Bad news for fans of the Playstation’s premier racing game: Gran Turismo 7’s release has been pushed from 2021 to 2022.
The revelation came during an interview with Jim Ryan, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s CEO, conducted by GQ. The magazine asked about the game’s release date and had a PR professional jump in to deliver the following statement.
“GT7 has been impacted by Covid-related production challenges and therefore will shift from 2021 to 2022,” wrote Sony in a statement. “With the ongoing pandemic, it’s a dynamic and changing situation and some critical aspects of game production have been slowed over the past several months.”
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As for an exact release date, Sony provided no further information than that it will be released next year. Indeed, Gran Turismo’s developers aren’t the only ones grappling with the pandemic. Several high-profile video games were delayed due to the same reason, like Deathloop, Far Cry 6, Halo Infinite, and more.
Gran Turismo 7’s first trailer was released in June as part of a Sony livestream event. The game is the first in almost seven years given a number and a place in the canonical Gran Turismo series. Although Gran Turismo Sport came out between games 6 and 7, its greater focus on e-sports meant that it was considered more of a spin-off than the numbered series.
Indeed, Kazunori Yamauchi, the CEO of Polyphony Digital who’s responsible for developing Gran Turismo, suggested in an interview earlier this month that the new installment would take a step away from GT Sport and return to the more familiar gameplay style of earlier entries into the series.