Ok I give up defending it.....guess which game is delayed.....AGAIN!

by Guest Thu 14 Oct 2010 - 13:52

The announcement from Sony on Wednesday morning has a familiar whiff: Gran Turismo 5 delayed.

“This is a joke,” read one comment on the official PlayStation blog, which posted the news on Wednesday that the much anticipated video game would not go on sale globally in early November, as previously promised, but would be “coming this holiday season.”

The humor is most likely lost on fans of the racing simulator series because the chronicle of the latest installment’s development reads more like a developing soap opera.

Sony’s reason this time is that Gran Turismo’s creator, Kazunori Yamauchi, and his developer team at Polyphony Digital “want to make certain they are creating the perfect racing experience.”

As recently as last month, I reported that buzz about GT5 was high at the Tokyo Game Show; final specifications were laid out then, and the release date was again confirmed.

And only last week, at a PlayStation news media event in New York during the Comic Con convention, visitors were digging into GT5 demos, and representatives from Sony Computer Entertainment of America seemed genuinely excited about the game’s then-imminent debut in the United States on Nov. 2. (It was to go on sale in Japan on Nov. 3, and in Europe on Nov. 4.)

“We’re really close, but this was an executive decision that was made yesterday,” said Taku Imasaki, the North American producer for Gran Turismo 5, in a phone interview. “Realistically, we thought we had a good date. We’re not happy over here.”

Mr. Imasaki said the company “is shooting for it to be out by the holidays. You won’t see too much more delay.”

There was also speculation that Sony might not have sufficient supplies of the game to meet demand in November.

The previous version, Gran Turismo 4, landed on store shelves more than five years ago — the first game came out in 1997 — and last year, Sony indicated that GT5 would go on sale this past March in Japan. That didn’t happen. The November date was made official at the E3 game convention over the summer.