I see no reason it couldn’t be a launch title. They were very clear when GT Sport came out that they developed assets for the next generation, claiming their textures will still look great up to 8k resolution. It is clear they have added ray tracing to their game engine, but they won’t need to re-model the cars/tracks for this.
I guess my main question is whether they will hold back to 2021 simply in order to add more content to separate it from GT Sport. Enough people complained when GT Sport came out with a small car/track roster, and they might not want to set that tone at the launch of GT7. If this, I expect a Fall 2021 release.
Kaz mentioned in an interview last year they were bringing cars/tracks to GT Sport as quick as they could model them (before stopping end of last year to focus on GT7). I think if it is to be a launch title it will have only a handful of new tracks and maybe 50 added cars at launch over where GT Sport is today. If they delay to 2021, they could have a dozen new tracks and 100+ new cars. Unless of course Kaz was only being half truthful, as perhaps they have been developing GT7 content alongside GT Sport for years, and simply never intended that extra content to be patched into GT Sport, hence his comment they were providing GT Sport tracks/cars as fast as they could develop them.
I believe their sound recordings will translate into this generation just fine. The in-game footage they showed I can hear a minor improvement to the sound engine in being able to hear more motor/exhaust noises from the non-player cars around the player car. A minor gripe I have had with GT Sport was not being able to rely on sound to position cars around me as much as I would have liked. I am disappointed there was still no sound reverb when the Mazda is driving through the tunnel in Trial Mountain or near walls in the gameplay trailer. I hope that is a feature they consider implementing in the final game. It adds an extra layer of realism that the car is truly present in the environment.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see minor tweaks to the tire/handling models and AI, but I don’t expect any major updates in that respect. I also don’t expect to see any major changes to the race UI or race cameras - maybe minor tweaks, but just like in the trailer they showed I think a lot of that will carry over from GT Sport.
Ultimately I think GT 7 on PS5 and beyond was always their intention when they set out to rebuild their game engine and assets from the ground up, with HDR up to 10k nits, 8k textures, etc. I think GT Sport as more of a GT 7 Prologue simply as a means to deliver something on the PS4 generation.
I don’t think they will be patching GT Sport with native 4K support. I think they split their codebase a long time ago to start optimizing for PS5. Considering how similar much of the racing aspects of GT7 will likely be with GT Sport, they will want to keep as much reason as possible (4k resolution, ray tracing, new content) for gamers to buy GT7.