Polyphony Digital

Polyphony Digital has announced they’ll be showing off a special version of Gran Turismo at Sony’s “Dramatic 4K Experience” in Japan.

Before the Gran Turismo Asia Championship 2012, the finalists were invited on a tour of Polyphony Digital’s new offices in Tokyo. A video which features some highlights of the event has been released, and contains a few interesting surprises.

Since the technology was first announced in January of 2010, Gran Turismo’s “Data Logger” has been mentioned a few times a year. As the first car to support it, the Toyota 86, makes its way into the world market, we’re finally learning a bit more about the product.

Ironically, England’s famous Silverstone Circuit has hosted every region’s GT Academy Race Camp every year since the competition began in 2008, yet has never actually been featured in a Gran Turismo game.

Each year at the prestigious Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, Kazunori Yamauchi personally selects a car at the show to be awarded the “Gran Turismo Trophy” and included in a future Gran Turismo title.

A team of Sony / Polyphony Digital engineers were spotted at a high-end tuning shop south of Los Angeles, capturing exhaust sounds for the Hyundai Veloster Turbo and Genesis Coupe on a dynamometer.

The focus of the automotive world will be on Monterey, California this weekend for the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and accompanying historic races at Laguna Seca, with the Shelby Cobra as this year’s featured marque.

Kazunori Yamauchi accepted the Honor Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences last night, at a special awards gala held in Barcelona.

Kazunori Yamauchi sported a Spanish soccer jersey at one point during a media session in Barcelona today at GameLab 2012, and some of his early interviews with local news outlets are now being published.

Kazunori Yamauchi will be attending GameLab 2012, a video game developer’s conference to be held this weekend in Barcelona, Spain. He will be receiving an Honor Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and will be delivering a speech on the Gran Turismo series and GT Academy.

After 24 hours of all-weather driving and some unbelievable twists and turns, Team GT Academy safely brought home their #123 Nissan GT-R first in their SP8T class and 30th overall.

As reported yesterday, the 40th Nürburgring 24 Hours gets underway at 16:00 CEST (14:00 GMT) today, with the Team GT Academy car 47th on the 171-car grid – and first in the SP8T class.

12 months after he scored a class victory for Schulze motorsport, Gran Turismo founder Kazunori Yamauchi returns to the Nürburgring 24hr race but this time he has another famous Gran Turismo name accompanying him.

Following on from the GTPlanet blog post late last week, GTP members have been back to the famous Mount Panorama circuit at Bathurst to catch the Polyphony crews at work.

After a busy 2011 for Polyphony Digital, including a move and expansion to new offices in Fukuoka, the studio has recently started to advertise for new “Gran Turismo staff”. According to this translation of their home page, PD are after a number of GT-specific staff, including:

Polyphony Digital has updated their title sales list, and the new numbers are impressive. Between January and September of 2011, Gran Turismo 5 moved an additional 1 million copies. This brings the game’s total sales up to 7.3 million, and helped push the entire series past 64.7 million sold.

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!

Each year at SEMA in Las Vegas, Sony hosts the “Gran Turismo Awards” – a competition with one very important judge (Kazunori Yamauchi), who selects a car on display at the show for inclusion in a GT game.