25th Anniversary
On the official GRAN TURISMO TV YouTube channel, a special ‘Gran Turismo 25th Anniversary Trailer’ commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Gran Turismo series has been published.
The initial Real Driving Simulator was released in Japan on December 23, 1997, marking the beginning of the Gran Turismo series. To this day, the Gran Turismo series continues to evolve and shows no signs of slowing down.
Whether you were around to experience it at the time or not, we hope you enjoy reminiscing with us on Gran Turismo’s first 25 years.
Message from Gran Turismo Series Producer Kazunori Yamauchi
I am thrilled that we are honoring the initial release of the Gran Turismo series 25 years ago.
Gran Turismo was the first project plan I prepared out of close to 100 others when I began my career in this sector in 1992, thus it means a great deal to me.
I began making video games as a hobby when I was 10 years old, but I never considered making it my profession.
I founded a film production club at age 14 and had been producing films, so I joined Sony with the intention of creating image products. However, the allocated department was not what I anticipated.
It was a department where the PlayStation console was set to launch, and Kutaragi-san was working tirelessly to bring the PlayStation vision to life.
This location was not what I had hoped for, but in retrospect, I was really fortunate.
I was captivated by the long-awaited real-time 3D graphics and designed and presented designs for a variety of video games, including but not limited to race games, RPGs, adventure games, action games, and puzzle games.
As a result, Gran Turismo adopted a more fantastical race game model in “Motor Toon Grand Prix,” becoming the first first-party product for PlayStation. However, if a proposal for a game other than a racing game had been authorized, there is a good probability that I would be working on a different title today.
The Gran Turismo project was then initiated by assembling a team of two part-time artists and three engineers.
From there, the number of comrades has increased steadily for almost a quarter century, resulting in Polyphony Digital, a corporation with more than 200 employees.
I don’t believe there are many video game series that have maintained the same title and development team for 25 years.
The founding members of the company continue to work on the front lines, and I am thankful and proud that all 200 members of our workforce share the same drive and passion as the company’s founders.
As of November 16, 2022, the cumulative sales of the series over the past 25 years had surpassed 90 million copies.
And this result is something that we could not have achieved on our own.
Behind this statistic of 90 million are the members of the media who relayed the appeal of Gran Turismo to their readers. There are the PlayStation employees that sold GT passionately over the world, as well as the enormous amount of support from shops who interacted with our users.
All of them have my sincere appreciation for their support.
And above all else, I cannot thank enough the GT users and GT community members who have experienced our new titles, which have at times been described as quite experimental.
We are where we are today thanks of everyone who backed us.
I believe that the Gran Turismo series has always sought “Beauty.” The beauty of the automobiles, the surroundings, the lighting, the driving, the sounds/music, and the visuals.
Gran Turismo was created with “the quest of beauty” in mind.
We have a newfound resolve to continue advancing with a strong sense of purpose into the future.
We appreciate your support throughout the past quarter-century.
Thank you.
