http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzcVXzrUH9A

When the staff at VG247 got the chance to interview SCEE president Andrew House, they didn’t hesitate to ask him directly about why we didn’t get the Gran Turismo 5 release date announcement that everyone was expecting.  His response:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEUzLSeuY4A

Hot on the heels of Gamersyde’s first look at the GamesCom playable GT5 demo, they now provide us with a first real look at ingame damage.

The folks at Gamersyde have managed to snare a video of GT5 being played on the floor at the GamesCom gathering in Cologne.

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All eyes of the gaming world are on Cologne, Germany, as Sony holds a massive three-hour long press conference today.  The star of the show is widely rumored to be a new “PS3 Slim”, designed to replace the PlayStation 3 at a lower price point to drive sales.  However, three hours is a terribly long time to talk about just one new device, and we’ve heard that Gran Turismo 5 news will also be coming out of the show.  Nothing is guaranteed, however, and it would be wise to not expect too much to be revealed about GT5 before GT PSP hits store shelves on October 1st.  With that said, it would certainly be a great opportunity for Sony to reveal another trailer for the game while committing to solid a release date.

Here’s a little something to make you smile while we wait for Sony’s press conference at GamesCom on Tuesday…  Gran Turismo 5 got some unexpected promotion on one of the most-visited websites in the world.  The problem, of course, is that website was MSN.com – wholly owned and operated by Microsoft.  The MSN editors are apparently unaware of the heated rivalry between their parent company’s own Forza Motorsport series and GT, and to make matters worse, they misspelled “Turismo” in the headline.  Of course, it didn’t take long for word of the ‘mistake’ to hit our own forums, and Galvanise at NeoGAF managed to grab this screenshot.  Good catch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsmO1_6SMkc

After a pricing mistake launched Gran Turismo 5 to the top of Amazon.com’s UK sales charts, the web’s largest retailer announced today that it will be cancelling all those pre-orders for the game.  Here’s the email sent out to everyone this morning who had their copy on reserve: