When Gran Turismo Sport launched in 2017 with a focus on online and highly competitive multiplayer racing, there was some disappointment among long-term fans at the lack of single-player or career mode content.
Some solace was found in the fact it was called "Gran Turismo Sport", differentiating it from the rest of the games. The next time would be better we thought.
Well, not really. Gran Turismo 7 arrived in 2022 with beautiful graphics on the brilliant PS5 and the career mode was once again missing. This time there was the GT Cafe, a brief and inconsistent path throwing new cars at you for three races before moving on to another manufacturer.
You didn't even get a GT3 (sorry, Gr.3) car before the final championship and it was all over. While Licenses and Missions provided some single-player content, they were soon done and have only received small additions since launch.
Meanwhile, the online scene continues to get massive support. The GT World Series continues at a pace with regular Manufacturers Cup competitions while the Daily Races keeps up their weekly rotations.
Single-player racers are left with a handful of events that feature a raceable AI field as opposed to a train of rolling chicanes. The best-paying races haven't changed in two years, forcing those who want to complete their garage to do lap after lap of Sardegna.
The lack of replayability for those not interested in sweating every millisecond or dodging rammers in online lobbies is a real problem for the series. Things like B-Spec and endurance races used to keep players coming back, along with trying to complete the career mode in different cars.
Now there is little to keep those not interested in Sport Mode returning to the game. Outside of the occasional new track arriving in the game, Gran Turismo 7 has long been done as a single-player experience.
This is a huge issue for racing fans, as few other track racing games provide a good single-player experience today. The best for a long time was Codemasters' F1 series, but F1 24 has been plagued with issues. Career mode and races against AI used to be the strength of that series but have fallen away dramatically in recent years.
Forza Motorsport came and went without making much of an impact. Even games like Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown failed to truly harness the solo gameplay vibe. It wanted to be a racing MMO and instead released as a half-baked experience that did neither the MMO side nor the single-player career particularly well.
The audience of former GT players, NFS enthusiasts, and disenchanted F1 racers have nowhere to go now. Sure, some have moved into Sport Mode or picked up iRacing. But if you want to race without the chaos and calamity of online play there are vanishingly few options.
Gran Turismo can change that. It can reclaim the audience of returning single-player racers. We are still a few years at least from Gran Turismo 8, but with the rise of GT Sophy and the vicious backlash against the GT Cafe there is some hope Polyphony has learned its lesson.
Gran Turismo should be a racing game for everyone. After nearly a decade of focus on the competitive PvP racing side of the genre, it's time it got back to its roots and emphasized the offline experience.