles, GT Sport Will Be Targeting First-Time Players and Beginners!

Kazunori Yamauchi, Gran Turismo franchise director and the CEO of Polyphony Digital, had some surprising news about the upcoming game in this series. According to him, the game is geared towards gamers who will be playing this series for the first time in their life. They didn’t want to create a hardcore racing simulation title.

As they are running it as an eSports title with FIA, they have a section where racing etiquette and behavior can be learned. The main focus is on equality. He said how they are often asked as to what is the difference between other racing titles and Gran Turismo.

He says that the main point of difference is the level of quality. 140 different cars have been included in this game, and all of them have been rebuilt from scratch. When it comes to tracks, the game will have 27 different layouts spanning over 19 different locations, and there are dirt tracks as well.

The game includes a campaign mode, an arcade mode with the former being the competitive offline mode. There will be 117 different offline events and what they used to call car dealerships have now evolved into brand central. This is the place where cars can be discovered for the first time.

You can watch different high-quality videos produced by the manufacturers for their cars. The game always included a museum feature in the past. In the new museum feature, the game will introduce the history of automobile alongside world history. The game will provide automotive history in extra depth and color.

Kazunori said that the sports mode is the basis for the Gran Turismo Sports name. The game will run two national flagship championships together with the FIA. One of them is the Nations Cup, the world cup of Motorsport while the other is a manufacturer championship. One of the key features of this series is that anyone can participate.

Sport’s purpose is not to discover the fastest drivers in the world like GT Academy. The world is segregated into three different regions in Nations Cup, and people will advance to the world finals after going through regional finals.

Due to the timing of the event, the region is divided into three. The final races will be broadcasted live all around the world, in the Sports mode. In the Manufacturers Cup, the representatives of manufacturers from various regions will advance to the finals.

The world-title winners will be awarded at the FIA prize-winning gala ceremony which is hosted every year. It awards and recognizes real-world motorsport champions. Therefore, besides players like Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton, Gran Turismo Sport winners will be awarded as well.

Kazunori Yamauchi spoke to IGN earlier this month and admitted that working on PS3 was a nightmare for them. Yamauchi talked about the declining sales for the two different Gran Turismo PS3 editions and blamed it all on Sony’s hardware.

According to him, the GT6 conditions were completely against them since it was difficult to develop on the outdated piece of hardware. It created a lot of problems for the development team.

Gran Turismo 5 was first announced in 2006 and after being delayed multiple times, it released back in 2010. GT 6 released three years later.

Yamauchi said that these delays were caused by his desire to deliver the perfect racing experience to gamers. However, in reality, it seems like the development team behind Gran Turismo went through a lot of hardships while developing the games for PS3. While designing the PlayStation 4 console, Sony responded to a lot of developer complaints.