Confusion over. The GT Academy 2010 Time Trial track releasing on December 17 is definitely GT5 code. This is your first chance to get a proper play of what will almost certainly be the biggest racing game of 2010.

“Yes, it’s GT5 code,” a PR rep just told us by email.

The taster will be a single track for the 2010 GT Academy competition.

Speculation mounted following the announcement of the demo’s release that it would simply be a new track in the Prologue engine: now you know.

So yeah. Get pumped. There’s no date on the game outside Japan as yet.

Sony just confirmed six new titles for the Greatest Hits range for PS3, including GT5 Prologue and MGS4. A hint? Very possibly.

The list:

• Army of Two, Electronic Arts
• Battlefield: Bad Company, Electronic Arts
• Devil May Cry 4, Capcom
• Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Sony Computer Entertainment America
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Konami
• Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Sony Computer Entertainment America

As of June 16, this lot will cost $30.

Polyphony Digital launched the Gran Turismo Café at Twin Ring Motegi circuit in Japan last week.

Apparently, the “exterior, interior, and even the staff uniforms have been decorated in the image of Gran Turismo, and there are additional items added to the already popular menu lineup as well.”

The restaurant even has booths where you can play GT5 Prologue.

Japan always seems to get the cool stuff.

Half-Life isn’t the only birthday boy in the house today: Gran Turismo is now ten, and celebrated with a party in New York at which the game was played at 240fps and 3840×2160 resolution. Just for a laugh, like.

Four PS3s were used to create the merged image of 8.2 million pixels.

There’s a full report on how is was done here.

Sony’s patched GT5: Prologue with three new cars, according to this Eurogamer piece, meaning you can now get your hands on the “GT by Citroen” concept car, the Ferrari California and the Lotus Evora.

Apparently there’s also tweaks added to the penalty system, race events and other miscellaneous bits and bobs.

More info through the link.

According to this US PS Blog post, “Gran Turismo 5 Prologue owners will receive a significant update,” the thrust of which is the launch of GT TV.

Notes from the site:

• For the first two weeks only, we are providing all pay-per-view content for at a discounted price of $.99! It’s a good way to get a taste Gran Turismo TV. The HD content we shoot for our exclusive stuff looks pretty amazing. Following the initial two-week period, content will start at $1.99. So start downloading away!
• Be sure to check the full content list for a full content list, as we will be adding new programs on a regular basis.
• Gran Turismo TV will also include new features that allow viewers to fast forward, rewind, and move between chapters when viewing video content.
• Viewers can download up to 8 episodes simultaneously and pause individual downloads.

More through the link.

On ThreeSpeech. According to the Sony-affiliated site, “GT TV will broadcast full high-def content on demand, footage from racing events around the world, automobile news, and much more.”

Much more? We hope so. Take a look. GT TV launches on August 1 and is accessed through GT5: Prologue.

Joystiq bumped into Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi at E3, who revealed that as Polyphony Digital is focusing most of its energies on GT5: Prologue, the full retail version of GT5 probably won’t hit the market until 2010.

The hits just keep on coming. More through the link.

By Mike Bowden

In this month’s OPSM, Polyphony head Kazunori Yamauchi said that Gran Turismo 5 will probably feature sexy car manufacturer, Porsche.

“We’ll have most – no, all of the major manufacturers,” said Yamauchi when asked about what manufacturers he’d always wanted to see in the game.

“So, come on… Porsche?” pushed OPSM. “Probably,” he replied.

GT5 is still about year away unfortunately.

By Mike Bowden

Kazunori Yamauchi has said in an Austrian interview that Gran Turismo may come to PC as a necessity for a Chinese launch.

“It is very, very improbable that GT will comes out on another console,” he said, speaking to derStandard.at. “But perhaps it comes to the PC. Particularly [so we could spread the game in] the Chinese market.”

Changes to the once untouchable series seem to be coming thick and fast at the moment, what with the inclusion of for-all online play and the promise of damage for Prologue later this year.

GT5: Prologue has just launched in Europe and hits the US at the end of this week.

“We had been developing the PSP version, but the problem was that the PS3 version took much more time and effort than we had first imagined,” he said. “So that’s been delayed – I don’t think we’ll be able to make the end of this year for the PSP version, but we are working on it.”

No more. If you’ve got a Kazunori interview, don’t blame us for not running it.

Another Yamauchi interview, this time from Videogamer.com. The Polyphony Digital boss plays other racers, he admitted, but they’re all rubbish.

“I try them out a little bit,” Yamauchi said when asked is he played the likes of Forza and PGR. “The only impression I get from those games is that the only benchmark for Gran Turismo is Gran Turismo and we have to base ourselves on that.”

Haughty. We like that. Expect at least one more of these today.

Speaking to CVG, Polyphony Digital boss Kazunori Yamauchi’s confirmed that a PSP version of Gran Turismo is still on the way but it’s going to be a GT5 add-on.

“I don’t think Gran Turismo Mobile will make this year,” he said, “but we are hoping to make the PSP version a satellite game, like an addition to GT5.”

GT5′s about a year off, so it’s going to be a while before you’re fiddling with Yamauchi’s motor in the palm of your hand.

There’s a full interview through that link. Apparently Eurogamer’s got one going up today as well, so watch out for that.

Speaking to CVG, Polyphony Digital boss Kazunori Yamauchi has revealed that a “major update” is coming for Gran Turismo 5: Prologue later this year, which will add long-promised car damage and extra community features.

Yamauchi said in February that GT5 would create a global community for fans of the game, so this sounds like the start of it all.

He promised that damage was on the way to the series last last week, but didn’t put a time-scale on it apart from “very, very soon”.

