Gran Turismo’s Yamauchi clears up the track – and a few other things

In an interview with Famitsu, Producer Kazunori Yamauchi clarified what’s up with the “almost missing in action” Gran Turismo 4 Mobile (yes, they’re still making the game), and explained the advanced AI and car damage engines for Gran Turismo HD. Okay, first things first: Gran Turismo Mobile is still on track. Polyphony has made that clear earlier; Yamauchi is making that clear now. He also hints at PSP-PS3 connectivity, similar to how a PC connects to a cellphone (or is it the other way around?). He could not comment further, however.

Yamauchi explained the reasoning behind releasing car damage and AI for Gran Turismo HD as downloads, which in short is “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Online gaming has changed the way developers approach building a game, he says. Rather than keep adding content until it’s time to release the game, it’s best to start service with something, and build it up from there. This means that a GTHD game (the Classic version) could be out as early as December (in Japan, anyway), and can be expanded later with microtransaction downloads.

And as for those downloads? Given the expense of downloading those cars and tracks and so forth, Polyphony hopes to make the GTHD-downloaded content usable for GT5 (planned release in 2008). Which, in our opinion, would actually be a very good idea – at least those downloads will still be useful when we get the next game, right?

In an interview with Famitsu, Producer Kazunori Yamauchi clarified what’s up with the “almost missing in action” Gran Turismo 4 Mobile (yes, they’re still making the game), and explained the advanced AI and car damage engines for Gran Turismo HD. Okay, first things first: Gran Turismo Mobile is still on track. Polyphony has made that clear earlier; Yamauchi is making that clear now. He also hints at PSP-PS3 connectivity, similar to how a PC connects to a cellphone (or is it the other way around?). He could not comment further, however.

Yamauchi explained the reasoning behind releasing car damage and AI for Gran Turismo HD as downloads, which in short is “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Online gaming has changed the way developers approach building a game, he says. Rather than keep adding content until it’s time to release the game, it’s best to start service with something, and build it up from there. This means that a GTHD game (the Classic version) could be out as early as December (in Japan, anyway), and can be expanded later with microtransaction downloads.

And as for those downloads? Given the expense of downloading those cars and tracks and so forth, Polyphony hopes to make the GTHD-downloaded content usable for GT5 (planned release in 2008). Which, in our opinion, would actually be a very good idea – at least those downloads will still be useful when we get the next game, right?