Yesterday, we learned that the Gran Turismo Sport beta wouldn’t be happening and developer Polyphony Digital was planning PlayStation VR support for launch on November 15 in North America and November 16 in Europe.
Today, in an interview with VideoGamer, Polyphony CEO Kazunori Yamauchi explained that the beta isn’t happening because they’d have to make a gold master of the beta test code, which would take as much effort to finish as the real master code.
He continued:
Just because it’s beta we can’t just throw it out there. It’s required that in order to do an open beta we have to create a proper master for it, and considering the release timing that we announced, we decided that we just don’t have enough time to do two gold masters for the game. By omitting that it saves us about three months of time.
Although he didn’t fully shut down a beta at some point, Yamauchi said, “Most likely I don’t think it would be possible. I’m very sorry but that’s just how it turned out.”
As for PlayStation VR support, he mentioned that they’re trying to support it at launch, adding, “My plan is that Gran Turismo Sport will be compatible to allow all aspects of [the game] to be experienced in VR. We’ve been compatible with 3D before, in GT6 we’ve been compatible with Oculus, so it’s just a continuation of that.”
In an IGN interview, Yamauchi revealed why they called it Gran Turismo Sport instead of Gran Turismo 7. “The reason why we called it Sport was because we really wanted to do a Sport Mode, but thinking about it now we could have called it [Gran Turismo] 7,” he said. “It’s got so many features that you could have called it 7.”
Here’s what to expect from the Sport Mode, as explained on the Gran Turismo website:
Enjoy the game with a play style that suits you best
The concept of sports isn’t restricted to only the top players who try to dominate their field. Rather, it’s meant for anyone who finds an activity they enjoy and then works to improve at it in a quest to meet or surpass their potential. Introducing a sportsmanship point system evaluating online race behavior, a player’s skill and behavior will be judged in daily races, and players with the same level will be matched in a fair manner.
FIA Gran Turismo Championships
In Sport Mode, the online feature of Gran Turismo Sport, there will be two FIA-certified online championship series running at the same time.
The first is the “Nations Cup,” where players around the world represent their home country in the series. The other is the “Manufacturer Fan Cup,” in which players select their favorite auto maker and represent them in the series. And the fun isn’t restricted only to the one doing the driving, you can root for your favorite driver, country or manufacturer through live race broadcasts.
And the champions of both series will be recognized at the annual FIA prize giving ceremony alongside real life motorsport champions. This will be a historic moment when a video game becomes a part of official motorsport.
Those live broadcasts will be hosted on the weekends and include course cameras and live commentary.
If you’re worried about GT Sport being an online-only game, Sony’s Ken Chan said, “[It] features online and offline modes, including Arcade.”
For those who missed the stream yesterday, you can watch the whole thing in the video above.
As of March 2016, the Gran Turismo franchise has sold 76.74 million copies.
[Source: VideoGamer (1), (2), IGN, Gran Turismo (1), (2), PS Blog]
