Gran Turismo Anywhere out early Feb

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 17 January, 2011

Odd GT5 feature about to leave the garage.

Gran Turismo Anywhere, the curious feature that allows gamers to interact with a Gran Turismo 5 race from a PC, will launch in early February.

That's according to a tweet by series creator and Polyphony Digital boss Kazunori Yamauchi, spotted by GTPlanet.

Anywhere, or Remote Races, allows gamers to control B-Spec races on a PlayStation 3 from a PC or mobile device. You can issue basic commands such as 'enter the pits' or 'overtake'.

Your PS3 game will still need to be running, however, and there are only a limited list of commands. Also, it is thought the feature does not enable gamers to complete regular B-Spec races. The remote races are designed to put your drivers and cars against the drivers and cars of your friends. Drivers get experience – but it will not count for B-Spec rank.

GTPlanet speculates that the launch of Anywhere may mark the release of a new Gran Turismo 5 update.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (20) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • Brev2034 #1 1 year ago

    And the point is, this could probably be the most pointless thing ever
    Edited by Brev2034 at 17/01/11 @ 08:16

  • weejok #2 1 year ago

    Sounds like a stupid idea?

  • levitate #3 1 year ago

    At the office: "Guys, we need an immediate distraction so we don't have to fix the actual game. Let's make a pointless addition that noone ever will use!"

  • Kengro #4 1 year ago

    Just what i needed... No it wasn't. What i need is more premiumcars, damage that makes sense and more a spec races. I still hate b spec

  • raloB #5 1 year ago

    Sponsored by N Power.

  • Mcstrife #6 1 year ago

    Bah if it doesn't work for your B-spec level, what's the point? I was somewhat excited since it could alleviate the grind somewhat, now I don't care anymore.

    Give more special events now.

  • lcmnick #7 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 12:48:44 14-04-2012

  • PixelPirate #8 1 year ago

    The idea that the game itself can level you up while you are away seems like a broken idea.

    I love GT5, plugging away at it at the moment, deep in to both A & B Spec, but thats because i enjoy the game, having it play itself seems like you are removing the fun.

    And as others have pointed out, all this can do is level up your driver, which is mostly pointless, since a decently tuned car can make up for his shortcommings if it is prooving a problematic race.

  • coolbritannia #9 1 year ago

    This is a great example of why Polyphony need close management from someone else.

  • Antaios #10 1 year ago

    @levitate: If Polyphony is doing anything at the moment, it's updating, patching, fixing and generally supporting the game as it is in a way that would put a lot of developers to shame (I'm looking at you, Codemasters, and your wreck of a F1 2010).

    Also, and I keep saying this over and over to people complaining about this; we all wanted the game to be released as it was. We literally said, "release it already in whatever state it's in and finish it through patching." PD is doing just that, and doing that brilliantly.

    Edited for being rude to levitate, which was uncalled for, so sorry. :)
    Edited by Antaios at 17/01/11 @ 10:27

  • mockturtle96 #11 1 year ago

    @Antaios
    Polyphony is forced to support this game since this is the most unfinished game at the time of launch I've seen in long time. So, they get no points for releasing patches and wasting our time and bandwidth every few days.

  • Noble6 #12 1 year ago

    @Antaios
    Biased ?

  • DrStrangelove #13 1 year ago

    lol the only use of B-spec was to win additional cars, which is a pain in the arse already with an AI driver that drives worse than a 90 years old Amish. And now I can have the awful experience on my PC, only without rewards.

    Seriously, what shit are they smoking at PD?

  • SYS64738 #14 1 year ago

    Please stop wasting time on this silly idea and implement a mid-race save game function instead, that way people that don't have unlimited free gaming time on their hands might actually be able to complete the game by 2020 when the GT6 will be out.

  • Antaios #15 1 year ago

    Noble6: "Biased ?"

    Perhaps a tad.

    Agreed, GT5 is still short on certain features and promises, but the game also does a lot of things extremely well and people tend to gloss over that. The game is massive as it is and it'll only get bigger and better. That doesn't have anything to do with being biased. Instead, PD have proven this already over the past two months.

    Anyway, I was reacting to levitate, who was more or less saying PD isn't fixing the game, which just couldn't be further from the truth. Many things have already been fixed in the game and there's a lot more coming. They could have dropped the game after release like Codemasters did with their F1 game, which has a career mode that is still so broken it's virtually unplayable.

  • WyatEarp #16 1 year ago

    Sounds like another giant patch coming our way then. Wouldn't mind if it did something useful, like stabalize the frame-rate or fix the weedy sound on collisions. Or even fix that annoying sound bug that forces my playlist to change tracks after loading/before starting races/after finishing races. And why can't we have our own music during the tune-up screens? - I hate that Japanese jazz!

  • zedzee #17 1 year ago

    Why don't Polyphony make this feature an ability to upload one's own racing profile from the GT5 game onto a Sony/Polyphony server and have it 'race' against other GT5 gamers' profiles?

    Then, with the PC/mobile phone app, one could, if one will pardon the term, pit one's own profile against other GT5 gamers and get updates from the app about how it's doing. One could then make decisions about going into pits, change tyres etc. That would be the way to 'play' the PC/mobile phone app.

    Profiles would be based on the races you've played in the full game, finishing results, the spec of one's chosen car, the mods made to the car...etc. Polyphony's servers would 'play' the game and do the actual 'racing'.

    So, if you lose such a race, it means your profile is still sh*te and you need to play the PS3 game, to get your skills and race profile level up. If you win, it means you're doing well and next time you use the PC/mobile phone app, you might be promoted to a higher-level race, to compete with even better players' profiles.

    But I suppose that would make too much sense.

  • bigtechno #18 1 year ago

    does anybody actially waste their time playing b-spec
    a-spec is borring enough

  • Makeem95 #19 1 year ago

    I just want to be able to buy a car directly from the list of entry requirements without having to write it down and then trawl the dealer to see if they have any of the required cars.

  • Noble6 #20 1 year ago

    @Antaios

    Clearly you're a decent lad. Its cool buddy, we all have things we love and support with the utmost passion.