A new official PlayStation 5 video has confirmed that Gran Turismo 7 is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2021.
The new video, titled “New Worlds to Explore” is very closely related to the first official PlayStation 5 TV ad we saw two weeks ago. That clip featured a short burst of GT7 gameplay — identical to that found in June’s original GT7 launch video — but only in the Japanese version of the ad.
This minute-long video contains the same narration, from PlayStation’s strategic creative partner Travis Scott, but it’s now laid over gameplay from the titles that Sony has been promoting since the very beginning. Among those is Gran Turismo 7 and, for the first time since June, we get to see some new — albeit brief — game footage.
A very short, new sequence involving the Chevrolet Corvette Gr.3 race car shows some racing action at Willow Springs Big Willow. Although we knew the Willow Springs location would be coming to GT7, as it appeared as a selectable course in the previous video, this is the first time we’ve seen it in racing action. In fact this is the first circuit we’ve seen other than the new Trial Mountain to appear in this fashion.
Just for comparison, we’ve recreated the scene in Gran Turismo Sport as closely as we can, and there’s a couple of obvious differences:
Although the angles aren’t exactly the same, you can spot that the Willow Springs environment seems to have been updated. The sparse grass on the track edges is slightly denser, presumably taking advantage of the extra memory space of the PS5. More clear is the lighting, with shadows on the inner front wing, rear wheel arch, and offside wing mirror support. This again speaks volumes for GT7’s use of real-time ray-tracing.
Of course it’s the release date that’s the real attraction of this video. A footnote overlaid on much of the clip states that Gran Turismo 7 is “Anticipated first half of 2021”. This is something that will sound familiar to GT7 fans, as it matches up with the time frame in the advert served up to some Canadian YouTube users just last week. That rather lends credence to the notion that this earlier ad was the real deal and simply slipped out by mistake.
While this is still a little short of a concrete release date, it is nonetheless a good sign for fans eager for the next generation of Gran Turismo on the next-gen console. The wait, it seems, is almost over.
We’ll bring you more news on GT7 as we get it, and you can keep up to date with all we know on the game in our special Gran Turismo 7 Guide.
