Most racing games are about speed and spectacle. Gran Turismo has always been about something more: the joy of cars themselves. Since 1997, it has let players buy, tune, wash and race faithful recreations of real-world vehicles, from humble hatchbacks to Le Mans prototypes. In the process it became PlayStation’s best-selling franchise, helped turn gamers into real racing drivers, and even inspired a Hollywood movie.
Here’s the full story of “The Real Driving Simulator,” and how to get started if you’ve never driven a lap.
The Basics: What Is Gran Turismo?
Gran Turismo (GT) is a series of sim racing games developed by Polyphony Digital for PlayStation systems. The games aim to recreate the look and handling of a huge range of mostly licensed real-world cars, with physics that model things like weight transfer, suspension response, understeer and oversteer. Assists are there for beginners, but to be competitive you need to learn real driving technique.
The classic GT formula works a bit like a role-playing game. You usually start with around 10,000 credits, buy a cheap used car, earn prize money in races, and slowly build up a garage of faster and more exotic machines. Along the way you take license tests that teach you skills like braking points and cornering lines.
In sales terms, it’s a giant. The franchise has sold over 100 million units worldwide, making it the highest-selling franchise under the PlayStation brand. (Wikipedia cites a GameSpot report from around September 2025 for this milestone.)
The Origin Story: Kazunori Yamauchi
The series is the life’s work of Kazunori Yamauchi. In 1992, while working at Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, he started developing the first Gran Turismo with a small team named Polys Entertainment that began with five people and grew to seventeen. Sony initially rejected his pitch for a realistic racing sim, so the team kept working on it as a side project. After the success of their arcade-style racers Motor Toon Grand Prix and its sequel, Yamauchi pitched it again and Sony said yes.
Development took five years. The original Gran Turismo, directed by Yamauchi and produced by Shuhei Yoshida, was released in Japan on December 23, 1997, and in North America and Europe in 1998. It had 150 licensed cars, more than any other racing game of the time, and a realistic visual style that showed off what the PlayStation could do. Polyphony Digital was founded shortly after its release.
The PlayStation Era: GT and GT2
Gran Turismo (1997) shipped 10.85 million copies (a figure reported in 2008), making it the best-selling game on the original PlayStation. It averaged 95% on the review aggregator GameRankings, making it the highest-rated racing game on that site when the site closed in 2019.
Gran Turismo 2 (1999 in Japan and North America, 2000 in PAL regions) added rally events and expanded the roster to about 650 cars. It was so big it needed two discs, and it shipped 9.37 million copies.
The PlayStation 2 Era: GT’s Peak
Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (2001) was originally announced as Gran Turismo 2000. It became the best-selling PS2 exclusive and the second best-selling PS2 game overall (behind Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas), with about 14.89 million copies sold. As of 2022 it was still the best-selling game in the entire series.
Gran Turismo 4, released in December 2004, grew the car list to around 700 and added a photo mode and a “B-Spec” mode in which you manage an AI driver who races on your behalf. It sold 11.75 million copies. Along the way Polyphony also released smaller “Concept” and “Prologue” editions, a habit that would continue.
The PS3 and PSP Era: GT5 and GT6
Yamauchi has said that developing for the PS3 was a “nightmare,” and Gran Turismo 5 was delayed several times. In the meantime came Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (2007), which brought online racing to the series with up to 16 players on track, and a PSP game simply called Gran Turismo (2009), with 800 cars and 35 tracks.
Gran Turismo 5 finally launched in 2010. Its “premium” cars were modeled with up to 500,000 polygons, compared with 300 polygons per car in the first two games. Gran Turismo 6 followed on PS3 in 2013, after the PS4 had already launched, with 1,200 cars.
The PS4 and PS5 Era: Sport and GT7
Yamauchi said the PS4 was much easier to develop for. Gran Turismo Sport (2017) was a bold experiment that focused on online racing, with no traditional career mode or “car ownership.” Fans missed the classic structure, though, and Gran Turismo 7, revealed in 2020 and released for PS4 and PS5 in 2022, brought the career mode back. A free update later added PlayStation VR2 support.
Gran Turismo 7 got generally positive reviews from critics for its graphics and driving, but players were more negative. Microtransactions and grinding drew criticism, and the game was hit by heavy review bombing on Metacritic, receiving the lowest user score for a Sony-published title.
From Gamer to Racer: GT Academy
One of the most remarkable chapters in GT history is GT Academy, a driver discovery program run by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Polyphony Digital and Nissan Europe, first tied to Gran Turismo 5. Top players competed in-game, then trained and tested in real cars. Graduates such as Lucas Ordóñez, Jordan Tresson and Jann Mardenborough went on to race professionally.
Today, competition happens through the Gran Turismo World Series, held since 2018 with many car manufacturers taking part. (Until the end of the 2021 season it was called the FIA Certified Gran Turismo Championships.) In 2021, Gran Turismo Sport was one of the games used for the FIA and International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Virtual Series, and Gran Turismo 7 was used for the motorsport event at the first Olympic Esports Week in Singapore in June 2023, won by France’s Kylian Drumont.
Vision Gran Turismo: Dream Cars Made Real
Through the Vision Gran Turismo project, carmakers including Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Nissan, Mazda, Subaru, Bugatti, Lamborghini and Ferrari have designed concept cars for the game. Some, like the Mercedes-AMG concept below, have been shown as physical cars at real-world events.
The Gran Turismo Movie (2023)
The story of Jann Mardenborough became the 2023 film Gran Turismo, directed by Neill Blomkamp, with Archie Madekwe as Mardenborough, David Harbour as his mentor Jack Salter and Orlando Bloom as Danny Moore. It premiered at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium on July 30, 2023, and opened in the U.S. on August 25, 2023. It grossed about $122 million worldwide on a $60 million budget and got mixed reviews. Critics praised the racing sequences but criticized the writing.
Where Should Beginners Start?
- Start with Gran Turismo 7 on PS5 or PS4. It brings back the classic career structure of buying, tuning and racing.
- Do the license tests. They’re the best driving lessons in gaming.
- Use a racing wheel if you can. GT was early to promote wheel play, but a controller works fine.
- Curious about history? GT1 through GT4 are classics worth exploring if you still have the original hardware.
Final Thoughts
For nearly three decades, Gran Turismo has been where car lovers and gamers meet. It has shown off every PlayStation’s power, turned players into pro drivers and made the PlayStation brand synonymous with racing. Whether you’re chasing lap times or just admiring a perfectly rendered classic, there’s a seat waiting for you.
What was your first Gran Turismo car? Tell us in the comments!
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