We met with Gran Turismo creator and godfather Kazunori Yamauchi at SEMA and asked him the usual phalanx of questions--most importantly, when the heck is the game coming out? We're dying here, man, dying!!!!!
When will you release GT5?
Yamauchi: We will release it in March in Japan but for other regions, it has not been decided yet.
What's holding it up?
That's more depending on SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment America) marketing decisions.
Have you spoken with those guys?
My job is to create the product, not sell it.
What's taking so long with the product, then?
From our perspective, it doesn't seem like that long a time. To make Gran Turismo 5, we threw away the legacy code from GT4 and started from scratch. It's been five years from [the release of] GT4, and that's the same amount of time it took to develop the first GT4. To create a game from scratch, that's the amount of time it takes to get it right.
You're at the SEMA show, what do you think?
Every time I come to SEMA, I can feel the passion of the car owners who bring their cars here. The SEMA show is different from what you see at a typical motor show. There is more passion here.
Will any SEMA cars ever be in GT5?
It is possible.
How many cars will be on GT5?
I have never actually counted all the cars. I don't have a policy to count them all. We are aiming for 1,000 cars in GT5.
Will those be on the disc when you buy the game or will we have to download them from other sources?
They will all be on the disc.
How do you chose which cars get in the game?
There will be three types: cars we want, the cars the users would like to see in the game and then cars the manufacturers want in it.
Have any manufacturers paid to put their cars in the game?
There have been cases where they've shown that interest [in paying to play], but I don't think we've ever shown interest in [accepting money to include certain cars].
Wouldn't that be a profitable venture for you?
A lot of times it develops into a relationship where we collaborate to raise the level of the game.
How many racetracks do you have in GT5?
There are 20 different environments and around 70 different track layouts.
Which tracks?
We haven't made any announcements. The demo [playing next to us in the interview room] is of Route 246, which runs through the middle of Tokyo.
That must be ripe for wrecking cars. Does GT5 include damage to the cars?
Yes, and the demo has it.
Is it difficult to include that feature?
It is not very hard, though it was not in previous Gran Turismos.
Is GT5 more for the advanced player or can beginners play too?
We do have a setting for people who are just learning how to drive. The other setting is very strict, where even an F1 driver can learn new tricks from the system. However, a lot of driver's aids will be included, such as driving lines, ABS, automatic braking, you can reverse your game and record your laps and share them with others. All those things. They were not that difficult to implement.
What other features will GT5 have?
There will be 400,000 polygons per car, 100 times more than were present on GT4. GT4 had 4,000 polygons per car. You can customize and tune the cars, too.
You have NASCAR and WRC in the game. Does this include the complete list of all tracks in those series?
The NASCAR series is so large it would be impossible to put everything in the game. We will have select courses and select cars in the game. You will also be able to race the stock cars on a number of tracks not found on the NASCAR calendar. In speaking with NASCAR, they said they'd like to see their cars able to race on other tracks, and you can do that [in GT5].
Will you have F1, ALMS or FIA GT?
We had a Ferrari F1 car in the game. For FIA GT and ALMS, we won't have that in the series yet. But we will have a lot of cars that race at Le Mans, so in that sense, there will be cars from ALMS.
Have you played Forza Motorsport 3?
I was watching the guys at our company trying it out in the office. I tried it a little bit. It's very similar in a lot of aspects to Gran Turismo. Some base components of the game are very different from Gran Turismo. It's a little bit different from what a simulator is. You can feel it when you drive it.
Will there be a Gran Turismo 6?
Yes. You won't have to wait as long as you did for GT5. GT5 represents a whole new operating system. GT6 is just new apps that run on the GT5 system.
Will there be downloadable content for GT5?
Eventually there will probably be but there are no actual plans set yet.
What did GT5 cost to make?
[He and translator do some figuring, converting yen to dollars] $60 million. There are other games that cost more. Considering the size and scale of the game, I think it's probably a fairly small amount.
Where do you see the future of gaming? Is it taking over movies, music and video as a form of entertainment?
I think that's already happened. It does take up a part of somebody's time in life. What's taking the most amount of time in people's lives is communication, like Facebook and things like this. I think that might take away from the time people spend on entertainment, whether it's movies or video games. A lot of basic instincts of human beings is starting to come out now [on sites such as Facebook]. Maybe human beings are just satisfied by continually communicating, not face to face but just communicating. The content they communicate doesn't seem to matter very much; it can be pretty much anything, even meaningless at times. There's a good possibility that even video games might be faded away.
But not right away?
Obviously not right away, but things change over time in every generation.
"Domo arrigato"
You're welcome.