http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k270m7ezQw

The playable GT5 demo which was first spotted last night at a Best Buy in Oregon has now been confirmed by multiple sources. GTPlanet reader Jeramy has also grabbed video of the new demo, walking us through all of the available cars, tracks, and features. Vermontster of the PS Forums has also shared his conversation with the Best Buy employees (thanks, calvins48), which you’ll see below. We do, indeed, owe a lot of thanks to Oldschool27 for his discovery!

UPDATE: This playable demo has since been confirmed. See the new post here for video confirmation and more details.

Our friends down under finally have an official release date for Gran Turismo 5: November 4, 2010, as confirmed by this press release from Sony. If you know you want the Signature Edition, be sure and reserve your copy now at a local retailer such as GAME Australia or EBGames.

InsideSimRacing has just published their Gran Turismo 5 Special, dedicating almost the entire 38-minute episode to video reports from Gamescom 2010 by our cooperative team of Andreas (from InsideSimRacing), Famine, and Venari. They discuss everything that we learned from the show, and go into more detail about the private breakout session, the Yamauchi interview, and how the latest GT5 demo compares to previous games from the series. It’s divided into three different segments, so be sure to watch through the full episode to make sure you catch everything. The guys at ISR have even more GT5 material from the show coming, so stay tuned.

Remember the outraged city of Siena, which was preparing legal action against Sony because the city’s Contrade flags appeared around GT5’s karting track, Piazza del Campo? There was some concern and confusion regarding what the eventual outcome would be, but the solution fortunately turned out to be quite simple: the offensive flags were removed and Siena’s cultural heritage “protected”…  As reported by Corriere Fiorentino:

Videos from the most recent build of the game shown at Gamescom 2010.

Kazunori Yamauchi has given us a heads-up regarding what to expect from GT5 in terms of hard drive installation size via Twitter (human translation thanks to our own SHIRAKAWA Akira):

For the third consecutive year, Kazunori Yamauchi has been invited to the prestigious Pebble Beach Concourse d’Elegance to present the Gran Turismo Trophy – an award “to support those who make efforts to preserve irreplaceable, precious automotive culture for future generations to come”. This year, it goes to the one and only 1952 Abarth 1500 Biposto Coupe in existence – an unusual, quirky, and significant car. From the official announcement:

As I mentioned earlier, GTPlanet teamed up with InsideSimRacing to provide comprehensive coverage of GT5 at Gamescom 2010 (which turned out to be quite a job!). We covered the announcements as they happened – now the ISR team is sorting through over 80GB of material to include for their upcoming GT5 and Gamescom special features. Watch for a quick preview in the latest episode (posted above) around the 28:00 mark, or take a look at a few of these screenshots from their footage below.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcCxx81duCg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqZKt0av0RM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXBCrJSVPe8

GT5 may not be too popular in Italy, but that’s fortunately not the case with the judges at Gamescom in Germany. They’ve awarded the game two of the most important prizes of the show: “Best of Gamescom” and “Best Console Game”. As you can see from the results below, it won each category in which it was nominated. Congratulations to Kazunori Yamauchi and his team at Polyphony Digital!

The new karting track revealed in the latest GT5 demo shown off at Gamescom 2010 is now causing problems for Polyphony Digital and Sony Computer Entertainment. The track, named Piazza del Campo after the famous city square in Siena, Italy, hosts a world-renowned horse race twice a year known as the Palio di Siena (you may remember it in Quantum of Solace – ironically a Sony movie). Unfortunately, though, in Polyphony’s digital recreation of the location, they’ve (gasp!) used flags of the local contrada without permission. As reported by Corriere Fiorentino, the city is none too happy about it, and is threatening to take legal action against Sony to prevent sale and distribution of the game in Italy.

Thanks for the tip, Randy!

Before you read any further, keep in mind the information below should NOT be taken as confirmation that any of the following tracks will be in Gran Turismo 5. I am posting this here to get ahead of other media outlets who post this without more careful consideration of what may actually be shown in these images. With that said, the following is an interesting discovery you GTPlanet readers should know about.