Gran Turismo 5: Prologue

The big August 1st update has been live for more than 24 hours in most of the world now, and although the download was rocky for some, most everyone has their hands on the latest iteration of Gran Turismo 5: Prologue.  Now, we’re discovering quite a few tweaks and bug fixes that weren’t documented in the press release.  For example, in-game sounds have improved, there’s a lot of new music tracks, Logitech’s G25 handling characteristics have changed dramatically, and online race hosts can no longer leave an online race and disconnect the other players.  Threshold has a very hot thread in our forums right now, as everyone tries to document a full list of changes as they are discovered.  Join the rest of GTPlanet in our GT5 Prologue Forum and share your opinion on all the changes!

When we first learned that the in-game GTTV feature was going pay-per-view, prices were still up in the air.  Today, Sony announced that all content would be available for just 99 cents during the two weeks starting August 1st.  Presumably, programs will be priced differently once this introductory promotion is over, but it will encourage people to at least try out the service.  What do you plan on watching, if anything?  Head on over to our Gran Turismo 5 Prologue forums and join the conversation!

Gran Turismo 5: Prologue has played a prominent role at the 2008 British Motor Show, with rumored circuits like the Nurburgring Nordschliefe and Le Sarthe both making appearances.  The most exciting news coming out of the show, however, is the Lotus Evora.  Shortly after its debut, Lotus allowed show goers to “drive” the new car in – you guess it – GT5 Prologue.  Obviously, the Evora isn’t in the current version of the game, and rumors are flying that it’s coming via a future update.  Here’s the first batch of official screenshots, including a rare look at the new car’s interior.

Now that the GT Academy competition is officially over, GTPlanet user Timppaq has taken on the task of organizing and sorting the international results to see just how close the drivers really are.  A special congratulations go to Timppaq of Finland and spyrrari of the Netherlands, who used their registered GTPlanet names to enter the competition.  Thanks to you guys for supporting our site, I know you will represent us well!  Check out Timppaq’s list of all the times along with a breakdown by country right here in his thread.  Of course, if you are also a finalist, be sure to stop by our forums and make yourself known!

Congratulations to Ahmad El Azmi of Kuwait, the fastest driver of more than 10,000 participants in the Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Middle East Challenge 2008.  Preliminary rounds took place in nine regional cities across the Middle East in June and July 2008, with the finalists invited to Dubai for the Grand Final this past weekend.  Ahmed walked away with a trip to Japan to test drive a Nissan GT-R, a “GT Racing Pod”, 40” Bravia LCD TV, and a new PS3.  If you’re reading this,  Ahmad, be sure to stop by our forums and say hello.

As you may or may not be aware, the August 1st update to GT5 Prologue will wipe all of your “Quick Tune” settings.  This is obviously a big problem, but an understandably necessary side affect from updating the game’s physics engine.  The solution, of course, is to “back up” your settings by writing them down, and GTPlanet user MeWhiteNoise makes the task even easier with his professionally crafted “Quick Tune Record Sheets”.  Available in a high-quality PDF file, these Record Sheets can be easily sorted, stored, or filed away however you prefer.  Be sure to stop by his thread on our forums and thank MeWhiteNoise for his contribution to the community!

In a very interesting statement at E3 today, GT series creator Kazunori Yamauchi brought us both good and bad news.  The good news is that he confirmed that the Polyphony Digital team was focusing nearly all of their efforts on Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, working hard to bring us features like vehicular damage, private online races, new tracks, and more cars.  Of course, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, and he added that these updates could push the full version of Gran Turismo 5 back into 2010.  He also confirmed that Gran Turismo Mobile, for the PSP, is still in “active development” but probably not be released until after Gran Turismo 5 (in other words, 2011).

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Polyphony Digital has just posted a special news release to their Japanese site – a downloadable update to Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (the Japanese version, at least) will be available on August 1, 2008.  Aside from the updates to the Gran Turismo TV service, which we will cover in another post, here’s the primary new features that you can look forward to:

A bit of information has popped up in the Gran Turismo 5: Prologue news section about the first international online race event.  Beginning on Thursday, June 26, you will be able to race up to 12 other players from anywhere in the world on the High Speed Ring circuit.  This represents, finally, a step forward in the development of the online racing environment.  All of the current online events limit you to competitors from your local region/continent, and it is good to see that Polyphony are ready to push the boundaries of the functionality of their software.  Also, it brings hope that when we are able to create private races, we won’t have any limitations on who we choose to compete with.  This international event trial will end on July 3rd, so don’t waste any time if you want to try it out – head over to our Gran Turismo 5 Prologue forum to meet up with the best racers every country has to offer.

