A special trailer celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Gran Turismo series has been released on the official GRAN TURISMO TV YouTube channel.

It has been 25 years since the original ‘Real Driving Simulator’ launched in Japan on 23 December 1997, and the Gran Turismo series continues to evolve and shows no signs of slowing down even to this day.

Whether you were around to experience it at the time or not, we hope you will enjoy looking back with us at a quarter century of Gran Turismo memories.

Message from Gran Turismo Series Producer Kazunori Yamauchi

I’m very happy that we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the first release of the Gran Turismo series.

Back in 1992, Gran Turismo was the first project I created out of close to 100 others I came up with when I first started my career in this industry, so it means a lot to me.

While making video games was something I started at 10 years old as a hobby, I had never thought about making it a career.

I started a movie production club when I was 14, and had been producing movies, so I first joined Sony hoping to create image products. But the department they assigned me to was not what I was expecting.

It was a department where the PlayStation console was just about to start, and was a place where Kutaragi-san was working feverishly to bring the concept of PlayStation to life.

That place was not what I had hoped for, but looking back now, you could say that I was very lucky.

I was fascinated by real time 3D graphics that many had been waiting for, and created and presented plans for all kinds of video games, not just limited to race games but RPGs, adventure games, action games, puzzle games, and more.

As a result, Gran Turismo took a more fantasy race game format in 'Motor Toon Grand Prix', becoming one of the first 1st party titles for PlayStation; but if another project other than a racing game were approved, there is a good chance that I might have been making a title other than Gran Turismo today.

Thereafter the Gran Turismo project started from gathering a team of two part-time artists and three engineers.

From there, the number of comrades has continued to increase in number for over a quarter of a century, and has become Polyphony Digital today, a company with over 200 staff members.

I don’t think there are many video game franchises in the world that have continued for 25 years with the same title, and with the same team.

The founding members of the company are still working on the front lines, and I am thankful and proud that all 200 members of our staff are a team that have the same motivation and love that the company had at the beginning.

In the last 25 years, the cumulative sales total of the series has reached over 90 million copies as of November 16, 2022.

And this result is something that could not be accomplished by ourselves alone.

Behind that 90 million figure, there are all the people of the media who conveyed the allure of Gran Turismo to their readers. There are the people at PlayStation who sold GT for us around the world with passion, and there is the incredible amount of support from the retailers who interfaced with our users.

My heartfelt thanks goes out to all of them for their support.

And above all else, I can’t ever thank enough the GT users and people of the GT community who have played our new titles, which at times could be said to have been very experimental. We are here today because of all the people who supported us.

I believe the Gran Turismo series has always pursued 'Beauty.' The beauty of the cars, the beauty of the scenery, the beauty of the lighting, the beauty of driving, the beauty of sounds and music, and the beauty of the graphics.

This 'pursuit of beauty' is the motivation for creating Gran Turismo.

We have newfound determination to continue our progress into the future with a strong sense of purpose.

We appreciate all of your support over the last 25 years.

Thank you.