Delay has been the common denominator often associated with Gran Turismo 5 since it’s announcement a few years ago.  After 5 years of development, Spring 2010 was slated to be the official release of Sony’s top selling franchise. Uh…Wait, It’s just been delayed again. Before everyone begins to pick up rocks in an effort to stone Sony, the light should be shown on the creator of the game.  Kazunori Yamauchi’s perfection my be the main culprit in the delays.  His tireless pursuit for perfection is fascinating, and most gamers aren’t aware of the how much of the developer’s soul goes into each game.

During an interview at CES,  Kazunori Yamauchi explains;

Games have kind of branched out into very detailed genres since 15 years ago when I first started developing games. And because they have branched out into these categories they have started to lose their individuality. It’s hard to differentiate between one game and another. I want Gran Turismo 5 to be something really special so we are doing something to really revolutionize car games and racing games in Gran Turismo 5.

In an Interview with USA today, Yamauchi describes his affinity for cars and the freedom they allow.

Out of all the industrial products out there, cars are very special. One, because you control the car and it allows you to travel at amazing speeds, basically enhancing what you do. And as an object, a car is beautiful in design.
The other thing is that cars are something that let you cross the bounds of society. For example, I drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for this trip and as long as you are driving under 65 miles an hour you are within the bounds of society. Once you go a little bit over you are kind of crossing those bounds and I can’t think of anything else in the world that lets you do something like that.

For example, like knives or guns, if you make the wrong decisions they will take you out of the bounds. But it’s not like cars where before you realize it, wait, I am out of the bounds.

For all those types of meanings, cars are special, I think. Because cars have that attraction is what drove me to make a video game out of them.

Yamauchi is a perfectionist when it comes to the Gran Turismo series, but the game has been in development for 6 years and has already cost around $60 million dollars. After reading the article, it is clear that his game is a work of art, and he doesn’t want to release an unfinished masterpiece. Developers often express the notion that  a games aren’t ever finished in their eyes. Will GT5 be the masterpiece that Yamauchi envisions? Every iteration of it’s rival, Forza, has been released during the production of Gran Turismo 5. Forza 3 is a crowning achievement for Turn 10 studios, and Gran Turismo 5 is being compared to Forza 3 as well as previous GT games. In many ways Forza has perfected the formula that GT created.  GT5 faces another hurdle too.  Sony’s struggles in having huge sales success with it’s first party titles.  Gran Turismo has a long drive ahead of it, and it might have arrived to the track too late.

Source: USA Today