Random: It now takes Dev 270 days to build a Gran Turismo car

Do you ever feel like we might be getting a little Also Obsessed about photorealism in games? Well, if you’re a car modeler at Polyphony Digital, no one would blame you for starting to feel that way.

When it comes to meticulous attention to detail, the Gran Turismo series has always been the gold standard for petrolheads the world over – the old vacuum-cleaner sounding engines of PS2 days aside.

But have you ever stopped to think about it? Just how much work What’s needed to prepare those retraced wing mirrors, buffed spoilers, and polished headlamps for their 4k (and soon-to-be VR) close-ups?

No, of course you haven’t. You only think about yourself. Fortunately for the rest of us, the Japanese outlet impressed are not so selfish, and in A recent interview Along with his Game Watch team, series creator Kazunori Yamauchi gave us a small window into the madness. And it’s fair to say that the numbers are very mind-boggling.

When it comes to car production, we spend 270 days building each car from scratch, which is a huge cost. Compared to the past, development costs are exceptionally high, but players simply evaluate the number by saying, “There are fewer cars than Gran Turismo 6.”

Now, as ridiculous as it may be to imagine, this obviously doesn’t mean that there’s some poor guy at Polyphony throwing his arms around and yelling “I told you, Dave! I Can’t get to the Mazda Demio exhaust notes until I finish modeling the turbo wastegate on this 1993 Nissan Skyline!”

(Though in fairness, this kind of bespoke, hand-crafted artistry would go some way to explaining the game’s somewhat divisive approach to microtransactions.)

No, of course we’re talking about 270 days of man hours spread across the entire team here: think modellers, sound designers, legal suit types, people who have to make sure the Mazda RX-7’s ass end slides. be done juuuuust right When you tip it into a corner at 60mph. That kind of thing.

Nevertheless, it is a truly eye-watering work. And if you think it’s just a bunch of polyphony’s anal buggers (new death metal band name if anyone wants) think again: turn 10 studios – competition developers Forza Series – is First went on record That said, the entire process of adding a new car to their game takes about six months.

To take you back a quarter of a century – why not? – N64 Classic Golden Eye 007 Full multiplayer mode The code was coded in about 40 days. When you stop to consider it, it begs some important questions about the complexity of modern-day video games.

Are we willing to accept less content in exchange for flashier graphics? Is true photorealism even a possible pursuit at this point? And will Dave ever get the exhaust note files he’s been waiting for since September?

Whatever the answer, we think it’s great to stop and think about these things every once in a while. God bless the game developers, eh?