Gran Turismo 5 delayed...AGAIN!
Yes, I'm a bit late with this news but its still news worthy because we all have been waiting for it since the PS3 launched back in 2005. GT5 has been in development for 6 years (it has been worked on even before the PS3 was released worldwide) and we're going to have to wait a little bit longer.
It was announced today that Gran Turismo 5 will not be available this November 2nd as originally announced, but the game will be coming this holiday season.
We sincerely apologize to GT fans for the delay. Creator Kazunori Yamauchi and the team at Polyphony Digital want to make certain they are creating the perfect racing experience, and we are all confident that this ambitious game will exceed expectations when it launches.
Check back here on the official Gran Turismo website for further updates.
Sony didn't give much of an explanation when it announced Gran Turismo 5's delay yesterday. For something a bit more solid (just a bit), we turn to series producer Kazunori Yamauchi himself.
Returning to Twitter for the first time since September 22, Yamauchi apologized to fans today and explained that the reason for the delay was that it was taking some time to finalize some of the game's more complicated systems. Apologizing again (two apologies in the same Tweet!), he asked that players wait a bit more.
Yamauchi quickly followed up this apology with some good news for those worrying that this is actually a stealth delay to 2011. A follower pleaded with him to get the game out by the end of the year. "I believe we won't keep you waiting until then," replied Yamauchi. —via Andriasang
Source: Official Gran Turismo
*UPDATE* 10/14/10
So it seems the "finalizing some of the game's more complicated system" is updating the SDK to 3.50.
An insider close to Sony is chalking up the recent delay of Gran Turismo 5 to the recent PS3 hack that has made waves over the last few months, pinning blame on a last-minute SDK switchover. This comes following yesterday’s revelation that GT5 would miss its November 2 release.
A source on the Blu-ray.com forums suggests that looming fears over piracy prompted the setback. Shortly after PSJailbreak and its variants made the rounds, SCE issued a mandate requesting that titles with a post-October release date must be compiled with 3.50 SDK libraries. Here’s the post in full, which has since been removed for reasons unknown:
Like I said it is manufacturing issues. I had it confirmed today.
The problem arose when SCE mandated SDK 350 on all games releasing after after October, GT5 was about to go gold running on SDK 341, but it has been delayed by around a week so that they can update to SDK 350. This has caused a big headache for the manufacturing side, given how big this game is missing the gold date by even a week can cause a months worth of delay as slots are already taken up at this time of year for Blu-ray movies and such. So Sony had to find a 3 week slot big enough to make 7m+ copies of this and get them shipped out.
If you want to blame anyone, I would direct it at the pirates and hackers, SCE never had any real SDK restrictions before firmware 3.41 was compromised.
Certainly sounds plausible. While a switchover to the new SDK is hardly a big deal, you have to factor in QA testing, which can easily take an upwards of a few days to complete, depending how extensive. That, factored in with setting a revised manufacturing date, can easily lead to a delay of this nature.
Fans can rest assured, however, that GT5 will make 2010. While Sony has not yet pinned down a firm date, it’s still on for a “holiday release.”
Source: eXophase
