Gran Turismo Celebrates 25th Anniversary With Trailer and Message From Kazunori Yamauchi - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 22 December 2022 / 3,651 Views
Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment and developer Polyphony Digital are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the popular racing series, Gran Turismo, with a trailer and a message from Polyphony Digital president and Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi.
The first Gran Turismo released for the PlayStation on December 23, 1997 in Japan, while it released in Europe on May 8, 1998 and in North America on May 12, 1998.
View the 25th anniversary trailer below:
Read Yamauchi's message below:
I’m very happy that we are celebrating our 25th anniversary since the first release of the Gran Turismo series.
Back in 1992, Gran Turismo was the first project plan I created out of close to 100 others I came up with when I first started my career in this industry, so it means a lot to me.
While making video games was something I started from 10 years old as a hobby, I had never thought about making it a career.
I started a movie production club when I was 14, and had been producing movies, so I first joined Sony hoping to create image products. But the department they assigned me to was not what I was expecting.
It was a department where the PlayStation console was just about to start, and was a place where Kutaragi-san was working feverishly to bring the concept of PlayStation to life.
That place was not what I had hoped for, but looking back now, you could say that I was very lucky.
I was fascinated by real time 3D graphics that many had been waiting for, and created and presented plans for all kinds of video games, not just limited to race games but RPGs, adventure games, action games, puzzle games, and more.
As a result, Gran Turismo took a more fantasy race game format in the “Motor Toon Grand Prix”, becoming one of the first 1st party titles for PlayStation, but if a plan for something other than a racing game had been the one that was approved, there is a good chance that I might have been making a title other than Gran Turismo today.
Thereafter the Gran Turismo project started from gathering a team of two part time artists and three engineers.
From there, the number of comrades have continued to increase in number for over quarter of a century, and has become Polyphony Digital today, a company with over 200 staff members.
I don’t think there are many video game franchises in the world that have continued for 25 years with the same title, and with the same team.
The founding members of the company are still working on the front lines, and I am thankful and proud that all 200 of our staff are a team that have the same motivation and love that the company started with in the beginning.
In the last 25 years, the cumulative sales total of the series have reached over 90 million copies as of November 16, 2022.
And this result is something that could not be accomplished by ourselves alone.
Behind that 90 million figure, there are all the people of the media who conveyed the allure of Gran Turismo to their readers. There are the people of PlayStation who sold GT for us around the world with passion, and there is the incredible amount of support from the retailers who interfaced with our users.
My heartfelt thanks goes out to all of them for their support.
And above all else, I can’t ever thank enough the GT users and people of the GT community who have played our new titles, which at times could be said to have been very experimental.
We are here today because of all the people who supported us.
I believe the Gran Turismo series have always pursued “Beauty”. The beauty of the cars, the beauty of the scenery, the beauty of the lighting, the beauty of driving, the beauty of sounds / music and the beauty of the graphics.
The “pursuit of beauty” is the motivation for creating Gran Turismo.
We have newfound determination to continue our progress into the future with a strong sense of purpose.
We appreciate all of your support over the last 25 years. Thank you.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Grand turismo 2 was amazing game! my favorite of the series. Congrats
I'm really enjoying GT7. GT Sport was my most played PS4 game. GT 3 was what got me into the series. GT on PSP was surprisingly addicting.
Wow, fascinating that he was interested in other genres! I always thought that he was such a car lover that making racing games was his only desire and passion. I don’t play GT or other car games, but you have to respect this guy.
I love GT. Kazunori has a third place in Nurburgring (2011) running with a NIssan GT-R.
The founding fathers of Playstation share similar story of being in the right place at the right time even if they wanted to be elsewhere doing something else.
But I'm glad they were where they were, we got great things from that like the passion project that is GT.
There will never be a Gran turismo!
Quite revolutionary back in it's time!
Copycats have been spawned becoz of it,
Only Kaz had that genius of a mind in building a racing game full of cars and not just sports cars but everyday cars too!
A monumental achievement!
It's been sitting in my pile for months. Hopefully I get around to playing it in the next 2 months
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