Gran Turismo 5 PS3 Release Delayed, Arrives Before Christmas

Speaking in the new issue of PSM3 magazine, Polyphony Digital’s President Kazunori Yamauchi comments that the current build of Gran Turismo 5 occasionally dips below 60fps, which could be why the studio decided to move the title’s release date from early November to, um… later than early November.

In the must-read 10 page feature, Yamauchi explains:

“I think 60fps is very important, so we’re working towards perfecting that. There might be times when you have a certain combination of conditions that come together – especially with the weather effects – [and] the game might briefly drop from 60fps, and for that I beg your forgiveness!

If you’re going from a standing start at No.16 and all 15 cars in front of you are kicking up water, there might not be 60fps at that moment.”

The delay to Sony's Gran Turismo 5 is a result of the recent PlayStation 3 hack causing Sony to shift manufacturing of game discs, an alleged insider has revealed.

Sony announced earlier this week that Gran Turismo 5 would not make its published 2nd November release date, claiming, "creator Kazunori Yamauchi and the team at Polyphony Digital want to make certain they are creating a racing experience of the highest quality."

That might not be entirely true however, according to a post on Blu-Ray.com's forums from a senior moderator called Maximus with alleged links to Sony.

"The problem arose when SCE mandated SDK 350 on all games releasing after October," reads the post. "GT5 was about to go gold running on SDK 341, but it has been delayed by around a week so that they can update to SDK 350.

"This has caused a big headache for the manufacturing side, given how big this game is missing the gold date by even a week can cause a months worth of delay as slots are already taken up at this time of year for Blu-ray movies and such. So Sony had to find a three week slot big enough to make seven million+ copies of this and get them shipped out."

"If you want to blame anyone, I would direct it at the pirates and hackers," the post adds. "SCE never had any real SDK restrictions before firmware 3.41 was compromised."

The original post has now been taken down from the forum.

We've reached out to Sony for comment.

Gran Turismo 5 will now launch on PlayStation 3 "before Christmas."