GT4 Online details

By Tom Bramwell Published 5 June, 2006

Never heard of it.

Gran Turismo 4 may have gone to market without an online mode, but that was never likely to be the end of it - and Sony's now put an online-enabled version in the hands of beta testers.

GT4 Online, which got some press earlier this year [no it didn't! - legal team], has yet to be announced as an actual product, but rather it's being viewed, a bit like E3 2006's Gran Turismo HD, as a tool for testing technology.

According to those who've got a copy, most notably IGN, it resembles regular Gran Turismo 4 - except it has an Online option, allowing for quick races, races with your own tuned cars, and private chat-rooms that allow you to commune with your fellow petrol-heads.

That last part's interesting because it sounds a lot like what series creator Kazunori Yamauchi originally had in mind. Way way back a few E3s ago he told us: "My main area of interest is not actually the racing element of online, for instance, where people will compete against each other online. My main interest is to find a setting where players can come to share knowledge of cars - just car talk. Car talk is endless: you can talk about tyres; you can talk about oil, car parks, modification..." A virtual showroom for cars was later mooted.

That's not far off what we've got. After inputting a GranTurismo.com login/password (part of the beta-testing ritual), which is then saved, players head to an Online Hub screen offering access to a quick-garage for swapping cars, an option to edit car settings, and the facility to join race modes - wherein you'll find the Private Race option.

That's the most popular bit at the moment, apparently. You create a chat lobby, assign a password if desired, and then up to 100 people can convene and jabber - chatting (using keyboard, on-screen keyboard, pre-written messages or voice comms), checking out other racers' profiles and of course actually racing them.

Each racer has a profile, allowing them to manipulate their age, a personal comment, a friends list and an ignore list; the business of customising cars is done through the garage, and you can also select cars, colours, and view opponent details in the pre-race lobby.

Other options in the GT4 Online beta include Quick Race and Tuned Car Race. The former is pretty straightforward, allowing you to pick a pre-set race event with cars of the game's choosing and then head into a chat. Meanwhile Tuned Car Race is exactly the same, except you get to pick your own car - based on the game's proposed minimum specifications.

None of which sounds particularly revolutionary, but then that's not the point - the point, it seems, is simply to see how well GT4 does online, with a view either to releasing it as a full game or working it into the next generation of Gran Turismo, which Yamauchi reckons will be out on PlayStation 3 sooner than we think.

Whatever they decide on, we'll let you know.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (29) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Skooch #1 6 years ago

    Meh GT4! Give me PGR3 or Forza anyday....

  • JediMasterMalik #2 6 years ago

    Sounds good actually. Though I've never been one for slow racing games. BURNOUT/WIPEOUT FTW.

  • Stormflood. #3 6 years ago

    Read that as GTA4 online!

    /sulks

  • #4 6 years ago

    Car talk is endless

    /Prepares noose.

  • JediMasterMalik #5 6 years ago

    @ Stormflood - It was GT4 online. They just may not be releasing it. ;)

  • speedjack #6 6 years ago

    So its a 'new' online tech demo of an old game using a old game engine on a old platform for an old online network no one uses anyway... and its not for sale.

    Erm... So what was the point again ?

  • Steroyd #7 6 years ago

    with a view either to releasing it as a full game or working it into the next generation of Gran Turismo, which Yamauchi reckons will be out on PlayStation 3 sooner than we think.

    that translates to there won't be as many delays as we're used to seeing. :)

    So its a 'new' online tech demo of an old game using a old game engine on a old platform for an old online network no one uses anyway... and its not for sale.

    Erm... So what was the point again ?

    hopefully a test bed for their online mode for GT5... eventually.
    Edited by 1 at 05/06/06 @ 11:53

  • JediMasterMalik #8 6 years ago

    @Speedjack - it isn't really meant for the public, it's for the dev team to assess how well their own system is working. And from the looks of things it's working pretty well.

  • speedjack #9 6 years ago

    Fair enough... but as the PS3 is an entirely different beast to the PS2, and Sonys online architecture will no doubt have changed radically by the time GT5 appears I have doubts as to how much of this tech demo is actually relevent.

    Just sayin'.

  • Rodster #10 6 years ago

    Who cares, give me Forza or Forza2 anyday. :)

  • Wrestlevania #11 6 years ago

    "Car talk is endless"

    /me changes into rubber pants, kick out stool under jamesphilp before whispering, "suck my dump valve, bitch" as the body slows its twitching

  • #12 6 years ago

    rubber pants...?




