The recent Gran Turismo World Final in Monaco was a chance for the attending media outlets to sit down with series creator Kazunori Yamauchi for some round-table interviews.
We’ve already covered some of the juicier answers to the larger questions, such as the possibility of Gran Turismo ever becoming available on PC platforms, the Gran Turismo Movie, and how the team completely rebuilt the online mode between Sport and 7.
However a number of other questions also arose regarding aspects of GT7, the game’s development roadmap, the GT World Tour, and future technologies. Although Yamauchi wasn’t necessarily able to answer them all in quite such a comprehensive manner, what he couldn’t say was almost as enlightening as what he could!
One of the most talked-about features in Gran Turismo 7 has been the car-selling function. Absent at launch, it finally arrived in update 1.26 in November.
When asked why it took so long, Yamauchi’s answer was rather frank: “We just didn’t have the time to do it properly”. Referencing older Gran Turismo titles, he added “We didn’t want to implement it where all cars that you buy are automatically one-third of their value when you go to sell it”, noting that “we were also creating a model where the prices of the cars vary, and there were a lot of things that we wanted to do in regards to the buying and selling of cars”.
That feature was of course highly requested, and alluded to in a statement made earlier in the year following the unfortunate update 1.07 incident, in which Yamauchi also laid out something of a road map for the title.
The subject of a game road map, and how it relates to fan feedback and suggestions, was also broached. Yamauchi commented “We do carefully consider feedback from the community of Gran Turismo… but there is a roadmap about what are the things we need to do for the future”.
“I’m always sort of living in the future and always thinking of the future of everything,” he continued, “but it’s only been about a year since Gran Turismo 7 came out so it’s still kind of too early to talk about the future”.
Speaking of the future, upcoming technologies formed part of the interviews too, and the second-generation PlayStation VR2 was a hot topic.
Unfortunately it was also not a particularly productive one, with Polyphony Digital seemingly unable to talk about VR2 at all. “We can’t talk about that,” said Yamauchi, adding “There are lots of things I am thinking about I just can’t talk about. But we have lots in our minds!”
Players have also been keen on how and when the new Gran Turismo Sophy AI might come to the game — especially after a comment from an official Gran Turismo channel moderator that it would be this year.
“There is still more development that has to happen,” says Yamauchi. We’d imagine that relates to scalability of the AI’s pace — which is currently superhuman — rather than the surprisingly human behaviors.
The possibility of Sophy as a B-Spec driver, referring to the AI driver-management feature of Gran Turismo 4 to Gran Turismo 6 was also mentioned. “It sounds fun right? I think so too! That is one objective but it’s not easy,” said Yamauchi.
Naturally, given the occasion, Gran Turismo 7’s online racing and the World Tour itself were major talking points during the various interviews.
Referring to the in-game online Sport Mode itself, Yamauchi noted “there is still lots more left to do for Sport mode. We already have events like this but I think there are more things that we can do on the code side to make it even better”.
The subject of the lack of FIA affiliation for the 2022 season was also on the table. “We have always maintained a great relationship with the FIA,” states Yamauchi. “The only reason we had a split this year temporarily was because the features we had in mind on the FIA side and on our side, there was a discrepancy”.
However he is optimistic that the motorsport governing body will be back on board for 2023. “The FIA has welcomed a new president [Mohammed Ben Sulayem] and the organization itself has changed, so I think next year I believe we will probably be working together again”.
That left the subject of the GT World Tour itself, which is set to expand back to its pre-2020 state next season, and how it will evolve in the future.
“I wanted to put serious thought into defining what sport is,” says Yamauchi. “When we think of sport today, the things you think about are the sponsors, the ticketing and broadcasting rights, and the sales of goods and merchandise, but what I’m thinking of is something different from that”.
We look forward to finding out precisely what that means when the World Tour returns in 2023.
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