Polyphony Digital's 2017 entry, built around FIA-backed online racing, driver ratings and a car list that grew to 338 over the years.
Gran Turismo Sport is a 2017 PlayStation 4 racer from Polyphony Digital, the twelfth game in its series. It centred on competitive online racing run with the FIA, launched with 168 cars and 29 tracks, and sold 12.977 million copies worldwide.
Polyphony Digital made Gran Turismo Sport the centrepiece of competitive online racing, and Sony Interactive Entertainment published it for PlayStation 4 in 2017. Compared with the vast garages of its predecessors, it leaned on a smaller and more focused selection of cars, built around a ranked online ecosystem and a championship run with motorsport's governing body.
When did Gran Turismo Sport come out?
Gran Turismo Sport reached PlayStation 4 on 17 October 2017 in North America, after a free demo and an open beta earlier that month. It was the twelfth game in the series and the first to be built around saving and progress in online play.
The road to release was long. Sony announced the title at the 2015 Paris Games Week, and it was originally scheduled for a 2016 release with PlayStation VR support. Sony then cancelled a planned beta to avoid further delay, and the schedule slipped into 2017.
A closed beta ran from 17 March 2017 for selected players in the United States and Europe. The open demo lasted five days, and more than a million people played it. Progress carried over into the full release, and the demo already included the livery editor and the Scapes photo mode.
A game that cut its car list to sharpen online racing, then grew single-player content through years of free updates.
Why was Sport Mode the centrepiece?
Competitive racing was the game's main focus, and the FIA-recognised online modes gave players a clear ladder to climb. Sport Mode gave players three daily races that reset each week, and the online structure was designed to reward clean driving. The single-player side was thinner at launch, which made the online part the heart of the package.
Saving was possible only in online mode, a difference from earlier entries that reviewers noticed at once. Arcade Mode offered quick single races offline, but the progress that mattered was tied to the online servers.
Arcade Mode, by comparison, was a looser offline playground of single races, and players wanting a relaxed session could use it without touching the rankings.
How did the ratings system work?
Sport Mode gave each player two ratings. The Driver Rating reflected overall skill, and the Sportsmanship Rating reflected behaviour on track, such as avoiding contact and obeying the flags. The Driver Rating could never climb above the Sportsmanship Rating, so clean racing was required to progress.
Sportsmanship came from behaviour such as avoiding contact and respecting the flags, so a fast driver could still lose ground by running into rivals.
The top general levels were A+ for the driving rating and S for sportsmanship, with E marking the bottom of both scales. Players ranked in the top 200 worldwide could hold a special S Driver Rating. Balance of performance adjusted the weight and power of each car in its category, so that a varied grid stayed close.
What were the car categories?
The game sorted its cars into seven categories. Group 1 covered LMP and Group C race cars, Group 2 silhouette racers, Group 3 GT3, GTE and GT1 cars, and Group 4 GT4 racers. Group B held rally cars, N Class covered road cars and Group X gathered concepts.
Balance of performance applied within each category, so the cars in a class were tuned to race on near equal terms regardless of where they came from.
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Gr. 1 | LMP and Group C race cars |
| Gr. 2 | Silhouette racers, such as Super GT GT500 cars |
| Gr. 3 | GT3, GTE, GT2 and GT1 race cars |
| Gr. 4 | GT4 race cars |
| Gr. B | Group B rally cars |
| N Class | Road cars, split into 10 sub-categories by power |
| Gr. X | Concept, electric, safety and track day cars |
N Class was the most varied group. Its sub-categories were set by maximum power, rounded to the nearest hundred in steps of 50 horsepower. A Mercedes-AMG GT S with 503 HP sat in the N500 class, while a Ford F-150 SVT Raptor with 411 HP fell into N400, which shows how a single model can land in a different class from its rivals.
How did the FIA championships run?
Two championships ran at the same time across the year. The Nations Cup had players representing their countries, and the Manufacturers Cup had them representing car marques of their choice. The FIA ran both directly, in the same way it managed its other race series.
The inaugural Nations Cup in 2018 was won by Igor Fraga of Brazil, with Mikail Hizal of Germany second and Cody Nikola Latkovski of Australia third. The Manufacturers Cup went to Lexus, while Toyota and Aston Martin took the next places. The World Finals in Monaco drew live-stream audiences of more than 3 million viewers across channels, and champions were honoured at the FIA prize-giving in Paris.