    Kinky.

  • Wrestlevania #13 6 years ago

    It's cheaper than constantly having to change the tighty-whities.

  • Steroyd #14 6 years ago

    @speedjack

    do you know how much of a perfectionist Polyphony are they said they were going to incorporate an online mode in GT4 and ditched it near the end because of some problem, heck they delayed it for almost a year because they wanted to add more tracks and cars in the game.

    Something tells me that Polyphony won't do an online mode unless it's perfect, or damn site 99.99% complete.

  • Talha #15 6 years ago

    @jamesphilp: For car nuts, car talk IS endless, believe it or not! ;-)

  • Eighthours #16 6 years ago

    So you can't talk about cars in a normal game lobby now then? ;)

    (You can't talk during a race in GT4 online... I'm sorry, but that's just terrible)

  • oreillymj #17 6 years ago

    Give me damage modelling instead of bumper cars before going on-line.

    Get the basics right. Cars do not bounce off concrete barriers.

  • Markusdragon #18 6 years ago

    If car talk is endless, why does Top Gear resort to making convertable people carriers and carboats that were doomed to sink? And to employing Jeremy Clarkson?

  • neuroniky #19 6 years ago

    While I respect both Forza and PGR, a well done online GT4 with collision problems solved is just the best we could have in the world of console racing. Including PC gaming, GTR and Grand Prix Legends are so much better in every sense that no console game can actually compare to them, but they won't ever be as succesful or as accessible.

  • BartonFink #20 6 years ago

    Christ on a bike how many version of this game does this make now? Polyphony have lost the plot surely.

    But yea PGR and Forza anyday.
    Edited by 2 at 05/06/06 @ 13:48

  • korky #21 6 years ago

    An awful lot of the declared functionality was present in Forza over a year ago and it didn't suffer from that atrocious "bounding box" collision model that GT4 (and predecessors) did. You can bet that Forza 2 is going to have a lot more than V1 did too...

  • Tiger_Walts #22 6 years ago

    You could probably get online with the current GT4 with the aid of some tunneling software. The networking component is already there after all.

  • albundy #23 6 years ago

    /YAWN

    As has been iterated in this comments section repeatedly, Gran Turismo was bested a long time ago. This just strikes me as being too little, too late. The series was once at the forefront of my driving fetishist mind, but Project Gotham Racing 2 and Forza Motorsport showed me innovation and new ideas. By comparison, Gran Turismo is just tired.

  • Dr_Fripp #24 6 years ago

    "The series was once at the forefront of my driving fetishist mind, but Project Gotham Racing 2 and Forza Motorsport showed me innovation and new ideas. By comparison, Gran Turismo is just tired."

    30 fps. Racing game. Does not compute.

    Project Gotham Racing 2. Innovation. Does not compute.

  • Bates #25 6 years ago

    "Cars do not bounce off concrete barriers."

    Yes they do, usually killing all within the vehicle! Mwahaha!

  • coojam #26 6 years ago

    PGR is hardly competition to Gran Turismo...its more of an arcade game.

    Forza shits all over it though. I was a big fan of GT1 and 3, but 4 is just....well its number 3 with more cars and more tracks. And crowds that jump out in front of you. Forza just feels so much better.

    Guess I'll have to see how Forza 2 ends up.

  • JediMasterMalik #27 6 years ago

    ROFL @ Bates

  • Les #28 6 years ago

    Still don't know why people love online so much? Don't you guys have friends or something? 4-in-a-room Mario Kart beats any online experience.

  • Hughes. #29 6 years ago

    The lack of online for GT4 was plain stupid, but not as stupid as the people who clearly have no interest in this article and prefer to hark on about how great it is that PGR2 got re-released with slightly nicer graphics for £50, or the "not as good looking as GT4 but can still only muster a puny 30fps because deformable cars are just SO important" sub-standard offering that was Forza.

    PGR looks great, and is nothing like GT4. Forza is painfully bad, and filled with idiot helper features like bright green racing line indicators and shouldn't even be used in the same sentence as GT4 unless it is followed by the phrase "poor attempt to challenge"

    If you want to insult GT4, make it relevant, like the fact that this Beta is probably never goijng to hit shop shelves, despite Yamauchi's firm claims that the whole point of GT4 was to be an online experience, with single player being a purely secondary feature.