Your first Gran Turismo might be My First Gran Turismo (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
A free Gran Turismo spin-off designed for new players is set to be released later this week, but it’s not a live service game.
Gran Turismo is known for being a pretty hardcore driving simulator, to the point where it has even turned gamers into real racing drivers.
The series has always attracted a dedicated audience but it’s unclear exactly how well the latest instalment, Gran Turismo 7, has sold. Although last December developer Polyphony Digital described it as a ‘success’, with a ‘really high number of active users’.
Either way, Gran Turismo 8 is going to be a long time coming, so in the meantime Sony is hoping to expand beyond its niche audience with a new free-to-play title, awkwardly called My First Gran Turismo.
In a PlayStation blog post, My First Gran Turismo is described as a ‘special free-to-play invitation’ to the series that is designed to be ‘both approachable and immersive’.
Based on the trailer, it looks like a trimmed down version of Gran Turismo 7, where you can drive one of 18 cars around three famous tracks from the series’ past, specifically Kyoto Driving Park, Deep Forest Raceway, and Trial Mountain Circuit.
Along with race events, the free-to-play title sports three time trials, three music rally stages, and license tests.
‘We’ve made sure the experience is intuitive, allowing anyone to get behind the wheel and master the essentials, such as cornering, braking, and acceleration,’ said Polyphony Digital president Kazunori Yamauchi. ‘By playing it, users will build confidence one lap at a time, tackling new challenges that’ll steadily refine their driving skills.’
My First Gran Turismo also supports PlayStation VR2 on PlayStation 5 just like Gran Turismo 7, so you can give the virtual reality portion a test drive as well.
When is My First Gran Turismo released?
My First Gran Turismo will be available for free from the PlayStation Store for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 from Friday, December 6 at 12am local time.
Although it is free-to-play there’s no indication yet that it’s a live service game, with so far no mention of any microtransactions.
This is the latest announcement in honour of PlayStation’s 30th anniversary, following an update which brought back the original PlayStation boot-up sequence.
Take Gran Turismo 7 for a test drive (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
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