Polyphony Digital takes it one thing at a time
At E3 this afternoon I had the pleasure of chatting with Polyphony Digital president Kazunori Yamauchi about his upcoming PS3 game, Gran Turismo 6. He also teased what might be coming up next, but made it clear that we’re getting ahead of ourselves when talking about PS4 Gran Turismo titles.
GT6 was just announced a couple of weeks back, so there’s plenty yet to be uncovered. We know that Polyphony Digital went under the hood to rebuild the foundation and basics of the game. They also worked to make the whole thing work smoother and faster, and also built in future expandability.
We asked Yamauchi what changes Gran Turismo 5 players might notice right off when trying out GT6.
“We’ve updated the physics engine, we’ve updated the rendering engine, we’ve updated the suspension models. That’s all good news for GT5 users, but I think if you try the version on the show floor right now you’ll realize that going from the top menu screen you can immediately go into a race seamlessly without it stopping for loading times,” Yamauchi explained. “That’s something we really worked hard for, so that the UI is smooth and quick. That’s something that I think GT5 users will really appreciate.”
But what beyond that? I told him that it seems like they have something bigger up their sleeves. He laughed and nodded.
“Yes, we have things in the works.” [laughs] “I think we might be ready to announce more things at gamescom.”
“We mentioned it a little bit at the Silverstone announcement a few weeks ago but we want to affect more industries outside of just the game world, and we’re setting up a lot of collaborations with a lot of different game companies right now, as we speak,” Yamauchi reminded. “I think those are some of the most interesting things coming up for GT6.”
He tells us that this year’s gamescom will bring us more information on these and other details, including multiplayer additions to GT6.
What about a PS4 Gran Turismo? Polyphony Digital has already made it clear that they wanted to serve the millions of existing fans out there with PS3 systems with the release of GT6, so we would have to wait a bit longer for a PS4 game. Yamauchi restated this during our chat.
I replied, “I hope we won’t have to wait too long.”
Yamauchi responded, “After launch we’ll continue to update [GT6] and it will grow as a game. Also, a lot more things are coming for it. Once players have kind of played out the features of Gran Turismo 6 and they’re satisfied with the game, that’s the point when we’ll release the next Gran Turismo.”
He smiled: “It shouldn’t be a very long time.”