Regional qualifiers fed the World Finals. The Americas produced a regional champion in Igor Fraga, Europe's champion was Mikail Hizal, and Asia-Oceania supplied a finalist. The Lexus Manufacturers Cup squad was made up of three drivers who represented the brand together.
Did the game include VR or single-player modes?
PlayStation VR support was narrower than first promised. It was limited to a dedicated VR Tour Mode, and a later update let players use VR in time trial. A traditional single-player campaign arrived in January 2018 through a run of free updates.
Many professional reviews were written at release and did not account for that later content, which kept growing for years. The free updates added single-player depth that the launch reviews never saw, so the game's standing changed over time.
How did development shape the game?
Series creator Kazunori Yamauchi said the game would use the same physics engine as Gran Turismo 6, and he expected much stronger gameplay on PlayStation 4 than the last console generation allowed. He also said the console would be easier to develop for than PlayStation 3 had been.
Sony first presented the game as a separate entry, but Yamauchi later confirmed it was a main installment in the series.
Porsche made its first appearance in a Gran Turismo title after Electronic Arts' exclusive licence to the brand expired, while earlier games had used Ruf cars as a stand-in. Kamui Kobayashi provided technical assistance, and Lewis Hamilton became the series' maestro, with a Time Trial Challenge pack released on 28 November 2019.
How did the car and track count grow?
The launch roster held 168 cars across 29 tracks. Free updates lifted that to 338 cars and 82 track configurations in 32 locations by July 2021, which pushed the game well past its original catalogue. Those additions arrived in updates over several years, a gradual build rather than a single launch of new content.
The increase came through post-launch updates, so players who joined later faced a far larger selection than the launch crowd. The category system still decided which cars competed against one another, which kept older and newer models in fair fights.
Track variety grew alongside the garage. Its 82 configurations spread across 32 locations, so many circuits could be run in more than one layout, which mattered for players who wanted variety across a season.
Porsche's arrival was one of the notable additions to the list. The Lotus Evora, by contrast, had been slated for the closed beta yet dropped out of release because of licensing difficulties.
What did the livery editor and beta offer?
The livery editor let players design paint schemes and share them online, and it sat alongside the Scapes photo mode in the open beta. Those tools gave the community a way to show off its work long before the main release.
The open beta ran for five days before release and attracted more than a million players. Some progress carried over into the full game, giving early players a head start, and the demo included arcade, campaign and sport modes so that buyers could test the whole package first.
How did critics review it?
Gran Turismo Sport received generally favourable reviews on Metacritic. Praise focused on the handling, the sound and the sharpness of the online racing, while the criticism centred on the small car list and the always-online approach. Later free updates added content that many launch reviews never saw.
Eurogamer welcomed the stripped-back approach and the livery editor, although it noted that the car list was far smaller than earlier entries. IGN called the online venue a sturdy one, while Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it 6/10 because of the online requirement. GamesRadar gave it 4/5 and praised the tracks and the handling.
Several year-end lists also rated the game. Eurogamer placed it 21st in its Top 50 Games of 2017, and Game Informer's Reader's Choice awards put it second for Best Racing Game. IGN also nominated it in its own Best of 2017 racing category.
Game Revolution noted that the track list was thin, with 17 locations and variations that brought the circuit count to 40. Reviewers also worried that the single-player experience was limited at release, which the later free updates partly addressed.
How well did the game sell?
The title held the top spot in the UK all-formats physical chart for a week, and it did well in Japan and New Zealand. It ranked second in Australia, and its first Japanese week brought 150,286 copies. Its download performance in Japan and Europe was also strong.
On Japan's download chart it hit first place, and it reached second in Europe. By May 2018 it had sold around 3.3 million copies, and by June 2019 the estimate had risen to eight million. Its lifetime total of 12.977 million ranks it second among all games in the franchise.
When did the online services end?
The online services were permanently shut down on 31 January 2024. Add-on items that could be used in the game had been delisted from the PlayStation Store on 1 December 2023, and the game itself left the store on 1 January 2024.
Offline modes stayed playable after the shutdown, and the requirement for a constant internet connection was removed. Gran Turismo 7 had already arrived on 4 March 2022 as the series' next main entry.
For competitive players the shutdown ended the championships and the ratings that gave the game its identity, so the offline content became the main way to race.
Previously purchased add-on content also stayed available in those offline modes, so owners who had bought the extras were not left empty-handed.
