Gran Turismo 4 Launch Date

Gamespot has the news that the much anticipated driving simulator Gran Turismo 4 releases on February 22nd in the U.S., while European drivers will be able to purchase the game on March 9th. From the article: "Before it finally launched in Japan on December 28, the much-lauded driving game had experienced delays of more than a year. Gran Turismo 4 will feature more than 700 automobiles from more than 80 manufacturers racing across new locales--including the city streets of the Big Apple and Las Vegas. Consistent with the series, drivers will compete in races to acquire various licenses and move up in the ranks. Unfortunately, the game will not include an online mode."

online play through xlink kai

[supersuckers]

There is a lan option, according to the gran turismo 4 [playstation.com] web site, and on the xlink kai [teamxlink.co.uk] site they list gran turismo 4 as being supported. Basically, this is tunneling software that let's you play the LAN mode over the internet.

Online play later in the year?

[philiptan]

Talking with an EB games staffer (and GT fan), I heard there's an online version of GT4 slated for later in the year. While it's unclear whether it'd require you to own the non-online version of GT4 to play online (I'm guessing probably not), apparently it'll let you import your non-online GT4 data into the new version. Why would anyone want to buy the February version of GT4, then? Well, given that most of the modifications you can perform on your cars (and the cars themselves) aren't obtainable until you put many hours into play, this means that folks with the older GT4 will be hopping online with tricked-out rides while those just buying the online version would be racing stock cars. This won't make a difference in the long-term, but that would certainly suck for new adopters for the first couple of months. Sega GT did a similar thing, releasing an online version after the non-online game had been on sale for a long time, so even though this is hearsay, I'd be biased towards believing it. Not that this is necessarily a winning marketing strategy...