The Gran Turismo series had it's 15th anniversary on December 23, 2012, Polyphony Digital sales statistics show 68 million copies of the games have been sold worldwide.

Total sales for each title, including special editions (such as GT5 XL and GT5 Academy Edition) now stand at:

Gran Turismo 5 gets a version update to 2.09.  Included are a range of fixes and enhancements.  One enhancement has been the noise which has a comparison in the video below.  Polyphony Digitals view was the sounds in GT5 were "too perfect".  This drew a load of reactions all seemed to disagree.   From my point of view they have been too clean and wooden. Just my 2 cents from driving race and sports cars.  Have a listen to the comparison video.

Jordan has sat down with Mr Gran Turismo himself to have a chat.  

Reading the comments its seems to have raised more than a few heckles.  

Polyphony will release three new cars plus add a number of fixes and updates to a release available now.  Update 2.08 will fix collisions and the options for its use plus fix an auto pilot bug.

Nice work here from fdh258789.  Check out Route 246.

Polyphony Digital has released a new update for their Gran Turismo 5 racer for the Playstation 3, adding a few new features and bug fixes to the title.

The new update fixes several small issues and niggles as listed below, one of the most important new features introduced with this update is the GT5 Photo Stream service.

Despite the fact that the update doesn’t come with any new content, it’s rather large, being almost 500mbs in size.

Updates and New Features

• It is now possible to adjust the race BGM and sound effect volume from “Quick Options” during a race.
• A save data backup feature has been added.
• Compatibility for the sequential shift mode of the Guillemot “TH8 RS” gear shifter has been added.
• A “Performance Difference Adjustment” has been added to the rewards for seasonal events (Applies only to seasonal events held after this update).
• Force feedback for the “Driving Force GT”, “GT FORCE Pro”, “G25 Racing Wheel”, ” G27 Racing Wheel”, and ” T500 RS” steering wheel controllers have been improved.
• A car with racing modifications applied are now categorized as a Racing Car (previously Tuned Car).
• The off-track shortcut penalty has been tweaked.
• GT5 Photo Stream service has just been launched for all players worldwide. To view the latest images taken and shared in the game are now available here.

GTPlanet has dug up an interesting rumor as several sources are suggesting that Australia’s famous Mount Panorama Circuit at Bathurst could be on the way to Gran Turismo.

GT creator Kazunori Yamauchi has expressed his interest in Bathurst before, commenting that “Bathurst is in our roadmap” all the way back in 2006. Since then, not much has happened until the Bathurst 12 Hour race last month where information surfaced that Polyphony Digital had both filmed and photographed the track as well as signed a licensing agreement with the track operators.

A new feature will appeal to all the Gran Turismo shutterbugs, named “Photo Stream”.  This feature allows you to share your finest images, anonymously, with the entire Gran Turismo community through an as-yet unpublished URL:

With the coming Gran Turismo 5 update planned for March 2012, we will be starting a new service on gran-turismo.com worldwide, called “Gran Turismo 5 Photo Stream”.

In GT5 Photo Stream, photographs taken in the photo mode of Gran Turismo 5 and set to “Share” will be shown in a list on a webpage, and be made possible to view by anyone.

The photographs will continue to change periodically, the online ID’s of the photographer will NOT be shown or made public, and there is no evaluation system or the like for the photographs. This is a service which simply introduces what kinds of photographs are being taken in Gran Turismo 5 by players around the world.

Polyphony Digital has released a new version of their popular Gran Turismo 5 racing title.

This month’s update focuses very much on bug fixing and other improvements, including better online performance and improved support for Thrustmaster’s T500 RS steering wheel.

Changelog

• Improved the performance of online races to provide a better racing experience. However, please note that using voice chat with 12 or more players can reduce screen refresh intervals.
• Reduced wobbling of the screen when using the Chase view (The Chase view is when the car is viewed from the rear during races and replays, selected by using the SELECT button).
• Electric cars (opponent cars and your cars in B-Spec) will now pit-in automatically to recharge the battery.
• Reduced the amount of steering pull when using force feedback steering wheel controllers in banks on courses such as the Special Stage Route X Oval.
• When driving formula cars using the Logitech steering wheel controllers, the initial force feedback amount has been lessened and adjusted to make it easier to drive in a straight line.

US automotive giant Ford is the latest car manufacturer to acknowledge the effect that video games have on brand recognition and vehicle sales, particularly in the 20-30 demographic.

In this November article in the New York Times, Ford cited research showing that the presence of their models in video games boosted brand awareness, brand loyalty and purchase intent by around a third, with gamers agreeing that certain models from the range were more fun to drive from their experiences in games alone. Since Ford’s official gaming debut in 1995 – with Sega Rally – they claim over 250 million copies of games with Ford models featured have shipped and with Ford a permanent fixture of Gran Turismo since the second game, 54 million of those games are Gran Turismo games. Ford even merited a cover car, with the iconic GT adorning the boxes of Gran Turismo 4, and has recently increased its PlayStation presence with a virtual showroom on PlayStation Home.