GTPlanet

The latest European sales numbers at VGChartz for “the week ending March 29, 2008″ show that exactly 374,607 Blu-Ray copies of Gran Turismo 5: Prologue have been sold.  Considering that the game was released in Europe on March 28, those sales numbers could only apply to the two single days that it was available on store shelves.  This, of course, is in addition to the one million European pre-orders and does not include the number of times the game has been purchased via PSN.

So, will you be making it 374,608 copies sold, or will you add your tally to the number of downloads?  Vote in our official poll and share which version you intend to purchase.

The much-touted inclusion of the Top Gear television series in Gran Turismo TV has finally come to fruition today for owners of the Japanese edition of Gran Tursimo 5 Prologue!  According to early reports from our forums, the complete first episode of Season 6 is the only one that has been posted, and it’s only going to be available until April 27.  We can expect a total of 60 episodes of the show to appear in the game, but this talk of “expiration” seems to indicate that not all will be available at once.  Still no word on a PAL update for European players, but it is simply a matter of time.  Check out the video trailer after the jump…

As GTPlanet has posted over the past few days, Polyphony has finally released the Spec II update for the Japanese game.  While we’ve been throwing around the highlights in this new update (like the inclusion of High Speed Ring, Ferrari F40, F2007, QTS, etc.), the game’s official Japanese site has carefully outlined all of the new features.  Check out the complete list after the jump…

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GTPlanet user dark_ruffo has created two excellent videos of the F2007 in action on the full Suzuka Circuit.  Both are of the same lap, inside the car and out.  It’s one of the first complete replays that we’ve seen on the full circuit, and it is nothing short of fantastic.  To put things in perspective, I’ve also included an onboard lap of Suzuka with Michael Schumacher in the F2006.  Play both on-board videos at the same time to see how they compare!

Despite some very serious problems actually getting the latest Japanese GT5 Prologue update to finish downloading, users who did manage to get the file are happily reporting that all of the vehicles in the U.S. and PAL versions of the game made it into the Japanese Spec II update.  So, if you’ve imported your own copy of the game, wait a few hours until the Internet tubes unclog and grab hold of your own F2007!  Granted, the IT staff in charge of managing the actual hosting of the file may not take international traffic into account when planning to release these updates.  However, unless certain technological infrastructure improvements are made, April 17 could become one very long day for fans here in North America.

Since we first learned of all the exciting new changes and content to the PAL and U.S. editions of Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, there has been one dominant question on our forums: will the Japanese edition of the game be updated accordingly?  It’s a legitimate question for many of the hard-core fans on GTPlanet, who imported the region free game back in January.  Until now, Polyphony and Sony had remained mum on the subject, but today the official Japanese site posted the following news release:

“Gran Turismo 5 Prologue” will be undergoing a free online update to “Gran Turismo Prologue Spec II” at around noon on Friday, March 28.

The detailed content of the update will be announced on the day of the update, but there are some points of caution before performing the update. Please red before proceeding with the update.

(1) After updating, it will not be possible to replay the replay data created and saved before the update.

(2) Because the content of events will be renewed in the update, the event data before the update will be cleared, and those events will no longer be possible to play. (Acquired prize credits, cars in the garage, and clear information up to the A class will be carried over.)

(3) Even if an error occurs during the update, data downloaded up to the error is saved. Repeating the update will complete the download normally.

The update can be resumed as indicated below:

- Select News in My Page after starting the game
- Exit the game with the PS button, and restart the game.

* To update, you will need a Playstation 3 connected to the internet with a broadband connection, and “Gran Turismo 5 Prologue” (Either the Blu-ray disc version or downloaded version).

* All information listed in this website is for Japan. For information outside Japan, please refer to the website of your region.

While new vehicles are not explicitly mentioned, a “tuned car” is visible in the Spec II screenshot from their site (as seen in this post), so I believe it is a fairly safe assumption.  Regardless, we won’t have to wait too much longer to find out…

A few days ago, we posted an interview of Kazunori Yamauchi walking us through some of the new features in GT5 Prologue, such as the Quick Tune screen and real-time setup adjustments.  However, as you may have noticed, the video was not perfect and stopped playing after about 5 minutes.  Today, thanks to jweaver, we’ve got the rest of the segment.  Aside from an incredibly annoying narrator (who translates the words of Kazunori Yamauchi with a bizarre drawl), near the end we get about a minute of footage of the F2007 racing against “normal” cars on Daytona Super Speedway.  It’s the first time we’ve seen the F2007 in action on the oval circuit, and the first time we’ve seen how it performs against normal cars.  Don’t miss it!

As we first speculated, the complete Gran Turismo 5 game will not be released until next year in 2009.  The confirmation comes from a reply to a comment at the PlayStation Blog:

“Also, to further clarify, GT5 is still about a year away. You should just decide now to buy it, enjoy it, go online and race against anyone and everyone, rank number one worldwide, get the girl (or guy) and become the most popular kid in town. The end.“

This doesn’t really come as much of a surprise, especially as Polyphony continues to pack more and more content into Prologue.  If the rumblings of new features are any indication, however, Prologue will continue to evolve and expand via online updates that will keep all of us entertained through the months ahead.

Let the rush begin: one of the United Kingdom’s largest online retailers, Play.com, has posted the following notice on their site:

“Our initial allocation of stock has now sold through. All orders placed on or after 25th March will be fulfilled week commencing 31st March.”

This represents an absolutely incredible demand for the game - and more importantly, an incredible demand for the hard-copy Blu-Ray disc.  Perhaps less informed fans of the series (i.e. those who don’t come to GTPlanet) are not aware that it will also be available via PSN download?  Or, could it be that everyone likes the secure feeling of owning a physical copy of the game?  Which version will you, yourself, choose to purchase? Head on over to our GT5 Prologue Forum and let us know.

As we learned earlier today, GT5 Prologue takes the series’ physics to a new level by allowing the player to completely disable the anti-lock braking system.  Now, only a few hours later, we’ve got the first video of the “skidding” in action from our own Numer0bis -  grab the video here.  As you can see in this screen grab, the brakes (with more bias correctly in the front) first lock up the two front wheels.  A few seconds later as the vehicle’s speed decreases, the rear wheels stop spinning as well.  It’s a very accurate recreation - thanks for the quick work, Numer0bis!