An official trailer for the next Gran Turismo 7 update has leaked out ahead of schedule, confirming the three cars we were expecting and suggesting that the update will arrive on Thursday July 28.
Update 1: The official GT7 site has posted a “game update maintenance” notice, confirming that the update will arrive on July 28.
Update 2: Information on all the content has now been released through official channels; the article below has been amended to reflect this.
The video was first posted on the “Bilibili” website, a video-streaming platform in China, via the official PlayStation account there. Sony in fact owns a portion of Bilibili, known locally as “B-Site”, having invested $400m in the platform in 2020.
Usually these videos arrive in the hours following the relevant update, but this one has landed a little early. This may have be due to a time zone mismatch or a simple date confusion, as Gran Turismo’s official channels have subsequently released the video.
It takes the usual format of the update videos we’ve seen over the past few years, bearing the title of “Gran Turismo 7 Free Update July 2022” before rolling into a preview of the new content it’s bringing.
Firstly, the good news: the video confirms the identities of the three cars teased by Kazunori Yamauchi before the weekend.
That means that when the update lands players will be able to, depending on credits and game progress, drive the Maserati A6GCS/53 Spyder, Nissan Skyline Super Silhouette, and Porsche 918 Spyder. All three cars are pretty significant additions.
The 918 Spyder is the second of the three “hypercar holy trinity” of high-performance hybrids to be added to the game, following the Ferrari LaFerrari that made its debut in GT Sport. Technically the third is also in the game, although the McLaren P1 GTR is an upgraded, track-only model rather than the P1 road car.
Gran Turismo 2 fans will remember the overpowered, overwinged Nissan Skyline Super Silhouette rather fondly. This Group 5 beast raced successfully in the Japanese Fuji Grand Championship Series, although it’s not clear where it will fit into GT7’s racing categories. It’s also the first car to return from the PS1 era of Gran Turismo without making any intervening appearances.
Finally the Maserati A6GCS/53 Spyder is a car we’ve been expecting for a while. That’s because Kazunori Yamauchi personally crowned it the Gran Turismo Award winner at the 2014 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. This Fantuzzi-bodied car was designed to compete in the 1953 World Sportscar Championship.
However the video only shows these three cars. Unlike the April and June updates, which added a 24-hour layout for Spa-Francorchamps and Watkins Glen respectively, there’s no trace of a new circuit in the video. That suggests that, like the May update, there’s no circuit content coming this time round.
One thing confirmed by an additional article on the official website is two new Scapes locations, and one is very peculiar indeed.
Presumably in honor of the main sponsor of Masahiro Hasemi’s Nissan R30 Skyline Silhouette, Polyphony Digital has added “Tomica Town” to the Scapes catalog. This is the first location that isn’t entirely real, consisting of model buildings and roads from Tomica’s toy selection — and should make for some interesting photographs.
Of course the videos only serve to highlight new content, and the update is likely to include other changes too. Fans will be hoping for new single-player races to expand the “offline” offering, as well as the ability to sell cars — something that was highlighted in the game’s roadmap back in March.
Hopefully we’ll also see some of the lobby issues, regarding loading and saving settings as well as overall stability, addressed, along with other pressing concerns. However we will have to wait for full patch notes after the update to see what’s changed.
A special game update server maintenance is scheduled from 0600-0800 UTC on Thursday July 28, with the update becoming available to download during this window. Players will need to wait until the maintenance has finished to be able to access the updated game.
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