http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQPM2g-UsCM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzcVXzrUH9A

When the staff at VG247 got the chance to interview SCEE president Andrew House, they didn’t hesitate to ask him directly about why we didn’t get the Gran Turismo 5 release date announcement that everyone was expecting.  His response:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEUzLSeuY4A

IGN editor Ryan Clements entered the GamesCom show floor this morning, and headed straight for the Gran Turismo booth.  After admiring the game’s new damage features, he got to talk with Kazunori Yamauchi and asked him to clarify some of the questions that were raised yesterday.  As many expected, not all of the cars in the game will feature damage:

Hot on the heels of Gamersyde’s first look at the GamesCom playable GT5 demo, they now provide us with a first real look at ingame damage.

The folks at Gamersyde have managed to snare a video of GT5 being played on the floor at the GamesCom gathering in Cologne.

As if today hadn’t been dramatic enough for GT fans, Polyphony Digital has pulled the Gran Turismo 5 feature list from their website.  In its place, they’ve announced the PSP-3000 “Gran Turismo Edition” – which is quite curious, considering how strongly the game has been associated with the new PSP Go.  At this point, we don’t have any more details about the availability of this device, only that it’s going to be “released in limited quantity” on October 1st.

Check out all of the 21 brand new screenshots in our full gallery after the jump…

Just released via Polyphony Digital’s website (the article seems to have been removed – let the conspiracy theories begin!).  Thanks to Black Chamber for the complete translation!

BREAKING NEWS:  Just announced at the Sony GamesCom press conference: European and PAL region gamers who purchase a PSP Go and register it before October 10th will be able to download the full Gran Turismo PSP game, digitally, at no cost.

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An early walkthrough this morning of the GamesCom show floor has revealed Gran Turismo 5 will be in playable form today.  There are clearly two different types of displays for the game: one featuring PSP’s, and the other with steering wheels and HDTV’s.  We also have further confirmation from the Japanese “Express” magazine, which states that “”GT5 will be playable at Gamescom and next will be at Tokyo Game Show.”  Check out the video after the jump to get a closer look at the Gran Turismo booth (visible after 1:25)!

All eyes of the gaming world are on Cologne, Germany, as Sony holds a massive three-hour long press conference today.  The star of the show is widely rumored to be a new “PS3 Slim”, designed to replace the PlayStation 3 at a lower price point to drive sales.  However, three hours is a terribly long time to talk about just one new device, and we’ve heard that Gran Turismo 5 news will also be coming out of the show.  Nothing is guaranteed, however, and it would be wise to not expect too much to be revealed about GT5 before GT PSP hits store shelves on October 1st.  With that said, it would certainly be a great opportunity for Sony to reveal another trailer for the game while committing to solid a release date.

Here’s a little something to make you smile while we wait for Sony’s press conference at GamesCom on Tuesday…  Gran Turismo 5 got some unexpected promotion on one of the most-visited websites in the world.  The problem, of course, is that website was MSN.com – wholly owned and operated by Microsoft.  The MSN editors are apparently unaware of the heated rivalry between their parent company’s own Forza Motorsport series and GT, and to make matters worse, they misspelled “Turismo” in the headline.  Of course, it didn’t take long for word of the ‘mistake’ to hit our own forums, and Galvanise at NeoGAF managed to grab this screenshot.  Good catch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsmO1_6SMkc

GTPlanet independently verified leaked shots of the new Logitech G27 a while back, but many of you still weren’t convinced.  Earlier this week, however, a VirtualR reader just happened to stumble upon the new wheel at Logitech’s own web site.  He wisely nabbed screenshots while the pages and images were still online to verify his discovery.  Although there doesn’t appear to be any new technical details revealed in the Portugese product description visible in the screenshots, it confirms the exterior design (including the six wheel buttons, thicker wheel, shift light indicators, and the suspiciously absent shift mode selector switch).  It’s becoming more and more likely, however, that the G27 is simply an evolutionary update to the G25, as opposed to a radical new design with lots of additional features.  We’ll keep you updated, of course, as more information is released.

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 // continue to fall 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…

After a pricing mistake launched Gran Turismo 5 to the top of Amazon.com’s UK sales charts, the web’s largest retailer announced today that it will be cancelling all those pre-orders for the game.  Here’s the email sent out to everyone this morning who had their copy on reserve: