According to Polyphony Digital studio boss Kazunori Yamauchi, the total lifetime player counts Gran Turismo Sport now stands at 9.5 million users. Yamauchi shared this figure as part of an interview with Japanese journalist Toshifume Watanabi, for the Japanese regional version of Octane magazine, which was published last weekend.
We’ve already covered some of the content in this interview, while Yamauchi talked about the influences behind Gran Turismo and Gran Turismo 7s return to a format more like previous titles of the main series. However, the interview also addressed some other topics, including Scapes – which Yamauchi now calls the number “in the thousands” – and the importance of real-time ray tracing. A brief discussion occurred between the other topics GT Sport.
Speaking of how the series changes from title to title, Yamauchi explained that “every time we change generations we have consciously incorporated a number of new challenges. That’s why every title has fans, but sometimes the changes seemed to confuse users ”. He brings up the concept of how GT Sport depended more on online esports, and how that seemed to scare some fans at first. “As a result, we got 9.5 million users, but it didn’t sell explosively from the start and it seemed that understanding progressed gradually and support increased over the three years.”
Of course, users and sales are not quite the same. Some players may have picked up a copy of the game and never played it, or even bought two or three to collect special editions. Others race on multiple accounts or allow other players in the household to access the game. However, we previously reported that GT Sport has passed the seven million player mark and sales of eight million within three months of each other.
That would indicate that about a quarter of all GT Sport players have come to the title in the last 20 months, and this would mean roughly the same share of game sales. The game has sold 3.3 million times in the first eight months of its life, but appears to have experienced largely linear growth until its second birthday, before sales started to decline more recently.
Still, with a fourth season of the FIA Online Championship just around the corner and the prospect of Sport Mode becoming part of it Gran Turismo 7‘s offering, the game could see ten million users and sales ahead of the next generation title. That would put it above Gran Turismo 2 and fifth in the all-time sales rankings.
You can read the Octane interview with Yamauchi here, even if it’s in Japanese.
Featured image courtesy of 05XR8.