Kazunori Yamauchi

Kazunori Yamauchi has given us a heads-up regarding what to expect from GT5 in terms of hard drive installation size via Twitter (human translation thanks to our own SHIRAKAWA Akira):

For the third consecutive year, Kazunori Yamauchi has been invited to the prestigious Pebble Beach Concourse d’Elegance to present the Gran Turismo Trophy – an award “to support those who make efforts to preserve irreplaceable, precious automotive culture for future generations to come”. This year, it goes to the one and only 1952 Abarth 1500 Biposto Coupe in existence – an unusual, quirky, and significant car. From the official announcement:

Hello all, from drizzly Cologne!

GT fans, get ready! The start of GamesCom 2010 is now only hours away, and I’m very excited to announce GTPlanet’s big plans for the show. We’re teaming up with InsideSimRacing.tv to bring you unprecedented, in-depth coverage of all the new Gran Turismo 5 information about to be released. Here’s a preview of everything that’s about to go down over the next few days:

Remember the contest held to title the Daiki Kasho song used in Gran Turismo 5’s E3 2010 trailer? The winner was finally announced last week after Kazunori Yamauchi made his selection from 5,444 entries: “5OUL ON D!SPLAY”.

Before Kazunori Yamauchi created the first Gran Turismo, he began his career with a title known as Motor Toon Grand Prix. Produced by “Polys Entertainment” (later to become Polyphony Digital), it’s a cartoon racing game featuring 8 karts and 10 tracks. Sony has just announced the game’s availability for download as a “PSOne Classic” on PSN for $5.99. So, if you want to see how it all really got started, grab the 251 MB download and give it a go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd0fscJeyxg

Thanks to gamer28 for digging up this short-but-sweet interview by AOL Autos with Kazunori Yamauchi, as he discusses the role that hybrid cars will play in Gran Turismo 5. Most notably, he also mentions you’ll be able to “tune” hybrids – with the recommendation of turbo-charging the new Honda CR-Z which will be featured in the game.

GT series creator Kazunori Yamauchi is taking your questions live, right now, via Honda’s official Twitter account! If you’re on Twitter, submit your questions by including the “#Honda” and “#E3” hash-tags in your tweets. I’ll be following the interview closely and will update this post accordingly. The interview starts right now, at 12:00 PM Pacific Time!

EuroGamer was first to share new details that emerged from the private GT5 presentation Yamauchi hosted at E3 on Wednesday, and now we’ve got even more information from MotorTrend, Kotaku, IGN, and GameSpot. Now, in addition to the new details I’ve already covered, here’s what we know:

As you may recall, GT series creator Kazunori Yamauchi joined the Team World Car Awards for the 24-Hour Nurburgring race just a few weeks ago. Despite some mechanical troubles, they finished fourth in their class, with Yamauchi himself setting the team’s second-fastest lap at 9:48. Check out on-board video of one of his laps below, featuring his signature smooth-and-steady driving style. Congratulations to the whole team, and thanks to all who sent this in!

Gaming business news site MCV is claiming to have received word from a “source close to Sony” that Gran Turismo 5’s implementation of 3D technology and support for the new PlayStation Move controller are the reasons for the game’s extended development time. While 3D support has already been confirmed, until now PS Move rumors had been fueled by nothing more than some extremely vague statements by Kazunori Yamauchi early last month to gaming magazine PSM3:

As many of you know, the father of the Gran Turismo series is competing in the Nurburgring 24 Hours race, going on right now. He’s driving the #72 Lexus IS-F with teammates Hideshi Matsuda, Owen Mildenhall, and Peter Lyon (learn more about them here). You can monitor their progress live on the race’s official website – they’ve even got streaming video coverage available right here. For audio coverage in English, tune in to Radio Le Mans (thanks for the shout-out on the air , guys!). I’ll update this post when the results are in. Good luck, Yamauchi-san!

In what is presumably the last of Kazunori Yamauchi’s round of interviews to emerge from his time at Snetterton, he’s made a comment regarding the development status of the big game:

In an interview with Japanese show “Love Cars!”, Yamauchi hinted at updates to GT5’s damage modeling:

During his time at Snetterton to watch the two GT Academy 2010 finalists compete for the top spot, Kazunori Yamauchi talked with quite a few journalists. His last interview to be published is with BBC’s TopGear. As you would expect, there aren’t any bombshells, but here’s the most notable quotes:

One of the more unpleasant surprises we’ve had waiting for Gran Turismo 5 was the unexpected postponement of the game’s March 2010 Japanese release. It was a quiet announcement, but set a somber tone at the beginning of the year for us eager fans. Since that time, we have not received any sort of information on exactly why that happened – until now. In an excellent interviewwith Dean Gibson of AutoExpress last weekend, Yamauchi-san clarified things a little bit:

Kazunori Yamauchi was (and actually still is, thanks to Iceland’s volcano) in the UK this past weekend to meet with the GT Academy 2010 winners at Snetterton. That went well, but the first interview to emerge from his visit (which appears to have been removed from AutoBlog UK) has already caused a great deal of teeth-grinding in our forums. Here’s the problem:

MotorTrend has just published a new video today, which includes new NASCAR video footage – including interior view! It also documents Kazunori Yamauchi’s first-hand experience at the Texas Motor Speedway. Thanks to everyone who sent this in!