Kazunori Yamauchi revealed the challenges of creating Gran Turismo 7’s online system at the Word Series 2022 World Finals in Monaco Traxion.GG.
Sony’s premier live service game, Gran Turismo 7, has seen its fair share of online challenges in its inaugural year – but series producer Kazunori Yamauchi explained Polyphony Digital’s philosophy at the finale of the Word Series esports competition.
At launch, changing lobby settings like the track or cars used required setting up a new room. The ability to host a qualifying session was only introduced in November update 1.26. Compared to its 2017 predecessor, the Gran Turismo Sport, it felt like a step backwards for connected competition.
“You know, Gran Turismo Sport had a real focus on online competitions that hosted the World Series events. It was designed for that,” Yamauchi-san said in an interview with Traxion.GG today (November 26).
However, Gran Turismo 7 is a full-fledged entry-level series, with the numbered nomenclature implying greater prominence.
“When you develop a software program, the core code needs to be revised from time to time to accommodate new elements for the future,” Yamauchi-san said in an interview with Traxion.GG today (November 26).
“That’s what we did for Gran Turismo 7.
“We had to redesign everything that allows for future evolutions of the software.
“Now we have clean code that we can expand and add more functionality to.”
The highlight of the Gran Turismo World Series takes place this weekend with the World Finals in Monaco. The general format and technical base haven’t changed much in a few years, with the exception of a move from GT Sport to Gran Turismo 7.
A number of tracks will allow in-game – and formerly GT Sport – drivers to compete in Sport mode for a chance to compete in the Tentpole events. Now that Gran Turismo 7 is more stable, changes to the online ranked mode and events could also come.
“I think there’s still a lot more work to be done for Sport mode,” Yamauchi-san continued.
“We already have events like this [World Series]but I think there are more things we can do on the code side to make it even better for that.”
However, Yamauchi-san has characteristically remained secretive as to what those traits might be.
Despite being almost nine months on sale, we felt that Gran Turismo 7 had yet to realize its full online multiplayer potential, and we look forward to potential changes in the future.
