I don't know if you're keeping up on industry news at all, but along with a lot of territories walking back impending legislation on pure-ICE new car bans, a lot of manufacturers are revisiting the idea too. Only this week Audi announced it was reversing its decision to phase out ICE by 2033. Additionally, low-volume manufacturers (which includes brands like Aston Martin) have remained exempt from large parts of the legislation on the matter, and motorsport keeps on kicking the EV can down the road - WRC moved away from hybrids this season.
Yes, I am following the sector even if I have to admit with lower and lower interest because I am so disappointed about the last trend.
I know that there is a sort of "breaking" effect on the electric trend, but I have also read that for some brands to insert the "reverse gear" and re-introduce gasoline engine is almost impossible.
Huge investments have been already done and the latest cars have a framework structured to accept only the electric engine and modify those for introducing an ICE engine will be extremely expensive.
Moreover some gasoline engine were not developed further to respect the new regulations having in mind to switch to electric, so those engine are not usable and develop and improve those engines will be expensive too.
It is like a oil tanker, to change the course you need miles and miles and you cannot stop in the meanwhile what is going to happen...
We're looking at no sooner than 2035-2040 for a phase shift from all-ICE to hybrid in Europe, never mind the USA where the executive branch thinks EVs, even the its all computer ones, are stupid cars for weenies. And they're not even the largest car markets in the world. 2035 is more than two Gran Turismo games away (if you don't think Sport was one; if you do then it's three GT games away), and even then GT rarely adds cars newer than a year old - so there's still at least three titles left with recent "pure gasoline soul cars".
I didn't do any mathematical counts in my previous thoughts, just a feeling watching the trend.
If I speculate on GT8 release on 2027 to celebrate the 30th birthday, and considering that between GT6 and GT7 took 9 years (maybe due to the platform jump), I can imagine that from 2027 till 2035 we would have still GT8 with speculation about GT9 as coming soon.
Which cars we will have going to be launched in the market between 2033-2035?
How many brands will be already disappeared and merged with some new electric Chinese giant?
We are talking about 10 years from now, an incredible amount of time.
A better question is if GT7 will be the last GT game.
Yamauchi is pretty well-off and 57 years old. He keeps making games because he keeps wanting to get his vision across - and that vision isn't necessarily always cars; he keeps on talking about simulating the world itself - yet, according to self-proclaimed fans, every game is the worst game ever and every update is the worst update ever, and he's stupid and dumb and disconnected and doesn't know anything about cars or fans and "we" want this and "we" want that, and he literally can't post anything anywhere on social media without being deluged with "give us new GT3s", "give us hypercars", and what amounts to "stop being lazy and having fun and go back to making our game".
At some point his desire to make games is going to give way to getting zarked off with entitled babies crying about this that and the other everywhere, and he'll go enjoy a nice retirement somewhere remote with his family and car collection. No Yamauchi more or less means no Gran Turismo; unless he has a successor lined up or they can find someone else who both grasps what the goals are and can say "no" to the management above him (and even Yamauchi doesn't always get his own way), post-KY GT will just sink into the same-as-all-the-other racing games mire with no distinct identity.
Of course, for those who only care about buying a game with GT on the cover for some inane territorial reason, that's fine.
Honestly on this last part I have never thought and you spot on a relevant aspect.
Even if a substitute is already shadowing Yamauchi doesn't mean that will keep the same spirit alive.
I can also speculate that Yamauchi could consider GT as his own creature and could shut down with him (as the child is the ball owner and go home with the ball).
I am really passionate of cars, I grew driving some crazy cars and what I see around me is more and more far from my passion.
I need soon to change my daily car and I am struggling in finding something interesting... so my pessimism would have influenced my writing above...
