If you've figured out how to create a Japanese account (here's a guide if you haven't), you can get the demo right now, and do so in the knowledge that the whole thing is in English (like the Prologue demo, it detects your system's language and adjusts accordingly).

Strangely, though, the demo is only a bit over 200mb in size, and is...well, as you'd expect from 200mb in 2009, it's pretty scarce. Actually, it's very scarce, as after only an half an hour I was already bored with it. Unless you're genuinely expecting to compete in the Time Trial Academy (the winners of which will get a shot at racing real race cars), there's not much here to keep you busy.

Maybe they should have thrown another track in there, add another car or two...

Sony Computer Entertainment America's Chris Hinojosa-Miranda has told Destructoid that the game is currently - and vaguely - gunning for a "summer 2010" release.

Which, if correct, means June 2010 at the earliest. Bummer.

Wonder if the European version will be out earlier...

Gran Turismo 5 gets targeted for 'Summer 2010' release [Destructoid]

A Sony representative was showing Polyphony Digital's upcoming PlayStation 3 racing game, and let me drive a couple of laps around a city track. What does me, a non Gran Turismo player do? Fall into last place and start bumping into walls.

My Audi TT took no damage even as I bashed it against the wall. The Sony rep explained to me that damage for that car wasn't in the demo. Damage was being shown on a Subaru WRC Impreza, the same virtual car McWhertor wrecked in Germany.

I smacked the Subaru into walls until its doors were flying open and its fenders were scratched. The Sony man took over and got the bumper to nearly fall off. He said he's gotten the hood knocked off too and that beneath these busted bits Polyphony has rendered the innards of the car. We'll be able to see behind the damage.

And it's not just cosmetic damage, I was told. The car's performance will be impaired if the vehicle is roughed up. Gears might not shift as well, for example.

The other stand-out feature I was told about was head-tracking. The game will support the PlayStation 3 camera, the PlayStation Eye. While one wasn't hooked up at today's event, it was explained that the device will track a player's head movements. The goal is for the depth-of-field focal point far down the track to shift, matching your head movement. What you look at will be appear more clearly, in theory. So as you look a little to the right, the right part of what you see beyond your car may come more sharply into focus. But the car itself won't turn with your head, of course.

The Sony rep explained that Polyphony's goal is for players to feel like they are experiencing what real racers see. He noted that the feature was still a work in progress and couldn't offer more details about how it works. From his gestures, I suspect the head-tracking will be responsive more to leans than to head turns, the latter of which obviously would make it hard to see the TV.

With neither the head-tracking incorporated into this demo nor the performance effects of the car damage evident to a series novice like myself, I can't judge either feature. But they sound like the attention to deal the series is respected for.

Gran Turismo is slated for a PS3 release some time next year.

See, there's a little confusion as to whether this is a GT5 demo or just some new, GT5-flavoured content sprinkled atop the existing GT5 Prologue. The download is called the "Gran Turismo 5 Time Trial Challenge" in the US, and in Europe, "GT Academy 2010". Not, as you'd think it'd be called, the "Gran Turismo 5 Demo".

Indeed, the European release doesn't mention the download having anything to do with Gran Turismo 5 whatsoever, while the US info only says the download is "powered by Gran Turismo 5's brand-new physics engine".

Only in the European comments section do things get a little more specific, where it's said "this is a downloadable time trial featuring new content from GT5 not GT5 Prologue" and "this time trial is a section of a track from the forthcoming GT5 game".

So...it's mostly GT5? Partially GT5? All GT5, with a really poor marketing message attached? Thanks, GT5 Prologue, for making this so confusing.

Guess we'll find out on December 17.

In an interview with IGN, the Polyphony Digital boss was asked about the possibility of bikes making their way into the game, to which he responded "If that's what users really want in the game, I think that's a possibility. Or we could consider making a Tourist Trophy 2 as well."

Might be best sticking to TT2. GT5 is late enough as it is.

Q&A With Gran Turismo's Kazunori Yamauchi [IGN]

That's according to series creator and Polyphony Digital head man Kazunori Yamauchi who, speaking with Autoweek, said "We will release [GT5] in March in Japan but for other regions, it has not been decided yet". Asked by the motoring mag what was holding up the Western release of the game, Yamauchi responded "That's more depending on SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment America) marketing decisions".

SEMA show: More news on the much-anticipated Gran Turismo 5 video game [Autoweek, via CVG]

When asked by AutoWeek about the game's budget, Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi dropped this price tag: $60 million.

"There are other games that cost more," Yamauchi added. "Considering the size and scale of the game, I think it's probably a fairly small amount."

Other games that cost more? Games like Shenmue or Grand Theft Auto IV?

With Polyphony Digital's know-how and expertise, the game probably cost less that it could have considering the lengthy development cycle. But then again, GT5 is apparently 50 times more than the first Gran Turismo. We're not sure if that amount includes marketing and what not.

If Yamauchi and his team curbed the dev cycle and turned around the game in a more timely fashion, they could has brought down the game's budget even more. Not our money, though! Perhaps the inevitable GT6 won't take as long — or cost as much.

SEMA show: More news on the much-anticipated Gran Turismo 5 video game [AutoWeek Thanks David!]

You are reading Kotaku's once-weekly (sort of) journey back to yesteryear.

Here's the Toronto Star in December of 2001, covering the release of Gran Turismo 3:

Gran Turismo 3 is the grandchild of the original, and seminal, Gran Turismo of 1998, the game that made the PlayStation the market leader that it is.

That's just one of dozens of expressions of Gran Turismo's dominance that I was able to find in a search of news clippings. GT used to be unstoppable and untouchable. Maybe it still is, but 2009 shows how competitive things can be. Between the release of GT4 and the eventual launch of GT5, Microsoft will have launched three Forza games, closing the gap, at least critically, on what the team at Polyphony Digital built for the PlayStation brand.

There was a time when reports of a Gran Turismo were coupled with references to the competitors' inability to compete. Is that time over? A new Gran Turismo might mean as much to Sony as the old ones did. So, will the old lines from 2001 and other years be written again once GT5 shows up?

In a piece in the evening edition of Osaka's Mainichi Newspaper, there's an editorial on the "date car" by journalist Masahiro Kawaguchi. Kawaguchi talks about how the slide in new car sales started in the 1990s and even connects the current decline in population to the car apathy that exists among young men. "Guys used to work hard at their job so they could get a stylish, cool car for girl's to ride in."

Even more interesting than that connection is what Kawaguchi quotes a Toyota exec as saying: "Home game machines are no good. Playing something that realistic makes the need for cars disappear."

Really? Video games make the need to go from Point A to Point B disappear? Next thing we know video games will be blamed for violent crime!

That's such an odd thing for Toyota to say, especially considering how many game tie-ins the company has, such as having its FT-86 Concept car appear in Gran Turismo 5 — which is playable at the Tokyo Motor Show. It makes us wonder if that was simply some off-handed, throw away remark that obviously wasn't not thought through before uttering. Maybe!

Kawaguchi finishes his article by talking about the next generation of sports cars and hybrid cars. Vroom vroom.

憂楽帳：デートカー [毎日新聞 はちま起稿] [Pic]

The Gran Turismo fan site spotted the game's box in the hands of game creator Kazunori Yamauchi on a Mercedes-Benz video that talks about the inclusion of the Mercedes SLS AMG.

Gran Turismo 5 Packaging Reveals Three Discs [GT Planet]

As we're fond of pointing out, all of these screens come from replay mode, where the game looks so amazingly realistic it could run over your cat. Replay mode is my preferred Gran Turismo mode, preferably after someone who knows how to play the game gets finished. Replay mode after I get finished driving is like one of those drunk driving course propaganda films, only in HD.

"The last thirty minutes of the race," Yamauchi told Kotaku at a recent visit to his Polyphony studios, "I didn't even know what I was doing. It was as if my brain was directly connected to my hands. I wasn't thinking."

During the tail end of the four hour race, Yamauchi started experiencing a driving high. While Gran Turismo is renowned for its realistic physics, Yamauchi had never had the first hand experience of the sensation that race car drivers get during extended races. "During that last thirty minutes, I forgot I was driving. It's difficult to put that feeling into words — the way I was handling the vehicle."

The experience was eye-opening for the designer, who hopes to somehow convey that experience in future games. When asked he would go about that, Yamauchi simply replied, "Through a higher level of game making."

As talented as Yamauchi appears to be, the game designer is humble about his future racing prospects. Humble as ever, he calls his first place win an "unexpected result." According to Yamauchi, "What's interesting is that I am a game designer who occasionally races. I don't plan on racing full time or anything."

While at Nurburgring, Yamauchi said he was approached by countless GT fans, who asked him why he was adding damage to the series. "For many fans I spoke with," Yamauchi explained, "one reason they seemed to like Gran Turismo is that you cannot damage cars." The decision to include damage apparently was based on looking at what was missing from the franchise. Currently the development of car damage is at about 50 percent — work on it was begun two months ago.

The increasing number of driving simulators is not a bad thing. "I think it's great that the racing game market is getting bigger," said Yamauchi. "It's like if you are a rock fan, you'd like there to be more rock groups. Same idea. That being said, we don't view Gran Turismo as competing with those other titles. We are competing with ourselves."

[Pic]

This wasn't Kotaku's first visit to the studio, but in case you missed our coverage from a few years back, here's a glimpse inside the place where they toil away on Gran Turismo.

The game will be out in Japan in March 2010. Which is still months away. A shame, we know, but then, GT fans have been waiting years for this. They can wait a little longer.

Only the Japanese date was revealed. If any info on a Western release pops up, we'll let you know.

This would be a first for the series, whose last outing - GT5 Prologue - was released in the US four months after it was out in Japan.

Speaking with Multiplayer, Yamauchi said that "its release is not too far away - it will be after the PSP GT release - and, most likely, it will be a simultaneous worldwide release".

If you can handle a bit of Italian (or Japanese!), the full interview is below.

Gran Turismo - Videointervista a Kazunori Yamauchi [Multiplayer, via 1UP and GTPlanet]