GT5 Demo

British gadget magazine T3 hosted a GT5 competition at the Selfridges department store in London on Thursday, and I’m proud to announce that GTPlanet user Synwraith took top honors (you may remember his interviews with the GT Academy 2010 winners). Check out his extensive write-up from the event for all the details and gameplay impressions from the demo on display. For his efforts, he’s been awarded a voucher for a free copy of GT5, a Logitech Driving Force GT, and has been featured on T3’s website.

The playable GT5 demo which was first spotted last night at a Best Buy in Oregon has now been confirmed by multiple sources. GTPlanet reader Jeramy has also grabbed video of the new demo, walking us through all of the available cars, tracks, and features. Vermontster of the PS Forums has also shared his conversation with the Best Buy employees (thanks, calvins48), which you’ll see below. We do, indeed, owe a lot of thanks to Oldschool27 for his discovery!

UPDATE: This playable demo has since been confirmed. See the new post here for video confirmation and more details.

Polyphony Digital has shared an interesting “ranking transition chart”, showing just how close the battle for the top spot was over the last few days of the Time Trial competition in North America. Of course, these guys weren’t exactly fighting for the same prize as the luckier players in Europe and Austraila/NZ (a visit to the Indy 500 or the chance to become a real racing driver, respectively), so there probably wasn’t as much desperation in the final moments as there was for GT Academy hopefuls. Regardless, I like this sort of data, and would be happy to see similar lap time analytical tools in GT5.

The free Gran Turismo 5 demo used to host the first round of competition in GT Academy 2010 has been downloaded over 1 million times in Europe within the first three weeks of its release (that’s one download approximately every 2 seconds), according to SCEE. Here’s what Yamauchi had to say about the milestone:

GTPlanet user Snake206 has discovered that GT5 is scheduled to make its next appearance at European Motor Show Brussels, to be held January 14-24. While this is good news by itself, there are some clues we could be in for a few surprises at this show. First, Sony is actually holding a contest to give away two tickets to this auto show to “learn” about Gran Turismo – unusual, to say the least. Also, the show ends on the 24th – a date which just happens to be near the deadline for the GT Academy 2010 demo.

Before the Gran Turismo 5 Time Trial Demo was released to the public, it was open to a few members of the press and special VIPs involved with the GT series. While their hot laps and replays were taken offline when the leader boards were reset, they live on thanks to more videos via TaxiGamer. Below you’ll find clips of Kazunori Yamauchi and the first GT Academy winner, Lucas Ordonez. Six-time WRC champion Sebastian Loeb was also spotted in the rankings, though I can’t find any video footage of his lap at the moment. If you have it, please share the link below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfeYSAmlUvg

The Gran Turismo 5 Time Trial demo has just become available for download in the Japanese PSN Store, and it should start popping up in your region soon. Of course, anyone can create a Japanese account (video instructions available here) and the demo’s in English, so first impressions are already starting to roll in around our forums. Head over to our dedicated GT5 Time Trial Demo message board to share your own opinions and see what others have to say about it! The demo file itself weighs in at around 201 MB, so you shouldn’t have to wait too long if you’ve got a slower ‘net connection.

Our friends at TaxiGamer, who are obsessed with high-quality video game footage, have shared some excellent new stuff from the Gran Turismo 5 Demo, including real game play footage, a replay, and a walk through the menu. Keep reading to see all the clips, and visit their site to download the original files in all their glory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGNeHlfJU6I

As I read through the comments here and in our forum, there seems to be a surprising amount of confusion regarding the details and some of the specific points regarding the Gran Turismo 5 demo announced yesterday. I’ll try to condense things down into a few key bullet points to make sure that we’re all on the same page, while summarizing the details of how it’s all going to go down…

Announced just hours ago on the PlayStation EU Blog, GT Academy 2010 will be held in a brand new demo of Gran Turismo 5 hitting the PlayStation Store on December 17, 2009. The demo will feature a stock and tuned version of the Nissan 370Z, and, while Sony has decided not to release the track just yet, I have been aware of the competition for some time now and GTPlanet can reveal the demo will include either Spa Francorchamps or the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. However, Sony described the track as a “specially created section of a new Gran Turismo 5 circuit”, which suggests to me it’s the Indianapolis GP Circuit, as it is quite literally a “section” of a larger circuit. (Let’s not forget it was also the big track prominently shown in Gran Turismo 5’s E3 2009 trailer.)