GT Sport surpasses 9.5 million users

Gran Turismo Sport has now exceeded 9.5 million users, as revealed by the game’s producer, Kazunori Yamauchi, in a Japanese-language interview with car lifestyle publication, Octane.

Before we go any further, there’s a distinct different between ‘users’ and ‘sales’ – users or players would include if someone borrowed a copy of the game from a friend, for example. But, in the world of streaming services and subscription bundles, ‘users’ is the modern parlance as the games market evolves.

9.5 million players is an impressive figure though because GT Sport has never been on PlayStation Now, nor given away as part of PlayStation Plus and is only on PlayStation consoles. In fact, Gran Turismo 2 sold 9.37 million copies, so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Sport has eclipsed that figure already.

Life lesson: never underestimate the global appeal of the Gran Turismo franchise.

“We got 9.5 million users, but it didn’t sell explosively from the beginning, and it seemed that the understanding gradually progressed and the support increased over the three years.”

The timing of the interview is interesting to me because Kaz has been relatively quiet of late. A large part of the interview talks about the possibilities of HDR and ray tracing within the upcoming Gran Turismo 7, so here’s hoping this is the start of a PR programme to seep out a few details here and there before a bigger GT7 exposé soon.

When that happens, be sure to visit Traxion to get the latest news and opinions.