Polyphony Digital boss Kazanori Yamauchi has confirmed that car damage is finally on the way to Gran Turismo.

“We really, really want to put damage onto our vehicles,” he said, speaking in a video interview you can find after the link. “We’ve had a lot of discussions with the manufacturers and although at the beginning they hated the idea of deformation, now they’re slowly coming around to it. We’ve still got a few to convince, but we will. Expect deformation in the very near future: very, very soon.”

Yamauchi was speaking on the eve of the release of GT5: Prologue in Europe, and far ahead of a 2009 release of the full version of GT5. While not saying whether or not damage would be included in GT5 next year, online updates are already confirmed for Prologue, and Yamauchi said that PSN delivery would continue to play a big part in the evolution of GT on PS3.

“Obviously, we wanted to do a next-gen Gran Turismo,” he said. “When the PS3 appeared, we realised that we needed a lot of time to develop properly on this hardware, so we gave ourselves four years yto come up with a complete programme. As a result, you’re not going to get Gran Turismo all in one go, but gradually, adding online elements and features as we go. The good thing is that it’ll have a long, long lifespan.”