Yamauchi's license is one of the pillars of the PlayStation label. After a transition generation, Polyphony Digital must regain brand value.
Gran Turismo is one of the most important intellectual properties in PlayStation history. Adhered to that name since its inception, the way of interpreting the genre of driving on domestic consoles of the Kazunori Yamauchi team has transcended for generations; with ups and downs, but with an idiosyncrasy, a touch that those of us who have been playing for years know how to identify. There is something special about Gran Turismo and you have to get it back on PlayStation 5.
Let jazz play again
It is possibly Gran Turismo 4 (2005, PS2) one of the culminations of the saga. Numbered installments have traditionally been used to perfecting what the odd started; It happened with the second, the fourth and the sixth installment, each in its own way: content, gameplay, physics. They always ended up taking steps forward, but they were not always all the right decisions. It happened with the release of Gran Turismo 6 (2013, PS3) when all the lights were already looking at the incipient PS4; It happened with Gran Turismo Sport (2017, PS4), which initially renounced itself by refusing its most characteristic single player modes.
Gran Turismo Sport | Polyphony Digital
GT Sport has undergone a profound metamorphosis in these two years and has surely become one of the most complete installments in memory, recovering circuits such as Spa-Francorchamps or Laguna Seca; incorporating the rain and making the Porsche universe real after this logo. But the commercial impact has been inversely proportional to the effort put in by Sony and Polyphony Digital to make room for the saga in the professional esports scene, where the level of some players is enormous. And yes, the game's online servers are going smoothly, but something is missing. It remains to recover that sound.
This type of situation, where some video games are completed properly years after their release (Capcom knows this well with the phenomenal Street Fighter V: Champion Edition; Hello Games knows it well with No Mans Sky) are irreversible: the impact is not Not comparable to what they might have had in their original release.
Polyphony Digital has been working on a new Gran Turismo for more than a year
Sony is aware of the importance of Gran Turismo in the future of the brand, they have recorded it themselves since their first mention in Wired in April last year. Back in October, when we learned that the console was finally going to be called PS5 and that we will begin to see it – if all goes well – in stores at Christmas 2020, they explicitly talked about Gran Turismo Sport; one of the games where they were testing not only the capabilities of ray tracing (real time ray tracing) accelerated by the hardware itself, but the new command, which we know under the tentative name of Dualshock 5.
They talked about Gran Turismo, about how different it felt to accelerate through the gravel with respect to the asphalt; from the vibration of the haptic triggers. Everything fits. Once again, history repeats itself: its driving video game par excellence as an emblem to expose the benefits of new hardware.
Gran Turismo Sport | Polyphony Digital
Microsoft knows that, with Xbox One in 2013, the experimental Forza Motorport 5 accompanied the launch of the console. Now, with a Turn 10 Studio that already works with ray tracing, there is a new installment of the main saga underway; Although as in the Japanese house, neither of them loose garment: the hypothetical existence of a hypothetical Forza Motorport 8 for Xbox Series X or Gran Turismo 7 or Gran Turismo Sport Complete, as they want to call it, for PS5 has not been officially confirmed. Of course: Polyphony has been working on the new installment since 2019.
But all roads lead to it, to see both sagas with a presence in the launches of the new generation consoles.
The difference is that Gran Turismo must recover the spirit of that Gran Turismo 4, where elegance, jazz and pianos left an impeccable video game to remember; from up to down. Played now, in the middle of 2020, it seems incredible that fifteen years have passed. It is a formula that works, that continues in force, it is only necessary to nourish it with content and adopt a design according to current times. Forza Motorport 7 (2017, Xbox One) advanced the Gran Turismo saga on the left, both for the good work of Turn 10 with Xbox Game Studios and for having done a correct reading of what the players wanted at that time. Their controversial in-game loot box system was criticized, but rectified. Now, the study has something clear: we must make a video game where the community participates more than ever. We are calm with those of Redmond.
Let it be
For Kazunori Yamauchi, the Gran Turismo saga is like The Beatles. In a recent interview with Motorsport, the Japanese creative reflected on the importance of the brand in the world of simracing and the perception of motorsport in society, where even more simulators are used in professional environments.
The analogy with the British group makes some sense; not so much because of the similarities between the music of those from Liverpool and this license, which are diametrically opposed, but because of the importance they have had over time. “It is not easy to create something that is seen as the standard to follow. It is not something that is created by magic, and I think we were lucky when we started working at Gran Turismo, "he said. “But when you do it and create something very creative, when you see it from the future it becomes ordinary and standard. It is like The Beatles. They created pop music, popular music and now we consider pop music normal. But if they hadn't existed, maybe we wouldn't have pop music. "
Who knows what would have happened with the simcade standard without Gran Turismo, but that doesn't matter anymore. The past is fine, now you have to look forward.
It is a matter of time before the new Gran Turismo is announced, presumably for the PlayStation 5. It is not our guess, Polyphony Digital is working on the saga and they intend to aspire to everything on a technological level. GT Planet also chatted with Yamauchi this February and they did not walk with euphemisms. We know that PlayStation 5 will be compatible with 8K resolutions (not to be confused with the fact that this ability is a purpose in its short-term video games), but Yamauchi knows that driving requires more images per second, not images with higher resolution.
There is a chasm between playing a car game at 30 FPS and doing it at 60 FPS; for this reason, the objective of Polyphony Digital with the future Gran Turismo is to aspire to "120 FPS or even 240 FPS" because 4K is sufficient.
“I am more interested in the progress we can make in terms of refresh times. As for frames per second, rather than finding ourselves at 60 FPS, I'm more interested in raising it to 120 FPS or even 240 FPS. ” Because, as he comments, "it is what is going to change the gaming experience from now on."
To date, more than 8 million players have played Gran Turismo Sport and more than 80 million copies have been sold in the history of the saga, which needs IP to be strong since the beginning of the PS5 commercial journey; who knows if from launch.
Considering that Microsoft will announce, almost certainly, that new Forza Motorsport for Xbox Series X that has been in development for three years, thinking that Sony will not do the same with its veteran license seems like nonsense right now. Competition makes us all win, because the two will print their efforts to make the discussions come back, that we debate on which delivery is better and not which one comes with more defects behind them.
Gran Turismo must recover jazz. The real driving simulator.
