Polyphony Digital

“We Love Cars!”

We’re now less than 24 hours away from the GT Sport reveal in London. The anticipation is palpable, as even Polyphony has stoked the fire with their brand-new official Snapchat account. Here at GTPlanet, GT Week celebrations continue unabated!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably on Snapchat – one of the hottest social networks out there. It’s about to get a bit hotter, as the Polyphony Digital guys are launching a new official Snapchat account to share content about Gran Turismo games and events.

A good driving song can make a boring journey into a memorable one, or a good trip into one of the greats. By that same token, while Gran Turismo is fondly remembered for the driving, there’s a lot of memories tied to the audio cues. A song will stick with you, intertwining itself with the game until you can’t separate the two. To this day, I’m still annoyed every time I walk into a Mazda dealership and this catchy tune isn’t playing.

If you’re like us, you can’t wait for the big GT Sport event in London this Thursday and Friday. In an unprecedented move, Polyphony is making the first playable showing of the game open to the public, and if you were lucky enough to snag some of the tickets GTPlanet had to give out last week, you’ll get to take part in the festivities.

Bang the gongs, cue the avalanche of GIF’s – it’s happening! After over six months of silence, GT Sport is ready for its first gameplay showing. As you’d expect of a company that has announced a title at a racetrack (GT6), and taken over an entire town for a release party (GT6 again), Polyphony is pulling out all the stops, showcasing the PS4 title in downtown London, at the Copper Box Arena, a former Olympic site.

Last week we reported that Polyphony Digital’s CEO Kazunori Yamauchi would be returning to the Nürburgring in the lead up to the 2016 ADAC 24 Hours of Nürburgring. Sharing the driving duties of the #101 BMW M6 GT3 with Matias Henkola, George Richardson, and Max Sandritter, Yamauchi was set to participate in the top SP9 class under the Walkenhorst Motorsport banner.

Kazunori Yamauchi will be returning to the gruelling Green Hell this year. Polyphony’s man in charge took 2015 off, after an accident during the qualifying session the year before. In a surprising turn, however, Yamauchi will be slotting in behind the wheel of a Bavarian motor for the ADAC qualifier this weekend.

More news on the Gran Turismo collection from Hot Wheels: It looks like even the world of diecast cars can receive expansion packs!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjkfOY5vNXM

I believe many of you will recall our report from the 2015 SEMA automotive show several months ago when we closely followed the battle between five 2015 GT Awards finalists, all brought together from various categories. Presented by Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi himself, the ”Best in Show” crown was awarded to a painstakingly-modified Datsun 240Z, which is owned by popular Fast & Furious movie star Sung Kang.

On January 23rd Gran Turismo was presented with the Golden Marker Special Award at this year’s Japan Car Design Awards ceremony being held at The Gallery Too in the Minato district of Tokyo, Japan.

STAFF INTERVIEW 003: Nobuhide Ishibashi (Original interview here)

Every year, Polyphony Digital hosts an annual Christmas party at their offices in Japan with a wide variety of motorsports and gaming industry celebrities in attendance. This year, however, they spiced things up a bit, using the opportunity to show off what appears to be new concept artwork likely related to next year’s Gran Turismo Sport.

A complete redesign of Polyphony Digital’s website went live earlier today, and with it, the company has updated us on the subject of sales for the second time in 2015. During GT Sport’s first unveiling in Paris, PD had snuck a quick mention of a rough series total into the game’s website. Over 75 million units had been sold as of March 2015, while today’s newer tallies come from September of this year.

UPDATE: The “Fugu Z” was scanned by the Polyphony Digital team on November 7, 2017 in Long Beach, CA. It was finally added to Gran Turismo Sport in the game’s 1.31 update, released on December 5, 2018.

It’s been a busy day at SEMA, as Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi toured the show floor visiting all the finalists for this year’s GT Awards.

As part of the flurry of activity and announcements surrounding the reveal of Gran Turismo Sport at Paris Games Week today, an interesting bit of information was revealed as Polyphony Digital updated their official site: the GT series has now sold over 75 million copies: