Gran Turismo 5 budget tops $60m

[Jason]

Yes, you read that correctly. The latest in Polyphony Digital's ultra-beautiful racing series Gran Turismo has a budget of Sixty million USD.

Jaws around the world dropped last week when the news broke that the PS3's flagship FPS Killzone 2 had cost about $21m, so god only knows what's going to happen to jaws this time round.
It's a lot of money, but when you actually crunch the numbers what they're doing with the hardware in this game (over 1000 cars, each sporting nearly half a million polygons EACH), it starts to make sense. This is the 'Titanic' of video games. It's working on the 'spend money to make money' logic that failed so spectacularly for John Romero's Daikatana, and succeeded just as spectacularly for Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 4.
One thing's for certain, that with several big-name motorsports licenses involved as well (NASCAR and the World Rally Championship to name a couple), this isn't a game that's doing anything by half measures. The only thing to worry about as far as Polyphony Digital is whether there are enough petrolheads out there to help them recoup such a massive outlay.

The game's expected to hit Western shores in the first quarter of 2010.

[BannanoPeel]

I have never played any of the Gran Turismo games, but I am looking forward to this one.

[Jason]

They're pretty good games even if you're not a complete petrolhead. I know just about enough about cars to allow me to change a tyre if I get a flat, but I still enjoyed the previous titles in the series - I think when a game gets shown this much passion by the developers it really does rub off on the game-buying public. Plus the soundtracks are usually excellent. :)

[Landy]

1K cars? That's massive! I remember playing the first GT game on my PS back in 98. Sadly i do not own a PS3, although i know the game has been released for PSP, i do not really feel like paying the same amount of cash for a PSP version that they charge for the PS3 one.

[MyNameDidntFit]

Gran Turismo games have always held a weird, precarious place in my heart.

I love them. They're the mother of all racing games and they're basically perfect in every way: they look sexy, they feel sexy, they sound sexy and that's before you open the case. But...

... then I think of NFS:MW and the GT games just don't seem to do anything for me. They're like the sweet, Catholic girl that you like because she's beautiful, loving and does what she does perfectly... but she just doesn't actually you do that much.

No matter how perfect the gameplay is and how awesome the visuals are, I can only stand driving a car around a track so many times before I want to smash up some crap and get into a high speed pursuit...

But wait, MNDF, didn't you say they were the mother of all racing games? And, why, yes, I did. Because they are. NFS isn't a racing game, and whenever it tries to be it just fails compared to GT... so, what I propose is that we take Gran Turismo and we add a pursuit mode to it.

... Excuse me. I need some alone time with that thought.

[Jason]

Ew.... Need for Speed. *shudder*

But in seriousness, I know what you mean with regards to GT - you know it's the perfect racing sim, and no matter what happens, it's always going to be the best pure racing game out there, but there does seem to be something slightly missing from it.

Apparently GT5 has worked in realistic damage (and with Polyphony Digital you know that when they say that, they mean it!), as well as upping the number of cars in races to 16, I think. Hopefully this will inject a spark of life into some of the races, as this was always a bugbear of mine that you had huge tracks like Grand Valley Speedway and only 6 cars racing round them.

[Recaner]

Not that surprising considering all those licenses they have to get. Plus all the specs and such.

Really great series. And the damage is going to be a bonus.