Gran Turismo 5

Since the Red Bull X2010’s existence was announced nearly one year ago, there’s been surprisingly little promotion of the vehicle in the form of real-world merchandise. A scale-modeler in the UK has decided to change that by taking matters into his own hands, building a 1/43 diorama of the car and putting it up for sale on eBay. Needless to say, it would be the perfect addition to any Gran Turismo collection.

If you’ve taken a look at the Mercedes’ Live Race Seasonal Event, you’ve probably noticed that many players atop the leaderboards scored their times by exploiting “shortcuts” around the track.

The latest GT5 Seasonal Event has just gone live, featuring one of the world’s favorite cars: the Mini! Races take place at the following locations, with no tire restrictions and are open to Minis with a maximum of 450PP:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_le496-npM8

A batch of new Time and Drift Trials have gone live in Gran Turismo 5, along with a revised Online Car Dealership that highlights Mercedes-Benz.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVgBFBNyxS0

In a surprise move, Polyphony Digital has released a new GT5 update less than one week after 1.11 brought a batch of bug fixes and a Jeff Gordon driving suit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibkOX0w7SoY

Polyphony Digital has been fairly quiet about their Gran Turismo TV service since Gran Turismo 5 was released. Today, though, they’ve added 23 new pay-per-view programs to the list, along with a free show about the 8th Annual Gran Turismo Awards held at SEMA last year. Here’s a look at the new line-up:

Sony Hong Kong is launching an interesting new “online tournament”, starting September 1st, open to players from Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. The tournament consists of three regional and cross-regional rounds of competition, with some hefty prizes up for grabs, including a GT5-Edition Tissot watch, an Apiga AP1 racing seat, a Thrustmaster T500RS steering wheel, and over HK$10,000 in PSN vouchers.

The latest version of Gran Turismo 5, 1.11, is now available as a free download, weighing in at 62MB. As Kazunori Yamauchi previously announced, this minor update is focused on fixing bugs and glitches within the game, with more “features and content” expected to arrive in the next few months.

As was suspected when Polyphony Digital announced GT5’s online maintenance schedule earlier this week, Kazunori Yamauchi has now confirmed, via Twitter, the game’s next update should become available on August 29th/30th.

Polyphony Digital has, curiously, announced a special “NASCAR-themed online racing event” to be held in GT5’s Seasonal Events next Monday, August 29th at approximately 8:00PM PST. Though specifics remain sparse, they have confirmed a unique prize for the event will be available in the form of Jeff Gordon’s 2010 driving suit and helmet. Kazunori Yamauchi has also commented on the event via Twitter.

Polyphony Digital has taken an unusual – though certainly welcome – opportunity to announce scheduled downtime for Gran Turismo 5’s online services through mid-September. While it is not clear what, if anything, these maintenance periods will bring with them in the form of software updates, it’s worth noting the release of new GT5 versions have frequently been released after network downtime.

Though Gamescom 2011 wasn’t nearly as exciting for GT fans as it was last year, Sony and Audi did use the event to launch an impressive new GT5 simulator built around an R8 LMS race car, similar to the one found in the game.