E3 2005: Wherefore Art Thou, GT4? - IGN (original) (raw)

At E3 2004, all the talk on the portable gaming side (outside of the announcement of two new handheld systems and a ton of new games for each) was about a PSP version of Gran Turismo 4 Mobile.

At E3 2005, nothing.

Polyphony Digital has a history of being fashionably late with its premier racing series, and it looks to be that the PSP edition will continue that with a delayed start. Believed to be available in the early days of the PSP (with word from Kazunori Yamauchi himself guessing the handheld version to be finished sometime in April of 2005), the game wasn't shown at E3 this year, leading to assumptions that the game won't be available for some time. The latest news on the PSP edition (which made the rounds around the time of the PS2 GT4 launch) is that it will have significantly unique aspects to it beyond or else aside from the console edition that it was originally assumed to be a port of -- wireless online play is one thought going around, but a reworked gameplay structure might also be in the cards.

It's a bummer not to be able to play "The real driving simulator" on a handheld this year, but hey, there's a good history here -- the last Gran Turismo game announced at a system unveiling was PlayStation 2's GT2000, which was eventually reworked into the vastly overhauled and outstanding GT3 A-Spec. Let's hope the same is the case for GT4 Mobile and our patient little PSPs.