Everything you need to know about Gran Turismo 7: Release date, trailer and more

Gran Turismo is one of the most storied of all racing game franchises, a simulator that was offering realistic racing well before many of its modern competitors were even conceived of. 

Now, with the PS5 out in the wild, Gran Turismo is coming back for its seventh game, and the hype is real. Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about this blockbuster racing game ahead of its release.

Gran Turismo 7 trailer and release date

The above trailer for Gran Turismo 7 came out back in June 2020, when Sony first unveiled a bunch of games running on the PlayStation 5, and we've not had much news about the game since. 

Initially, we hoped for a 2021 release date, since it didn't seem likely it would launch with the console, but that's now slipped. Gran Turismo games notoriously don't come out until they're deemed completely ready, and the latest intel is that GT7 will now be hitting a release date of 4 March 2022.

Jim Ryan confirmed in a 2021 interview that the cause of the delay, as with so many other games, has been the chaos caused to development by COVID-19, which is certainly something we can sympathise with!

Gran Turismo 7 platforms

There's been some mixed messaging when it comes to where you'll be able to play Gran Turismo 7, it's fair to say. When it was first unveiled, we were left confident that it was a PlayStation 5 game from the ground up, and was labelled as an exclusive. 

That made sense given its seemingly bleeding-edge graphics - the visual upgrade that the game's bringing seemed simply beyond older hardware. However, a later interview from Hermen Hulst, head of PlayStation Studios, has named GT7 as one of a few games that Sony is looking to bring to both the PS5 and PS4, to avoid freezing out its massive existing player base.

That makes sense on paper, but we're a little surprised to learn that this graphical showcase will manage to run on a PS4 in due course. 

Needless to say, as one of Sony's most long-standing exclusive franchises, it won't be on its way to Xbox or Switch gamers, either. A PC release is a more interesting idea given Sony's recent move to publish more exclusives on that platform, but we still think it's hugely unlikely to come at launch if it ever does. 

Gran Turismo 7 gameplay

The good thing about Gran Turismo 7's reveal trailer, above, is that it had a chunky section of gameplay in it to give us a clear look at how the game is shaping up.

The first big area to cover off is visual fidelity - GT7 is clearly going to be an absolutely gorgeous game. The trailer is expressly designed to repeatedly show off the reflections that it can now manage, and they look for all the world like full ray tracing from here. 

Sony's confirmed that the game will be targetting 60FPS, as you can tell in the footage, as well as bringing support for 4K and HDR. Whether it can manage all of those, with ray tracing, at the same time, is something that will remain to be seen, but there's no harm in being optimistic. After all, as an exclusive title it should be well-placed to maximise its use of the PS5's hardware.

The game will also take advantage of the PS5's SSD for quick load times, and the DualSense controller will be a nice upgrade too. It'll have adaptive trigger settings and haptic feedback to immerse you further. Layer on 3D audio and it's going to take advantage of all the PS5's bells and whistles. 

We know from past Gran Turismos to expect a huge range of meticulously recreated real-life cars to drive around circuits, and it's clear that all of them will be customisable with liveries and part-swapping to tune them to your exact needs and preferences before a given race. 

The first trailer shows off a bit of what looks like a career mode, too, with characters guiding you through some menus, and it looks like there'll be plenty of different ways to play. 

On the track, though, we expect it to be a traditional Gran Turismo game - meaning punishingly realistic with all the assists turned down, and a racer that leans closer to the hardcore than most other options out there. For purists, it'll be a dream, and even for those who don't care too much about accurately modelled suspension modes, the visuals should be more than enough to make it really enticing. 

Source : https://www.pocket-lint.com/games/news/playstation/156007-gran-turismo-7-trailer-release-date-gameplay-details