Kazunori Yamauchi

Announced this morning via Twitter, Lucas Ordoñez will shortly find himself driving a Nissan GT-R at the punishing Nürburgring 24 Hour race.

After relatively successful pre-race preparations for the GT Academy graduates, their relative fortunes took a turn for the worse come race day.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Kazunori Yamauchi shows some love for Gran Turismo fans by sharing news about the game’s 2.05 update. A rough translation of Kazunori’s tweet via Yahoo! Babel Fish confirms the release dates:

Kazunori Yamauchi has just confirmed, via Twitter, the release date of Gran Turismo 5’s next update, presumably version 2.04.

The ‘Nürburgring 24 hour race’ is the world’s largest touring car event. Kazunori Yamauchi has returned to this extreme race, driven on the combined Grand Prix course and Nordschleife of the Nürburgring.

Kazunori Yamauchi has announced Gran Turismo 5’s next software update and new downloadable content will be coming on December 20, 2011. Via Twitter:

While thanking fans for their Twitter messages celebrating GT5’s one-year-anniversary, Kazunori Yamauchi shared some information about the game’s next update:

IGN has published their most recent interview with Kazunori Yamauchi, where he provides fairly detailed responses to some familiar questions. Notably, he offers a rough timeline of how often we can expect new content to be introduced in Gran Turismo 5:

At the 2011 SEMA Show last week, I had the very special opportunity to – for the first time – personally interview the master himself: Kazunori Yamauchi. We had a great chat, and I am happy to report that Kazunori seemed happy, relaxed, and in good spirits.

The 2011 Gran Turismo Awards were held last Thursday night in Las Vegas, and Kazunori Yamauchi himself selected this year’s “Best in Show” winner: a 1971 Chevrolet Camaro, customized and tuned by Mary Pozzi of Salinas, California.

The 2011 SEMA show kicks off this week in Las Vegas, and the Gran Turismo Awards – where a custom car from the show is awarded immortality in a Gran Turismo game – are almost here!

Just as the North American gamers are getting to grips with yesterday’s DLC addition, Kazunori Yamauchi has announced a game update. The update will address issues gamers have brought up with the Spec 2.0 version of the game released earlier this month:

Following the community reaction to some of the intricacies of the downloadable content released earlier in the week (or next week for North America), Kazunori Yamauchi has been busy working on solutions and responding to complaints via Twitter. The latest of these includes a nod to the present, one-off nature of the car pack:

Kazunori Yamauchi has been sharing a boatload of new details via Twitter this morning on the previously announced Gran Turismo 5 Spec 2.0 Update coming later this month. Here’s an overview of what we can expect from 2.0, which will be made available to everyone for free:

Fulfilling his pledge to make important Twitter posts in English, Kazunori Yamauchi has just announced some interesting plans if Sebastian Vettel wins the 2011 F1 World Championship:

The GT community has been eagerly awaiting news of the next significant update following last month’s announcement hinting at new content and features for us this fall. According to a very rare English-language tweet from Kazunori Yamauchi this morning, that new content and features will be a “Spec 2.0” update to the game in October and downloadable content shortly after:

As was suspected when Polyphony Digital announced GT5’s online maintenance schedule earlier this week, Kazunori Yamauchi has now confirmed, via Twitter, the game’s next update should become available on August 29th/30th.

Polyphony Digital has taken an unusual – though certainly welcome – opportunity to announce scheduled downtime for Gran Turismo 5’s online services through mid-September. While it is not clear what, if anything, these maintenance periods will bring with them in the form of software updates, it’s worth noting the release of new GT5 versions have frequently been released after network downtime.

At the 2011 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance yesterday, Kazunori Yamauchi awarded this year’s Gran Turismo Trophy to a head-turning 1960 Plymouth XNR Ghia Roadster concept car. Created by influential car designer Virgil Exner (hence the concept’s name), it was intended to preview the direction of Chrysler’s designs in the 1960’s. It had enough muscle to back up its dramatic, asymmetrical look, producing 250 horsepower from a Valiant 225 Slant Six (more details on the car are available here).