Kazunori Yamauchi, CEO of Polyphony Digital and developer behind the Gran Turismo franchise, recently sat down with GT Planet to reveal a bit about the studio’s next Gran Turismo title. Yamauchi says that not only is the next GT game already in works, but it will embrace the “past, present and future.” Furthermore, Yamauchi says he believes in the future of VR, and confirms it’s “very suited for a driving game.”
Although Yamauchi was reticent to speak specifically about whether the next GT game will definitely feature VR support, he feels confident in virtual reality as the next generation consoles emerge.
“The first thing that’s going to be affected by more power is VR,” Yamauchi told GT Planet. “I don’t think that there’s anything else that requires that much processing power. I really like VR; I’m one to believe in the possibilities of it, and it’s very suited for a driving game.”
Sony most recently revealed the first details of its upcoming PlayStation console in an exclusive interview with Wired, saying that the current generation PSVR will be compatible with their next gen PS console, and that it would feature a more powerful CPU and GPU, advanced audio processing, and radically faster mass storage—all of it music to any VR developer’s ears.
“VR is something that really depends on the evolution of GPU power, and the hardware for it, like display devices even,” Yamauchi continues. “It’s something where you can never have enough computing power; there’s always going to be that hardware limit, and that limit is never going to be high enough for us! Obviously that’s going to gradually improve over time and we’ll make sure to follow that.”
Responding to a question regarding whether the studio’s next title will be in the Gran Turismo franchise, or its offshoot Gran Turismo Sport (2017), Yamauchi thinks the next title “will be a combination of the past, present and future – a complete form of Gran Turismo,” he concluded.
When Polyphony Digital announced that Gran Turismo Sport would include full PSVR support back in late 2015, many driving sim fans were excited they’d finally get to jump into their favorite super cars and hit the track in VR. However the studio didn’t end up offering full support, rather serving up a single ‘VR Arcade’ mode—something that proved to be pretty lackluster due to its 1v1 races with AI that just doesn’t seem to offer much of a challenge.
The lack of full support was very likely due to hardware concerns however, so a console with greater processing power may allow the studio to offer its next game fully in VR.
