GT Academy 2012

The famous GT Academy Race Camp gets underway Saturday at its now traditional home, the world renowned Silverstone Circuit in the UK. Over 830,000 people from across Europe entered the fourth iteration of the European competition this year, and only the best 36 remain.

The latest special GT5 Seasonal Events are now live for players who achieved all Gold times in Round 6 of GT Academy 2012 and have received the Nissan GT-R Black edition (GT Academy) ’12.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy1JwoQMk9s

New Seasonal Events are available in Gran Turismo 5 to GT Academy 2012 participants who achieved all Gold times in Round 5 of the competition and were awarded with the Nissan SKYLINE GT-R (R34) (GT Academy) ’02.

The second phase of GT Academy 2012 is now complete, with no less than a dozen national finals taking place across Europe and in the United States.

August is the big month for the race camp finalists from the four GT Academy regions – Russia, Germany, the USA and the eleven eligible European countries – this year, but Sony and Nissan have revealed a surprise for hitherto excluded gamers.

Although Gran Turismo players from Asia didn’t have the chance to become a racing driver, the top players in the region still have an interesting prize to look forward to.

If you thought the 33rd “Racer X” wildcard position brought a dramatic twist to the U.S. GT Academy finals in San Diego last weekend, you’ll be very surprised to find out what the competitors in Portugal had to contend with!

As those of you who tuned in to the live stream already know, the top 16 finalists in the U.S. region of GT Academy 2012 were determined this weekend in a dramatic event held in San Diego, California during Comic-Con.

After eight long weeks of online time trials held in the GT Academy 2012 mini-game, the top 33 Gran Turismo players in the United States have earned their place in the National Finals.

A series of special new Seasonal Events have just been announced for Gran Turismo 5, which feature the prize cars earned in the GT Academy 2012 mini-game.

The one and only U.S. GT Academy 2012 wildcard event is taking place today, Thursday, July 12, in San Diego, California! The winner, who will be known as “Racer X”, will take home the custom HumanRacing GT Chassis pictured above and join the top 32 U.S. contestants in the finals this weekend for a chance to go to Silverstone.

The top 32 drivers from Spain met last weekend in Barcelona for their regional GT Academy 2012 finals.

Yesterday, the first prize (a Nissan Leaf) earned by participants in the GT Academy 2012 mini-game was distributed to players in Gran Turismo 5, but it wasn’t yet clear when the others would become available.

If you achieved “Gold” times in the GT Academy 2012 mini-game, your efforts are about to be rewarded! Prizes earned in the competition’s time trials are now being distributed to players in Gran Turismo 5.

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.

As was discussed in our forums, registration pages for GT Academy 2012 experienced some technical difficulties last weekend in the final days of the competition. This prevented some participants from completing their registration, which would make them ineligible to move forward in the competition.

Lots of new information has just been published on the PlayStation Blog which outlines everything that’s about to go down at the U.S. GT Academy 2012 finals, which will be held alongside Comic-Con next month in San Diego, California.

We’re closing in on the final hours of GT Academy 2012, the most intense and competitive time of the public contest.

GTPlanet has been invited to participate in a live-streaming event on Twitch.tv, Thursday at 20:00 GMT 21:00 GMT (the event had to be delayed one hour due to technical difficulties, you can now watch the recorded stream above). You can watch the stream in the embedded video above, or head over to the official GT Academy channel and watch from there.