It’s hard to believe now but the Gran Turismo franchise is celebrating its 25th Anniversary. The series began life way back at the end of 1997 in its native Japan, and the Sony-owned franchise has been running strong ever since. The developer, Polyphony Digital, and their CEO Kazunori Yamauchi, have revealed that the Gran Turismo franchise has now sold more than 90 million copies, an astounding achievement for the long running racing simulator.
They also released a special celebration video which is a brief overview/history walkthrough of how the series started and how far it’s come since. This new statistic is also a massive jump from the previous milestone, which was in 2018. The developer announced at the time that Gran Turismo has sold more than 80.4 million copies, roughly 10 million less than the current sales number. This was more than likely helped by the long awaited release of Gran Turismo 7, which launched this past March. That title went onto have the highest launching sales month in the franchises history, and was nominated for Best Sports/Racing Game at The Game Awards 2022, which it won.
In the 25th Anniversary video above, Kazunori Yamauchi speaks about the origins of the series, while also mentioning that it was a lucky break that he ended up making video games to begin with. Yamauchi originally had ambitions to be a filmmaker, but ended up working in Sony’s newest gaming division, which in an of itself is part of the origins for the original PlayStation. Starting all the way back in 1992, and taking five years to complete, the first Gran Turismo launched in 1997 to critical acclaim. Many within the industry now consider it to be the first true 3D racing simulator, and set a major precedent for future racing titles that are influenced by it to this day. Ironically, Yamauchi’s dream of being a filmmaker appears to be coming true after all, as the Gran Turismo film is set to be released in August 2023.