yea the full interview is even better i wish i was that lucky

hi every one

during my trip to japan couple of weeks ago, i had a chance to visit Polyphony Digital studio.

the day i visited the studio was a non-working day for them. but thanks to Sony for arranging with K.Y him self to be there just to meet with me


there were only me and my friend, K.Y, interpreter and a couple of sony staff. they intoduced me . and he congratulated me for my wining

the guy was super cool. he is as kind as you all know him from the videos over the internet, even more, he was so humble as if he didn't do such a great thing to the gamers world


we spend more than an hour there, and we toke a tour on the studio and he explained every section of it .


after that we sit and start my Q&A as if i were investigating him

i asked i alot of question, maybe some questions been asked before by magazines, i think other haven't been asked before.

i really want to write everything here but i'll just stick with whats most important info he gave me.

to be honest alot of his answers i felt like he didn't want to expose detailed info.


-first of all i asked him about the Nurburgring, when its coming ? and what takes it so long? and i told him that alot of people waiting for such a great track.

-K.Y simply said its gonna be in GT5

- then i said GT5!!!! Ohh my God !! thats way to far from now.

- "he laughed" and said : why are you saying that ?

-Me: because of what i know is that the team still didn't think even of targeting a release date for GT5 and to be honest i dont believe GT5 will come before 2 years which is a long time/

-K.Y : "2 years hahaha, no no. dont worry much about that its gonna be sooner than expected"

- Me : any hint about when?

K.Y: he laughed again and said soon.

-Me: how do you get the feedback from the gamres of the game ?

-K.Y: we have a staff that surfs the internet specially looking for such detailes, collected from reviews, forums ....etc.

-Me: is it these informations taken only from japanese gamers?

K.Y: No, we also look into europe and the u.s gamres

Me: any near update coming to GT5 Prologue?

K.Y: we just released the Spec 3 update and about future update there is for sure.

Me: is it soon ?

K.Y: "smiled" we will anounce it in our website before there is any update. but we will anounce the information only before an update is goin to be released in a couple of days like what we did in spec 3. even GT5 will release at the same way "laughing" we will do every thing as a surprise.

Me: about being able to have our own private room for racing is it coming soon ? a 1000's of people were hoping such a feature is coming to the last update (spec3). and i think its the most important feature that the game should consist . rather than what we do now from syncronizing our watches just to meet our friends on a race (and i explained to him how)

K.Y: "laughed" thats crazy but also that feature is coming to GT5 for sure .

Me: ok there is one question that have never been asked before, and a detail that had never been officialy mentioned any where. which is the "catch up mode" or "Boost" as GT4 stated it, some people call it "Rubber band effect" whats the deal with that ? everyone is annoyed of it , is there is any chance to get rid of it in the future?

K.Y: "ahhaaa" we but that feature to allow a fair race for everyone for instance, if you started in the 16th position in a rooling start at fuji-speedway there is no way to win the race. also it does help but not that much. its only active when the gap is huge (more than 2 seconds). also there were some event that the RBE were not active. we will only remove it completly only when there is going to be a qualifying laps to sent every on position in the starting grid. Plus only very good and proffesional players will like playing without it active.

Me : what does it actually do ? is more grip ? or more speed ? for the left behind cars . or less grip, speed for the leading car?

K.Y: its a compination of both grip and speed for both.

then he asked me whats your favorite track in the game?

i told him suzuka .

then he said ok .. then we'll but an event called super-proffesional-event where the RBE will be disabled just for you "and he smiled"

then i asked him about porsche and lamporghini's are they goin to be in the game? why isn't already?

K.Y: the thing is we are working on it , because like the porsche have some contracts with other games manufacturer, and those contracts has just ended so its possible for us now to negotiate.

Me : what about the damage feature ? how far is it?

K.Y :thats also coming. the negotiations are taking place already. the only problem is that some manufacturer like porsche (NOTICE HE SAID PORSCHE, DOES THAT MEAN SOMTHING ALREADY HAPPINING) say's its ok to crash and total our cars we have no problem, and other manufacturer like Ferrari say's : we won't allow you to show some damage on our cars even if its the side view mirror damage .

then i asked him : is there is anything you can show me that have never been anounced. or anything new?

K.Y: what would you like to see?

Me: Nurbargring maybe..!

then we walked to the console and started it, and it started as some data base with alot of cars names and alot of tracks, me and my friend tried hard to look into the list, what i can say is that there were a lot of cars.

he asked me what car to chose. i said F430. then he started the game and said here you go give it a try

i was about to cry that moment. a full lap in ferrari F430 at the Nurburgring and K.Y him self watching me .

after i finished a full lap he said wait ...... he changed somthing and said here you go .. its the lemans track give it a try.

everything was happening like a dream to me my mind stoped thinking whats going on

after i finished a full lap at leman's track.

i thanked him for his time and toke a couple of pictures with him .

but the surprises didn't stop there.

he bring to me a Ceramic-White PlayStaion3 console and a White PSP and said "if you have some space in the airplane you can take it with you this CW PS3 model havent been released yet in the market (i think he mean the japanese market)

i asked him for a signature on the PS3 and the PSP and he said yes sure

that was one day that i'll never forget, i really had fun. he was dealing with us as a friends.


i know i missed a lot of questions i didn't mentioned here but this is what i remember and most important info.

guys please forgive me if my english isn't that good, its my second spoken language. so please take it easy on me about the grammer and the spelling thing


Peace

 no wonder i didnt see it because i looked

I hoe "it will be released sooner than expected" imples that it will be ready sooner than expected, as opposed to rushed.

Also it's good to see that the devs have learnt something from the success of Mario Kart Wii with this whole elastic band effect thing.

 I expect it in June '09... I hope it isn't sooner than that. (I've always expected late '08 to mid '09 release)

Does this means end of 09 realease?

Hmmmm... if he says it like that then am thinking Fall 09??? Or dare I say it..... Summer 09??!!!

lets be realistic

GT5 could be an xmas surprise next year

Wow, GT5 for 09 would be HUGE news for Sony!

this is 5+ million in europe only sales game.