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Forums - Sony Discussion - Eurogamer: GT5 Kazunori Yamauchi full interview

Despite spending over five years making it, Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi still isn't happy with his latest creation. But it is finally here and at the official launch for the game last night in Madrid, Yamauchi turned up with a garage-load of supercars and a wide grin of relief.

After telling us "today is only the beginning" for the game, Eurogamer grabbed some time with Mr GT to find out what this means, and what's next.

Eurogamer: The game's finally out today. What took you so long?

Kazunori Yamauchi: We really wanted to make it incredible, and to make something incredible just takes time. But it's still not perfect.

Eurogamer: What's not perfect? You said on stage you're going to be upgrading every week, every month – what specifically do you want to work on?

Kazunori Yamauchi: That's sort of a surprise we're keeping for the future. Once games go online it's no longer the type of thing where you just make it, hand it over to the players and they go out and play it. Games will keep evolving.

Now it's released we're going to have several million people who'll become citizens of Gran Turismo. From here on we have to listen to their voice and see what they want and change the game accordingly to match their needs. So Gran Turismo really is just at the starting point, it's really the beginning and we're just going to evolve from here.

Eurogamer: You've been working on the game for over five years. How hard was it to say 'we've done enough'? Would you have liked more time?
 
Kazunori Yamauchi: Of course that's true and it would have been nice to have more time, but at one point we have to release the game because my imagination alone is not enough to make the game evolve to where we want it to go. We really need to listen to the voice of our citizens and see what they want out of the experience and evolve with that.

Eurogamer: On a specific note, will you be adding online matchmaking soon?

Kazunori Yamauchi: In this release we focused on the features that allow close friends to race together. Online updates are planned of course for leaderboard and matchmaking - [they're] all planned in the process of evolution.

Eurogamer: You are a perfectionist, you've said the game isn't perfect – but what do you think is GT5's greatest achievement?

Kazunori Yamauchi: I think it's the overall packaging of the game I'm really proud of. GT integrates a lot of different features, whether it be the graphics or the physics - it evolves a lot of different things. Really integrating that together in a clean package was a difficult process and I'm really proud we were able to do it.

Eurogamer: Looking ahead, Gran Turismo 6: will that be on PlayStation 3 or the next console?

Kazunori Yamauchi: 10 years ago it was easier to predict what would happen three years in future. Nowadays no-one knows what happens in the future. In three years, we don't know what will happen.

Eurogamer: So you're not sure that it'll be a PS3 game?

Kazunori Yamauchi: [Laughs and shrugs]

The following text comes from a general press Q&A session the morning after the launch event.

Journalist: I've test-driven a lot of the cars. Modern cars now drive quite alike – often it's hard to appreciate the difference between them. In the game there's always a difference between two cars – what do you do to enhance that difference?

Kazunori Yamauchi: It's really because the body structure and layout of the cars are becoming almost identical that we came up with different cars. For example, if you take the Ferrari 458 Italia and the Ford GT and look just at the body they're almost identical and you can't really tell them apart.

I think it's just that sports cars have evolved to that point now. For the character of each of the cars, manufacturers focus on providing different sounds that the driver will experience in the car, and also the steering and driving feel.

They would treat things like the feel of the power steering and I guess some of the cars have an adjustable power steering feel. There's many cars where, by turning this knob, you have a very different character in the same car.

On the base part Gran Turismo is pretty much the same. In terms of character you'll find of course that older cars have a stronger one. You'll find that especially so when you compare cars with the same power ratio over those of an older era – the difference is much greater in older cars.

Journalist: Did you have to invent something to create character in the game?

Kazunori Yamauchi: The most important thing is to recreate the car as accurately as possible. We don't do anything in addition to what the manufacturers do. For example, the Lexus LFA was a car where the engineers had a really exact idea of how they wanted it to sound. There's a very specific mechanism for producing that, that transmits the sounds from the engine into the cockpit.

If you look at the waveform graph of the sound coming from the engine, you can really tell that a certain frequency is very pronounced in the design. The frequencies are about five times the engine RPM. Those ranges are extremely pronounced in the sound design for the car and we've recreated that accurately within Gran Turismo.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-11-25-kazunori-yamauchi-interview-interview



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Poor guy was never gonna please everybody, I mean there are still people crying GT5 doesn't have guns. But whatever, it's still a great game.



PS One/2/p/3slim/Vita owner. I survived the Apocalyps3/Collaps3 and all I got was this lousy signature.


Xbox One: What are you doing Dave?

Well that confirms GT5 will be only GT on PS3, Sony will want GT6 in under 2 years after PS4 releases. 



I've found my calling as a Pit Manager, B-Spec ftw, it makes shit drivers awesome at GT5 :D



PS One/2/p/3slim/Vita owner. I survived the Apocalyps3/Collaps3 and all I got was this lousy signature.


Xbox One: What are you doing Dave?

