Kazunori Yamauchi

Kazunori Yamauchi has made two interesting comments at the Goodwood Festival of Speed regarding one of the more controversial aspects of Gran Turismo: engine sounds.

Yesterday’s announcement of Gran Turismo’s partnership with the FIA has made shockwaves around the Internet and right here at home on GTPlanet, and now we have a few early details about the FIA Online Championship – the first virtual race event to be organized and sanctioned by the world’s governing body of motorsport.

As confirmed in a major announcement from Polyphony Digital and the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), Gran Turismo 6 has become the first-ever video game to feature FIA-certified content, with four of the game’s real-world tracks receiving approval from the governing body of world motorsport.

Race Coverage

Polyphony Digital has launched a new blog called the “PitStop” as a place to provide more frequent and informal communications with the public. A “variety of authors” from around the world will be contributing to PitStop, and comments can be posted via Facebook.

The Volkswagen Vision GT car was formally unveiled in the “real world” at the Wörthersee GTI Meeting in Austria today, and Kazunori Yamauchi himself was on hand to launch the car with the executives and designers from VW. The car will be playable in GT6 “mid-June”.

After working closely with Polyphony Digital over the past few weeks, I am excited to announce that Kazunori Yamauchi will be answering a selection of the most popular questions posted in a special forum here on GTPlanet.

Nissan today announced that it is bringing back the Nissan GT-R to the Nordschleife with an assault on the 2014 Nurburgring 24 Hours. The event, held on 21-22 June, is one of the toughest endurance races in the world, providing the ultimate test of man and machine as they compete on the daunting Nurburgring Nordschleife.

Tamir Moscovici’s documentary about Kazunori Yamauchi and the Gran Turismo series has now been released on YouTube, via PlayStation’s official channel.

Kazunori Yamauchi made a special appearance at the Taipei Game Show this weekend, and the first announcements are coming in from Taiwanese sites Gamerhotline and UDN (as kindly translated by our own Yui-san).

KAZ: Pushing the Virtual Divide is now available, premiering exclusively on streaming service Hulu (it will be widely released on Sony Movie Channel, Sony Entertainment Network, Amazon Instant Video, and Crackle starting February 5, 2014).

On Wednesday, January 22, 2014 at 6:00pm PST (click here to convert this to your local time zone), I will be hosting members of the Gran Turismo production team, 2013 GT Academy U.S. champion Nick McMillen, and KAZ director Tamir Moscovici, in a roundtable discussion streamed live on the official PlayStation Twitch.tv channel.

SCEA has announced the release date for KAZ: Pushing the Virtual Divide, a documentary about the history of Gran Turismo and its creator, Kazunori Yamauchi. The film will be released on January 22, 2014 via web streaming service, Hulu.

Over the past week, Gran Turismo 6 has taken over the small town of Ronda, Spain, in what was arguably one of the largest launch events in the history of the video game industry.

At the Gran Turismo 6 launch event, GTPlanet had the opportunity to take part in a round-table interview with GT series creator Kazunori Yamauchi at the Ascari Race Resort.

Amongst all the announcements at the GT6 launch event in Ronda, Spain, one of the most unexpected surprises came from the city of Ronda itself, as the mayor announced a street would be named in honor of Gran Turismo series creator Kazunori Yamauchi.

EuroGamer has published a lengthy and comprehensive interview with Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi, discussing everything form his childhood, his philosophy on life, motorsports, Gran Turismo, and just about everything in between.

Chevrolet has featured Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi in their marketing efforts for the new 2014 Corvette Stingray, which includes an interactive film and website with keyboard-and-mouse challenges.

A special collaboration between the Ayrton Senna Institute and Gran Turismo 6 has just been announced at the 2013 Brazil Game Show in São Paulo.

Last month’s Jalopnik Film Festival was an interesting and successful event for a lot of reasons. Although there were no major GT6 details announced or revealed, Kazunori Yamauchi spent a fair amount of time talking and interacting with journalists from a wide range of backgrounds.