Order Gran Turismo 5 Prologue for PlayStation 3 between June 19, 2008 and July 22, 2008 in our Video Games Store and receive a $15.00 Amazon.com Gift Card*. An email will be sent out by July 29, 2008 and will include the Amazon.com Gift Card and redemption instructions. This offer applies only to the purchase of the Gran Turismo 5 Prologue for PS3 offered by Amazon.com and does not apply to products sold on our site by third-party merchants or through third-party areas such as Amazon.com Marketplace or Auctions. Limit one per household.

A “Nurburgring Special Edition” of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is on display at the 24-hour endurance race of the Nurburgring Nordschleife. As one of the most popular circuits in Gran Turismo 4, there is perhaps no other track that Prologue owners want more. Here’s a few shots of Nurburgring Special Edition in action (taken by Oliver Wegen of ringfotograf.de), along with video of a complete lap. Check out the rest of the images here.

Gran Turismo series creator Kazunori Yamauchi has announced during an interview with CVG that a “major update” is in the works for GT5: Prologue, and is going to include the highly anticipated vehicular damage!  Other updates will include enhanced online functionality and “community building features.”  We have known for some time now that private races and in-game chat have been in the works, with a realistic release date sometime this summer.  However, damage may be a bit further off in the fuall of this, as cited by IGN.  Stay tuned for the full interview, released tomorrow, where Yamauchi is expected to comment on the possibility of developing a complete Formula 1 title in the future.

The latest European sales numbers at VGChartz for “the week ending March 29, 2008” show that exactly 374,607 Blu-Ray copies of Gran Turismo 5: Prologue have been sold.  Considering that the game was released in Europe on March 28, those sales numbers could only apply to the two single days that it was available on store shelves.  This, of course, is in addition to the one million European pre-orders and does not include the number of times the game has been purchased via PSN.

The much-touted inclusion of the Top Gear television series in Gran Turismo TV has finally come to fruition today for owners of the Japanese edition of Gran Tursimo 5 Prologue!  According to early reports from our forums, the complete first episode of Season 6 is the only one that has been posted, and it’s only going to be available until April 27.  We can expect a total of 60 episodes of the show to appear in the game, but this talk of “expiration” seems to indicate that not all will be available at once.  Still no word on a PAL update for European players, but it is simply a matter of time.  Check out the video trailer after the jump…

As GTPlanet has posted over the past few days, Polyphony has finally released the Spec II update for the Japanese game.  While we’ve been throwing around the highlights in this new update (like the inclusion of High Speed Ring, Ferrari F40, F2007, QTS, etc.), the game’s official Japanese site has carefully outlined all of the new features.  Check out the complete list after the jump…

GTPlanet user dark_ruffo has created two excellent videos of the F2007 in action on the full Suzuka Circuit.  Both are of the same lap, inside the car and out.  It’s one of the first complete replays that we’ve seen on the full circuit, and it is nothing short of fantastic.  To put things in perspective, I’ve also included an onboard lap of Suzuka with Michael Schumacher in the F2006.  Play both on-board videos at the same time to see how they compare!

Despite some very serious problems actually getting the latest Japanese GT5 Prologue update to finish downloading, users who did manage to get the file are happily reporting that all of the vehicles in the U.S. and PAL versions of the game made it into the Japanese Spec II update.  So, if you’ve imported your own copy of the game, wait a few hours until the Internet tubes unclog and grab hold of your own F2007!  Granted, the IT staff in charge of managing the actual hosting of the file may not take international traffic into account when planning to release these updates.  However, unless certain technological infrastructure improvements are made, April 17 could become one very long day for fans here in North America.

Since we first learned of all the exciting new changes and content to the PAL and U.S. editions of Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, there has been one dominant question on our forums: will the Japanese edition of the game be updated accordingly?  It’s a legitimate question for many of the hard-core fans on GTPlanet, who imported the region free game back in January.  Until now, Polyphony and Sony had remained mum on the subject, but today the official Japanese site posted the following news release:

A few days ago, we posted an interview of Kazunori Yamauchi walking us through some of the new features in GT5 Prologue, such as the Quick Tune screen and real-time setup adjustments.  However, as you may have noticed, the video was not perfect and stopped playing after about 5 minutes.  Today, thanks to jweaver, we’ve got the rest of the segment.  Aside from an incredibly annoying narrator (who translates the words of Kazunori Yamauchi with a bizarre drawl), near the end we get about a minute of footage of the F2007 racing against “normal” cars on Daytona Super Speedway.  It’s the first time we’ve seen the F2007 in action on the oval circuit, and the first time we’ve seen how it performs against normal cars.  Don’t miss it!