‘Gran Turismo 7’ coming to PS4, PS5 in March 2022
Sony has finally revealed the release date for Polyphony Digital's long-awaited Gran Turismo 7.
During early Friday's PlayStation Showcase, the studio announced that the latest installment in the Gran Turismo series is coming to both last-gen and current-gen PlayStation consoles on March 4, 2022.
"The objective for GT7 in current culture today, is to design a game to convey everything from the last 150 years of car and racing culture, whether you are a lifelong fan or discovering cars for the first time," Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi said.
"GT7 is both the culmination of the series which answers the expectations of GT fans throughout the years, and at the same time it is a title that marks a beginning of a difficult mission to contain the full breadth of car culture from the past into a single video game," he added.
The announcement also came with a brand new gameplay trailer that's packed with ray-traced visuals and some improved features that fans can expect in the highly-anticipated racing simulation game.
Some of these include the GT Café, the sim game's improved Car Collection feature that allows players to visit new locations where they can purchase cars or participate in races to augment their steed collection.
GT7 players will also be able to satisfy their "tuning needs" at GT Auto, a place where they can customize some of the parts of their car including its engine, suspension, transmission gearing, and brakes.
Aside from customizing cars to suite every preference, GT Auto also allows players to conduct maintenance work on their vehicles like performing oil changes or even washing your car. Some other features that are making a comeback in GT7 are wheel changes, wide body modifications, addition of roll cages as well as other aerodynamic parts.
Long-time Gran Turismo fans will also be treated with the return of the GT Campaign mode and some legendary circuits such as the Trial Mountain and High Speed Ring. The studio said that the layout of these tracks not only have been updated but also feature richer detail thanks to the capability of PlayStation 5.
Additionally, just like most other games like Ghost of Tsushima, GT7's Scapes mode will now allow players to take photos of their cars in more than 2,500 picturesque locales in 43 different countries. Polyphony said that utilizing HDR technology and ray tracing allows images taken by players to appear "very real."
Meanwhile, GT7 will also feature a more natural and realistic variable time and weather effect systems as Polyphony Digital used "a massive amount of meteorological observation data, including those from the academic databases of NASA" in order to provide players real and complex sky patterns and changes in light for different times of day and weather conditions.
Sony said that fans can expect "lots of more exciting" updates in the coming weeks.
(Images from PlayStation)