Jordan Greer

Wow! In an unprecedented move (and on a Sunday morning, no less), SCEA has just announced the cancellation of Round 2 in GT Academy USA, due to more abuse and “wall-banging” on Rome and Madrid. All participants who qualified for Round 2 will be automatically moving on to Round 3. The start of round 3, previously scheduled to begin on February 14th, is now “subject to change” pending the next GT5 update, which has been confirmed to introduce more sophisticated corner-cutting and wall-banging detection mechanisms to “prevent this type of inappropriate driving”.

On their Japanese website, Polyphony Digital has formally announced they’ll be pulling the plug on GT5 Prologue’s servers June 30th of this year. The game had a very good run, selling over 5 million copies since its release in Japan back in December of 2007.

Sony and Polyphony Digital have, fortunately, acted quickly to resolve the issues with corner-cutting in round 2 of GT Academy USA. All times for the Indianapolis Road Course have been removed, and the track has been replaced with a new custom-built circuit known as “Eifel 102A”. As with Indy, the  Nür (R34) is the only available car. The round will still end at its regularly scheduled time (February 6th at midnight, EST).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQK3eWW55Bs

Ten years ago, GTPlanet first made its appearance on the web. Since that time, it’s grown to a scale far beyond what I could have ever imagined and, in the process, has made a profound influence on my life’s work and interests. Though the site remains a one-man show behind the scenes, I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you who has played a role in the success of this community over the years.

According to several users in our forums, Sony has started sending out surveys inviting participants to “Help Gran Turismo 5 Stay on Top of Its Game”. In addition to basic demographics, the questions are focused around your progress in the game, how much you’ve been playing it, and which in-game events you enjoy the most. The invitation email goes on to say “your opinions may change the way new games are created”.

One of the more interesting and unusual GT5 features announced before release was “Remote Races” (also known as “Gran Turismo Anywhere”), enabling you to control your B-Spec races on your PS3 from your PC or mobile device. Obviously, this was missing from the game when it shipped last November, and its future has been uncertain – despite the fact that it remains listed (with this screenshot) on Polyphony Digital’s official GT5 feature list.

GT5 was off to a great start last month, selling over 5.5 million copies worldwide in just two weeks. Now, we’re able to catch a glimpse of the game’s performance in the United States thanks to fresh numbers from the NPD Group: 560,500 copies were sold in the U.S. throughout December.

[HTML1]

As you’ve probably heard by now, the PlayStation 3’s security has been completely cracked, allowing unfettered access to the console’s software, files, and games. Unsurprisingly, GT5 has been an active target for hackers taking advantage of the compromised system. Their first major accomplishment involves a way to easily duplicate game-saves between different PSN accounts (sorry, I won’t be providing any source links for information on how to do this).