Jordan Greer

A few of the first hands-on comments have been popping up around the web by people who actually got to play Gran Turismo 5: Prologue with the new Logitech Driving Force GT wheel, and so far, they are good. While these are just impressions from the floor at the Game Developers Conference (and not full reviews), it is interesting that the force feedback is getting so much attention. Hopefully, these folks have experience with other force-feedback wheels, and can actually detect an improvement from the older games.

There has long been speculation that Gran Turismo 5 Prologue would be arriving on European shores in late March, but nothing we could really put a finger on. Now, as usual, our very own amar212 spied the official European date, quietly tucked away near the bottom of the press release announcing Logitech’s new wheel.

Logitech has just announced the all-new Driving Force GT wheel for Gran Turismo 5 Prologue! This is the first wheel of its kind that has a dial on the wheel itself to allow the user to adjust things on the car in real time, such as brake bias and damper settings. The force-feedback feature has also been given more power, and most importantly, the illuminated GT logo in the center can now be pressed to blow the car’s horn in the game.

I’ve always had a thing for official GT logo merchandise, and it looks like it is finally starting to show up. According to a few of the eBay auctions, if you purchase a PlayStation 3 / GT5 Prologue bundle, you can also get a free GT5 Prologue ‘windbreaker’ jacket. Although similar bundles are imminent for the North American and European markets, it is highly unlikely that we’ll be getting the freebies as well. The individual jackets are beginning to pop-up on eBay, though, so grab one while you still can!

Part 2 of the Kazunori Yamauchi interview that we posted yesterday has been uploaded by GTChannel. There isn’t many interesting questions for this second part of the interview, but he did mention an interesting aspect of the online Gran Turismo 5 experience that we haven’t heard before: “users can also create an online community – for example, fans or owners of the GT-R can create a community or team of their own…” It will certainly be interesting to see if this new feature is mentioned down the road as it has a lot of potential to expand on the game’s online arena.

A new interview with Kazunori Yamauchi was just released by GTChannel, where he discusses some interesting things about his own history and projects that he has worked on in the past. His own personal garage consists of a heavily modified Nissan 350Z, a Honda S2000, a Porsche GT3, and a Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG which he uses as his daily driver. He also owns two Ford GT’s: one white, and one in gunmetal gray.

As you may have heard, Sony has recently launched their new “official” website for the North American version of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. Although we have already reported that there will be more than 60 cars in the U.S. version of the game, the number of tracks mentioned on the site has been raising a few eyebrows. To quote from the new site:

Those of you who have already purchased the Japanese version of Gran Turismo 5: Prologue probably made a good decision. In its latest press release and PS Blog update, the North American release date has been set at April 17 for the new game. Pricing will be set at $39.99 and it will be available as a Blu-Ray disc or as a download from the PlayStation Store. The most interesting thing about the new press release was noticed by resident GT guru amar212 – there will be more than 60 cars for North America. This is a significant increase from the 37 vehicles currently available in the Japanese version of the game. Perhaps they will be available for download in a future update? It’s impossible to say for now, but good news nonetheless.

A well-written article about the level of realism found in Gran Turismo 5: Prologue has been posted over at Kombo. If you don’t have any experience pushing a real race car to the limits, Brian Alexander has done a good job of explaining what that feels like – and how no game will ever be able to compete with it.

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