Since its inception 25 years ago, Gran Turismo has always been a PlayStation-exclusive franchise. But this could change in the future.
Last month, series creator Kazunori Yamauchi hinted at Gran Turismo 7 getting a PC port in the future. A Gran Turismo PC game may sound sacrilegious, but it isn’t farfetched.
After all, several PlayStation franchises such as Uncharted, Spider-Man, and God of War have already made the jump to PC, so we wouldn’t be surprised if Gran Turismo is next.
In a recent roundtable interview at the Gran Turismo World Finals in Monaco reported by GTPlanet, Yamauchi spoke about the difficulties of PC game development.
Kazunori Yamauchi: "PC is a world where the users do a lot of the QA"
If Gran Turismo 7 is ported to PC, one of the biggest hurdles Polyphony will need to overcome is making it compatible with different PC hardware.
Gran Turismo has always been a visual showpiece of PlayStation hardware with high-fidelity visuals and smooth frame rates. But getting GT7 to meet these expectations on a variety of PC hardware setups won’t be easy.
“On a PC, there can be a large variety of hardware that the software has to be compatible with, which makes QA [quality assurance] very difficult,” said Yamauchi.
This is less of an issue on consoles where the hardware is universal, making QA comparatively easier. “But the PC is a world where the users do a lot of the QA!” Yamauchi continued.
“We had just seen a presentation for a new steering wheel controller here in this room earlier, but it was running on a PC." But it wouldn’t start up, the drivers wouldn’t work, they reinstalled the drivers, etc. The PC is an interesting platform where a lot of responsibility is placed on the user’s side.”
Running GT7 in 4K60 native on PS5 is “a very difficult task”
Of course, consoles have their own limitations too. During the interview, Yamauchi also highlighted the challenges of running GT7 at 4K resolution and 60fps on PS5.
“Running in 4K60 native is a very difficult task. The PS5 only consumes about 300W maximum, power wise, and that is not a small amount, but on a PC you can use 700W or 800W. Achieving 4K60 with just 300W is pretty difficult.”