Ajescent said:

Poor guy was never gonna please everybody, I mean there are still people crying GT5 doesn't have guns. But whatever, it's still a great game.


Altought i'll certainly have some points i would want to change

He already made me a happy man



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

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CGI-Quality said:
Ajescent said:

I've found my calling as a Pit Manager, B-Spec ftw, it makes shit drivers awesome at GT5 :D

Hey, A-Spec is doing it's duty as we speak!

if by "doing its duty" you mean handing my ass to me on a plate, then yup :D



PS One/2/p/3slim/Vita owner. I survived the Apocalyps3/Collaps3 and all I got was this lousy signature.


Xbox One: What are you doing Dave?

Blue3 said:

Well that confirms GT5 will be only GT on PS3, Sony will want GT6 in under 2 years after PS4 releases. 


Can be... he always released 2 GT iterations per gem... If GT5P is considered one, so GT6 is PS4 game.

If not them i bet GT6 will be GT5 with the addition of more cars, courses (as all second game of generation have been)

and all the aditions they have done through the updates, and a little secrets.

 

While this the team will work in GT7 to PS4, the GT6 could be executed by less member (just an upgrade, not everything news, as always has been) and supervisioned by Kaz himself. I wouldn't doubt they doing this.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

Ajescent said:

I've found my calling as a Pit Manager, B-Spec ftw, it makes shit drivers awesome at GT5 :D


It's a shame that modes like B-spec have been ignored by most of the journalists giving the game lower scores.  It's like reviewing Halo: Reach based solely on the singleplayer, while ignoring features like Forge.  Or reviewing LBP based solely on the levels that come on the disc.



makingmusic476 said:
Ajescent said:

I've found my calling as a Pit Manager, B-Spec ftw, it makes shit drivers awesome at GT5 :D


It's a shame that modes like B-spec have been ignored by most of the journalists giving the game lower scores.  It's like reviewing Halo: Reach based solely on the singleplayer, while ignoring features like Forge.  Or reviewing LBP based solely on the levels that come on the disc.

Though I do remember B-Spec being one of the things that was most complained about, both by reviewers and fans alike, in GT4, due to it's simplistic interface and features. 

KY and PD worked so hard on improving it, and it was mostly ignored now.



Current PC Build

CPU - i7 8700K 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz turbo) 6 cores OC'd to 5.2 GHz with Watercooling (Hydro Series H110i) | MB - Gigabyte Z370 HD3P ATX | Gigabyte GTX 1080ti Gaming OC BLACK 11G (1657 MHz Boost Core / 11010 MHz Memory) | RAM - Corsair DIMM 32GB DDR4, 2400 MHz | PSU - Corsair CX650M (80+ Bronze) 650W | Audio - Asus Essence STX II 7.1 | Monitor - Samsung U28E590D 4K UHD, Freesync, 1 ms, 60 Hz, 28"

CGI-Quality said:
lestatdark said:
makingmusic476 said:
Ajescent said:

I've found my calling as a Pit Manager, B-Spec ftw, it makes shit drivers awesome at GT5 :D


It's a shame that modes like B-spec have been ignored by most of the journalists giving the game lower scores.  It's like reviewing Halo: Reach based solely on the singleplayer, while ignoring features like Forge.  Or reviewing LBP based solely on the levels that come on the disc.

Though I do remember B-Spec being one of the things that was most complained about, both by reviewers and fans alike, in GT4, due to it's simplistic interface and features. 

KY and PD worked so hard on improving it, and it was mostly ignored now.

I think that's in part to the market shift. People are focusing on other things when reviewing most of these titles. Like Halo: Reach, GT5 was picked apart for the smallest of things, while GTA IV had FAR more problems and was awarded 10s across the board (this with the game being in development just a year less than GT5).

Oh well, at least Reach & GT5 both appealed to their targets (also unlike GTA IV which disappointed many of it's fans for taking features away). We'll know just how much of a success GT5 really is in just a week.

I think that in the end, what really matters is what you said in the last paragraph. As long as the fans are appealed, then GT5 did it's job.

Given that KY is going to be supporting GT5 for quite some time, then things can only get better, just as it did with GT5:P (the final version, GT5:P Spec III, was a much better version than Spec I).



Current PC Build

CPU - i7 8700K 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz turbo) 6 cores OC'd to 5.2 GHz with Watercooling (Hydro Series H110i) | MB - Gigabyte Z370 HD3P ATX | Gigabyte GTX 1080ti Gaming OC BLACK 11G (1657 MHz Boost Core / 11010 MHz Memory) | RAM - Corsair DIMM 32GB DDR4, 2400 MHz | PSU - Corsair CX650M (80+ Bronze) 650W | Audio - Asus Essence STX II 7.1 | Monitor - Samsung U28E590D 4K UHD, Freesync, 1 ms, 60 Hz, 28"