GTPlanet

According to a report by VideoGamesZone.de, Gran Turismo 5* is at Berlin’s IFA trade show…in 3D. The news comes off Sony’s press conference at the show, focusing on their consumer electronics products. The theme of IFA seems to echo what all the big players first started promoting at CES last January: 3D movies and games.

As you might remember from CES, they actually had a copy of GT5 Prologue running on a prototype 3D television. I got to experience the game firsthand, and I can tell you that it was remarkable – not in the “oh-wow-something-is-flying-out-of-the-screen” sense, but it gave the world of  Prologue surprising depth and scale. It didn’t feel like I was looking at a screen – it felt like I was looking out of a window, watching a Nissan GTR drive around Suzuka in a miniature world defined by Polyphony Digital’s texture palette.

VGZ expects Sony to push 3D display technology hard in 2010, and they just might use GT to do it. The question, then, is what does it mean for our favorite franchise beyond GT5’s release? Could Gran Turismo 6 be used to showcase the next generation of Sony televisions? Could you justify upgrading to a new 3D TV in a few year’s time, or do you even want to?

*We’ve heard no other reports that GT5 (not Prologue) is at the IFA show, and there’s a good chance the demo is the same thing we saw at E3 earlier this year. If it does turn out to be something new, we’ll be sure and bring that to you as the news breaks.

As you may know, Polyphony Digital publishes the sales figures of each Gran Turismo game on their website, and they just updated the numbers for Gran Turismo 5: Prologue.  In the last four months (going by the numbers from May), the game has sold approximately 700,000 copies, bringing the total to nearly 4,000,000.  No doubt, the Greatest Hits price drop helped drive retail sales, despite the fact that prices  on eBay.  Regardless, this is an impressive milestone for a “small” game – and one which will, no doubt, pour fuel on the the fire of the endless GT / Forza debate…

With the quickly falling price of GT5 Prologue continuing to drive sales of the little game, many folks who have been holding off are finally picking it up.  Despite its small size, however, it still manages in-depth gameplay – the intricacies of which can be daunting for even experienced players.  To help out, GTPlanet user Conquerer put together this impressive, comprehensive walkthrough that leaves no stone unturned.

Starting out with a large FAQ section, Conquerer’s guide takes you through gameplay modes, detailed specifications on each car, techniques on how to win each race event, car tuning tips, and much more.  This is a really awesome compendium of knowledge, and it’s far more useful than anything you can pick up off the shelf at your local bookstore.  Best of all, he’s providing this information to the online Gran Turismo community free of charge, and you can download it right here on GTPlanet.  This takes a massive amount of work – please be sure to leave him a note of thanks on his profile page or in the comments below to acknowledge his efforts.  Well done!

Download the GT5 Prologue “Ultimate” FAQ/Walkthrough (.txt format, 268 KB)

It’s always kind of interesting to find out that a celebrity shares your hobby for sim racing – especially when that celebrity competes in the highest level of international motorsport!  Renault Formula 1 driver Nelson Piquet, Jr. gave lots of Gran Turismo fans something to smile about when he recently posted the above picture to Twitter from what appears to be his apartment in Monaco.  As you can see, he’s at Suzuka East with the “racing line” enabled – needless to say, that’s something that’s earned him some friedly jibes in our forums!  Regardless, Nelson embraces the web, and communicates frequently via Twitter about everything he’s doing – it’s worth following him at @NelsonPiquet_ (you can follow @GTPlanetNews, too!).

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a Formula 1 star behind the wheel of a Gran Turismo game.  Nelson’s teammate and two-time F1 World Champion, Fernando Alonso, played Prologue (at High Speed Ring) against some lucky Spanish gamer last year.

In a dash of bittersweet news, we can all collectively stop hoping for an “Update Available” message to appear one day when we fire up Gran Turismo 5: Prologue.  The game’s “US Producers”, Chris Hinojosa Miranda and Taku Imasaki confirmed that the team is now completely focused on getting Gran Turismo PSP and GT5 out the door in this Q&A session on the official PlayStation Blog.

Before you get too excited about them answering questions, though, let us be the first to warn you not to expect much.  They did confirm GT PSP will not feature damage or DLC, and that only 4 cars will be on track at a time, but Yamauchi already told us that last month.  While it’s encouraging to at least see more communication about the game, it’s hard to understand why they selected selected some of the questions when they obviously had no intentions of answering them.

If you’ve been holding off on GT5 Prologue because you don’t want to pay for a “demo”, you are quickly running out of excuses – especially if you’re in the United States.  As has been reported around the web, Target has dropped their in-store price on the game to $9.98.  That’s an incredible $30 less than the old MSRP for the game (and what’s still listed on their website), and $20 less than it’s new Greatest Hits price.

Although the most likely explanation for the price cut is to clear out old inventory and make room for the Greatest Hits packagaing, a GTPlanet user has already reported getting a Greatest Hits game for the low price, and someone at SlickDeals.net claims there are no mentions of sales or clearance tags.  As good and unusual as this is, we don’t know how long it will last – so head down to your local store and pick up a copy right now.

A “demo” that has sold more than 3.3 million copies will be added to the PlayStation 3’s “Greatest Hits” library on June 16, along with several other popular titles which have “reached a significant sales threshold”.  Thus, GT5 Prologue continues the decorated history of the franchise, with each worldwide release attaining “Greatest Hits” status.

Of course, when PS3 games are added to the library, their price is reduced to $29.99.  With usual MSRP’s of $59.99, this is a significant cut.  However, Prologue has been available for $39.99 since its release, making it a less exciting addition to the library.  Regardless, it’s an interesting announcement for Sony to make, especially considering what a flood of Gran Turismo 5 news at E3 could do for sales of Prologue…

Alba, a long-time creative character in the GTPlanet community, has maintained a slick, free GT5 Prologue PS3 theme for the past few years.  The latest version was just released, and it’s looking better than ever!  All you need is a USB drive and 60 seconds to get this running on your own console – grab both red and blue versions of Alba’s theme via our download mirror below or directly from his website, follow the installation instructions, then head on over to his forum thread and say thanks!

Alba’s GT5 Prologue Theme Pack (w/Backgrounds) 15.4 MB

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