The 2012 Gran Turismo Awards were held last night in Las Vegas, where Kazunori Yamauchi himself selected the David Eckert’s Ford Mach Forty as “Best in Show” from among the five category finalists.

Kazunori Yamauchi toured the show floor at SEMA in Las Vegas today, visiting all of the individual category winners in this year’s Gran Turismo Awards. They are:

The latest round of Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, in the form of new Time & Drift trials featuring Nissan’s own supercar, the Skyline GT-R . The challenges are as follows:

As hobbies go, gaming tends to attract the stigma of being solitary, sedentary and for geeks. The image of the slacker playing games in his mom’s basement is tough to shake off and online gaming doesn’t do much to help.

Hip-hop star Snoop Dogg (or “Snoop Lion”, as he now prefers to be called) will be headlining at the 2012 Gran Turismo Awards, to be held at the Palm Resort’s Rain Nightclub in Las Vegas, this Thursday, November 1st at 9:30pm.

One hundred. It’s a milestone, and just before we celebrate two years since GT5’s launch, GTPlanet’s own Photomode Competitions are breaking into the triple digits this week. Our two initial competitions, the aptly named “Photomode Competition” (PMC) and “2.0 Advanced Competition” (2.0) hit the ground running back in the same week Gran Turismo 5 made its way into gamers’ eager hands, and haven’t looked back. GT4’s initial inclusion of a Photomode was originally met with criticism back in the last decade, but in an age where sharing is central, it’s now basically a requirement of the racing genre. GT5’s Photomode might be the most in-depth, fully-featured implementation of its kind too; it’s certainly popular, as our GT5 Photomode forum sub-section boasts a massive +220,000 posts!

Images courtesy of fiawec.com and Red Square Images.

A new website and video trailers have just been published for the 2012 U.S. GT Academy reality TV show, which premiers on Spike TV, Thursday, November 1st, at 11:30pm Eastern Time (check your local listings for other time zones). It will also be re-broadcast on MTV2 and available to download via YouTube and the PlayStation Store.

Note the “Performance Difference Bonus” applies, so more credits will be awarded for using a slower car below the maximum allowed PP value.

In yet another career milestone for GT Academy champion Lucas Ordoñez, he helped drive the radical Highcroft Racing Nissan DeltaWing prototype to an incredible 5th place overall finish at Road Atlanta’s Petit Le Mans.

As just announced last month, GT Academy champion Lucas Ordoñez has been selected to drive the unique and radical Highcroft Racing Nissan DeltaWing prototype car at the prestigious Petit Le Mans endurance race, taking place this Friday and Saturday at Road Atlanta.

As most of you are aware, Gran Turismo 5’s online services have experienced significant disruption over the past few weeks.

The latest round of time and drift Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, featuring the Subaru BRZ, Scion FRS, and the Toyota 86. The challenges are as follows:

Polyphony Digital’s demonstration of a Gran Turismo tech demo running at “4K resolution” made quite a splash when it hit the news a few weeks ago.

GT Academy officially kicks off today for players in its two newest territories, South Africa and the Middle East.

The Gran Turismo Awards have become a popular staple of SEMA 2012, the massive modified car show that takes place in Las Vegas each fall.

The latest round of Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, featuring suave French cars. Cars are limited to a maximum of 450PP and Sports/Hard tires or less. The challenges are as follows:

The published schedule is:

Many gamers have been reporting patchy online performance from Gran Turismo 5 in the last couple of days, with random disconnects from online lobbies and “Error Code: 268” when trying to join. There was even a succinct message added to the in-game news feed yesterday afternoon: