Gran Turismo 5

Since Kazunori Yamauchi announced the next Gran Turismo 5 update was being held back due to ongoing problems with the PlayStation Network, GT fans have had special reason to closely follow news about the service. Fortunately, Sony has taken yet another important step forward, bringing the PSN Store back online today in the U.S. and Europe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_UdLgoft9w

Kazunori Yamauchi is back to posting messages on Twitter Sunday afternoon, and he offered a bit of information on what’s holding up the next Gran Turismo 5 update. According to translations by our own SHIRAKAWA Akira, Polyphony Digital is waiting until the PlayStation Network finally “settles down” before publishing the next revision of the game.

It looks like the long wait is nearly over – Sony will begin restoring PlayStation Network services around the world over the next 24 hours. A new PS3 firmware update is already available and will be required to connect to the network when it finally does come back online in your location (SCEA is maintaing a service map for U.S. users here). Everyone will, of course, be prompted to change their PSN passwords upon signing in. Watch the video above from Sony president Kazuo Hirai for more information.

As you’ve probably noticed, it’s been nearly seven days now since Sony last offered up a “this week” time frame for the restoration of PlayStation Network services. While there’s still no real end to the downtime in sight, Sony has at least acknowledged they’re probably going to miss that soft deadline with their latest blog post:

Sony held a press conference in Tokyo today to provide more details about the PlayStation Network outage and their plans moving forward. There’s a lot of information of in the press release below, but the best news – for those of you eager to back online with GT5, at least – is they expect online gaming services to return “this week”.

Before you ask in the comments below, no – the PlayStation Network isn’t back up yet (not as of writing, at least). While you wait, check out this slick video tour of Gran Turismo 5’s real-world Tokyo R246 circuit, put together by Caterham Japan to feature their Superlight R300. For comparison, here’s a lap of the track in GT5:

What started as downtime in the PlayStation Network last Thursday has gradually snowballed into a very serious problem for gamers. The inability to connect to PSN has rendered Gran Turismo 5’s online features and races useless, with angst is growing in our forums and around the world.

This interview conducted with Kazunori Yamauchi shortly after the release of Gran Turismo 5 has been flying under the radar since it was published back in February. It was just recently brought to my attention and, though there’s obviously no bombshells, it provides a few interesting details worth highlighting here: