Sony invited us over to the Polyphony Digital studios today to tour the office and mess about with Gran Turismo HD. After being welcomed by a table full of fatty, salty snacks, we were guided through the development area cubicles to see how the Gran Turismo grunts spend their 60 hour work week.

Make the jump for pics of the tour.

That's Kazunori Yamauchi's office and it's a freaking mess. No one would accuse the rest of the staff of being tidy, but Kaz is clearly the worst.

Here's the design review space. Can you find the Xbox 360 in this photo?

After passing the server room (where the wine was stored)...

...we were shown to the "relaxation room" where staff can unchain themselves from their desks to read from the library of thousands of car magazines and books, or go lower brow with the collection of hundreds of PlayStation 2 and PSP titles. The room also features "Japan's best massage chair", an electric drum set, electric guitar and a massive keyboard for office jamming, as well as...

...tons of lighters. The staff likes to smoke. A LOT. There are ashtrays everywhere.

We were also shown the "hotel rooms", where those pulling a literal all-nighter can catch a few winks. We were there on a Saturday and at least a dozen members of the staff were working that afternoon. Working on what? Modeling cars of course.

Kaz later explained that the modeling process can take up to three months to perfect a car. Despite the long hours and bouts tedium, the staff actually was still capable of smiling.

Then we continued on to the staff area. Normally cubicles aren't that interesting, but this is the home of Gran Turismo.

Where they really really really REALLY like cars.

And they have a lot of PlayStation 3 reference tools. The office was littered with what seemed like hundreds of machines from PS2's to high end Dell computers to Vaio laptops to PS2 TOOLs.

Of course, they need monitors to see all this stuff in action.

After the tour, we were invited to play Gran Turismo HD on the PS3 Test boxes and try out the Subaru developed Gran Turismo cockpit.

So we did.

After all the buttering up—the gorging on snacks, the game playing—we were led into the conference room to hear what Kaz had to say about what the future held for Gran Turismo. You can check out our wrap up below. Michael McWhertor

Liveblogging The Gran Turismo HD Press Event

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