According to this. The previous holder of the record was Insomniac shooter Resistance. Being Britain, we have no actual sales figures because Chart-Track only lets the president of the world see them, or something, so you’ll just have to take the British stats company’s word for it.

Also, you can’t transfer the file, as it’s linked specifically to the account that downloaded it, although we can’t quite see why you’d want to do that anyway.

Sounds like it might have been better to buy the disc, no?

Here. The game’s now up on the European PSN and is available for download.

GT5: Prologue was supposed to release yesterday on PS3′s online service, but was delayed due to “technical” problems, according to a statement issued by SCEE earlier today.

The wait’s over, anyway. Go fetch, assuming you haven’t bought the disc out of wild frustration at not being able to download it at midnight last night.

Update: SCEE just made the following statement:

We would like to apologise for the lack of a PS Store refresh yesterday. As previously mentioned, we unfortunately experienced some last minute technical difficulties and were unable to publish the new content as planned. However, we have been working hard to resolve these issues and are pleased to be able to let you know that the… content is now live on the UK store.

A rumour’s doing the rounds that Gran Turismo 5: Prologue will be available for download between 3pm and 6pm today.

The racer failed to hit the target launch date yesterday and since then Sony has blamed technical difficulties for the delays.

A rumour appeared earlier today saying the game might not be available until tomorrow.

We’re still waiting on an official release statement from SCEE.

By Mike Bowden

SCEE’s made a statement regarding the fact GT5: Prologue failed to turn up on the European PSN last night, blaming tech issues for the snafu.

“Unfortunately due to some last minute technical difficulties, we were unable to publish the new content to the PS Store yesterday,” said a spokesperson. “We are working to resolve these issues and will let you know as soon as new content is posted.”

The statement was posted on ThreeSpeech, and we’re still waiting from an official comment on Sony central. All very exciting this, isn’t it?

This is reporting that European gamers may not be able to do download the racer until Saturday.

We’ll keep phoning. Expect to see SCEE make some kind of statement on this later today.

Update: Just had a mail from SCEE PR. They’re waiting for comment from central office, apparently, so looks as though a statement’s on the way.

GT5: Prologue hasn’t turned up on the European PSN as planned, leaving some rather angry punters wondering what happened. The game was supposed to be released for download yesterday, with the boxed copy hitting stores today.

We’re waiting for comment from SCEE.

Polyphony Digital boss Kazanori Yamauchi has confirmed that car damage is finally on the way to Gran Turismo.

“We really, really want to put damage onto our vehicles,” he said, speaking in a video interview you can find after the link. “We’ve had a lot of discussions with the manufacturers and although at the beginning they hated the idea of deformation, now they’re slowly coming around to it. We’ve still got a few to convince, but we will. Expect deformation in the very near future: very, very soon.”

Yamauchi was speaking on the eve of the release of GT5: Prologue in Europe, and far ahead of a 2009 release of the full version of GT5. While not saying whether or not damage would be included in GT5 next year, online updates are already confirmed for Prologue, and Yamauchi said that PSN delivery would continue to play a big part in the evolution of GT on PS3.

“Obviously, we wanted to do a next-gen Gran Turismo,” he said. “When the PS3 appeared, we realised that we needed a lot of time to develop properly on this hardware, so we gave ourselves four years yto come up with a complete programme. As a result, you’re not going to get Gran Turismo all in one go, but gradually, adding online elements and features as we go. The good thing is that it’ll have a long, long lifespan.”

Watch the rest after the jump.

Speaking here, SCEA’s Chris Hinojosa-Miranda has said that the full version of Gran Turismo 5 will be shipping roughly in the first half of next year.

“You could borrow it from someone, but that’s like licking the bowl after someone’s finished the ice cream,” he said in response to a question about whether a user should buy Prologue or wait for the full version. “Also, to further clarify, GT5 is still about a year away. You should just decide now to buy it, enjoy it, go online and race against anyone and everyone, rank number one worldwide, get the girl (or guy) and become the most popular kid in town. The end.”

Hinojosa-Miranda’s comments come after UK retailer GAME sent an email to subscribers saying the final version of the racing title wouldn’t be seen until 2009.

GT5: Prologue releases in Europe on Friday.

Headlining tracks are:

• Weezer – “Automatic” (LA Riots remix)
• The Mars Volta – “Goliath” (EL-P remix)
• Justice – “Let There Be Light”
• SebastiAn – “Dolami”
• Kavinsky – “Testarossa Autodrive” (SebastiAn remix)
• DJ Shadow – “Love Love”
• Does it Offend You, Yeah? – “With a Heavy Heart (I Regret to Inform You)”
• The Earaches – “Not the Kind of Man I Am”
• Thin Lizzy – “The Rocker (Richard Evans Mix)”
• The Klaxons – “Golden Skans”
• Friendly Fires – “On Board”
• Pride Tiger – “Let ‘Em Go”

Other, lesser known, artists include Nittoku Inoue, naomee, and Goose.
As of yet, there is no confirmation as to whether these songs will make it into the European (out Friday) or Japanese versions.

By Mike Bowden

The game releases on March 28. Still has plenty of the Prologue bundle left for this weekend, if you fancy it.

Speaking on the US PlayStation blog, SCEA producer Takau Imasaki has revealed that updates for GT5 Prologue are in the offing, including off-the-board races and new communications features.

“Private races with buddies and in-game chat are all in the works but will not be ready from day one,” he said. “Will keep you posted on the progress!”

GT5: Prologue will release in Europe on March 28.

That includes Australia and New Zealand. So the racer’s not the first game to go platinum before release as previously thought. Just to clear that up.