Gran Turismo: DLC and the Future
Polyphony Digital's Kazunori Yamauchi talks about moving the franchise forward.
IGN
November 10, 2011
With nearly a year under its fan belt, Gran Turismo 5 is still racing. New GT5 DLC landed last month, and there's more on the way, according to Kazunori Yamauchi, the creator of the Gran Turismo franchise and President of Polyphony Digital Inc. But then what?
Yamauchi made his annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas recently to check out the latest real cars at the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) industry trade show and host the annual GT Awards. IGN caught up with him there to chat about where Gran Turismo is headed as a franchise.
IGN: What role does SEMA play for you each year when you come to Las Vegas for the GT Awards?
Kazunori Yamauchi: One of the other reasons why we actually come to North America for SEMA every year is to really take that opportunity to check out the newest trends in the car market. When you talk about the GT awards, I think it's an opportunity for us to include part of the car trends every year into Gran Turismo and really take that in into our world. So it's something that we'd like to continue doing as long as we can from here on, as well. It's really the car culture that we want to include into Gran Turismo by doing the GT Awards.
IGN: Can you talk about how much you've been able to update and improve Gran Turismo 5 since the game first launched?
Kazunori Yamauchi: It's been about a year since we've released the game and in the interim we've had about 15 updates that were performed on the game. These set up the basic platform for the system. Now that we have that out of the way, we're ready to release more expansions and content to add to the game. I think that will include cars and trucks that we'll be releasing maybe once every two months or so from here on out. What we do from here on is also really dependent on the reaction of the users to this first DLC that we just released because this is the first one. Now we have the feedback from our customers and we'll see how that will affect what we will do from here.
IGN: How has fan feedback impacted what you add to DLC for GT5?
Kazunori Yamauchi: I think one of the major ones is including a simplified cockpit view for all the cars in the game, including the standard cars. That was something that came from the feedback of our users. And that was a lot of work because there are over 900 cars that we had to make sure everything is displayed correctly. There's really no end to the small details because we keep doing something every month basically to make things better according to what people tell us.
IGN: How did you choose what was going to be on the first DLC that released?
Kazunori Yamauchi: We have a pool of materials that are possible to release and it was just something that I decided with the team. We decided the vehicles and tracks and content in this first DLC was going to be our starting point.
IGN: GT Academy driver Bryan Heitkotter is preparing for the Dubai 24 Hours race in January, but he can't practice the course in Gran Turismo 5. Is that course something he might be able to play down the road?
Kazunori Yamauchi: I can't deny the possibility, but I don't know yet.
IGN: What are your thoughts about the fact that those drivers like Bryan Heitkotter played your game and is now a real Nissan professional racecar driver with two races already under his belt all based on your simulation?
Kazunori Yamauchi: It's really a big dream come true for myself, actually. When I created the first Gran Turismo I knew that one day a driver that learned how to drive on Gran Turismo would become a racecar driver. And it really did come true.
IGN: How often are you able to get behind the wheel of real vehicles as you develop these games?
Kazunori Yamauchi: I don't get to drive all of the cars that go into the game, but most of them I do. And out of those cars, some of them I do actually get to drive full-out on the track. That's important in really checking our simulation model every once in a while. I like to periodically check to make sure that we're on the right track when they pull in the physics.
IGN: How do you decide what goes into GT5 DLC and what goes into the next full game?
Kazunori Yamauchi: Of course we're working on GT6 already and I think what really will be the separating factor is something that we can't update through a DLC is something that obviously has to be saved for GT6. Things that we can provide through DLC we will, so that's really the market difference.
