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In times where gamers have grown accustomed to enticing pre-release information, screenshots and trailers, one glowing example of the old ways remains. A shining beacon of silence, vagueness, contradictory statements, secrecy, confusion, and mistranslations, these are the apparent modus operandi for Polyphony Digital.

The last few years have been rough for the hardcore fans. GT4 came out about five years ago, we've had a new console since 2006, and those who've grown to love Gran Turismo are naturally dying to find out what Polyphony Digital can do with the technology. Indeed they provided us with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue in 2007, a title which is hard to know exactly what it means but you'll most often hear it referred to as a demo. I'm not sure if that's logical as demo's seldom pre-date the final version by three and a half years, but I digress.

Prologue was a masterpiece of virtual physics, hook up a high quality wheel to it and the experience is sublime. It features a decent collection of 70 odd cars but sadly, only about 6 tracks. Those 6 tracks have, by this point, been traversed so many times by hardcore fans the virtual pavement is deteriorating, and one can rest assured the mere thought of ever looking at them in the full GT5 title will trigger the gag reflex. The games real failing point however was the on-line functionality, which was so thin it could barely even be considered on-line. Players can match randomly in a queue to race in specific events, no selection of track and no way to play with people you actually know. Friends are relegated to synchronizing clocks and arranging to press submit and the same time in the hopes of landing together in a group. (for now, we'll skip over how buggy it is) This functionality was of course said to be arriving via patch in statements that were either mistranslated or later retracted, a problem that'll surface more than is comfortable if you try to follow the news, but I'll try to stay on topic. Prologue was in a lot of ways great, I certainly got a lot of enjoyment out of it, but as the years wear on and you realize the immense potential Polyphony Digital has brewing, the fans get antsy.

2009 was particularly wild, because at this point some information and actual trailers started to circulate. I get all my info from GTPlanet, and frankly they've posted a pretty all-encompassing review of the ups and downs of 2009. Officially, PD says almost nothing, and what they do say is often in Japanese, sometimes immediately removed as soon as it's posted, and all to often completely contradictory to something they said before. (or was mistranslated before)

Because of this it's still pretty damn hard to tell what's going to be in game but by this point I'd have to say it looks hopeful that most of the following firsts will make it in:

1. rights secured for Lamborghini & Bugatti
2. night racing, rain
3. damage :O
4. rights to Indycar, NASCAR, World Rally Championship
5. HD video upload to Youtube
6. head tracking

Anyone familiar with the series looking through that, and knowing what the PS3 is capable of, will surely see the potential for something great here. Most importantly it's now finally time for proper on-line integration, which PD claims to be working on extremely heavily and planning big things for, but of course there are virtually no firm details, screenshots, or feature lists.

At the start of this year, 5 years after GT4 and about 3 years after Prologue, North America and Europe still have no release date. Japan's release was slated for March. Today that Japan release date was delayed indefinitely, citing what I believe translates to "production issues" but who really knows. The press release apparently goes on to state that this does not affect the North American or European release date, which could easily be a non-statement as it doesn't exist.

Clearly I've got a severe love hate relationship with Polyphony Digital. They must be the most frustrating game developer operating today, because anyone remotely familiar with what other publishers are doing before a release knows how easily they could produce a steady stream of information to hold us over (while still holding a few gems back), but most importantly communicate clearly. But despite all this, and even though I'm pretty sure they've got a tendency to bite off way more than they can chew, I can't help but respect their attention to detail, and the fact that the end product always turns out to be something pretty great. GT5 will surely be no different, despite all the confusion and waiting the end product will no doubt be fantastic, we'll all buy it, and they'll make millions.

Here's hoping it lands on our shores before 2011. After this morning you've gotta wonder...

DISCLAIMER: Apologies to fanboys of the recklessly optimistic variety. :) Yes, a lot of the above can probably be considered unfair to PD.