The Classification Board has awarded Gran Turismo 7 a G rating in Australia ahead of its release in March next year.
This news shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Gran Turismo series doesn’t typically attract controversy. Each game in the series has attained a G rating in Australia, and so the tradition continues.
The Classification Board uploaded its ruling to its website yesterday, citing “Very mild themes, online interactivity and in-game purchases” among its notes.
Gran Turismo 7 will be the first fully-fledged game in the series since Gran Turismo Sport in 2017. Prior to launch, there was some confusion over whether GT Sport was considered a mainline GT title or a smaller Prologue game. The GT Prologue offshoots are essentially large, paid demos, proof-of-concept builds big enough to sell. Series creator Kazunori Yamauchi later confirmed Sport qualified as a mainline GT game. This effectively makes Gran Turismo 7 the eighth mainline game in the series.
Gran Turismo has long been considered a world-class driving simulator. A PlayStation exclusive its entire life, Gran Turismo has always been extremely Japanese in its sensibilities. Polyphony Digital makes a no-nonsense simulator. Its handling model is carefully crafted and precision-engineered. Its damage model, like its contemporary Forza Motorsport, is limited to ensure vehicle manufacturers are kept happy. It recreates fan favourite tracks and circuits, like Germany’s Nürburgring Nordschleife and Bathurst’s Mount Panorama, in the kind of excruciating detail that get stern nods of approval from even the most dedicated iRacing fans.
The question, in 2022, will be how Gran Turismo 7 stacks up in a world where the Forza series has dominated the vehicle sim space for almost a decade. Has Forza‘s more accessible approach changed what people expect from a motorsport game, or is GT‘s ultra-granular approach still what players are looking for?
We’ll find out when it launches for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 on March 4, 2022. You can find out more about the Australian Classification ratings board here.
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