Jim RyanCEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, surprised us this Tuesday with an avalanche of news related to PlayStation. The most striking, without a doubt, is the confirmation of the next generation PlayStation VR that will be integrated with the PS5. However, it is not all good news. The manager confirmed to GQ news that was already an open secret in recent months: Gran Turismo 7 will not arrive this year.
Gran Turismo 7, what will wait until 2022, was emerging as one of the most important exclusives of the PlayStation 5 during 2021 along with Returnal, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Y Horizon: Forbidden West. The problem, however, is that neither Sony nor its internal studies contemplated the emergence of the pandemic when the development of these games began. Jim Ryan himself said that the delay of the racing title has to do with the obstacles generated by COVID-19.
The reality is that the delay of Gran Turismo 7 It shouldn’t surprise many. The reason? The title is the responsibility of Polyphony Digital, one of Sony’s Japanese studios. When it comes to video game development, Japan is one of the countries most affected by COVID-19. And it is that, unlike other countries where employees continued to work from home, on the Asian island they were not prepared to migrate their work home.
The transition to remote work took longer at development studios in Japan, and Polyphony Digital was not the only harmed. Nintendo is another of the companies whose announcement and launch calendar had to find new dates due to the obstacles that were crossed. In fact, it took 18 months for another Nintendo Direct to take place like last week. The health situation took us all by surprise, of course it is.
“COVID did nothing good and pushed Gran Turismo 7 through 2022,” noted Jim Ryan. However, he hinted that Horizon: Forbidden West still scheduled for the second half of 2021. For its part, Returnal Y Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart maintains its dates for April 30 and June 11, respectively. He also said that the filming of the film of Uncharted and the series of The Last of Us they will not suffer problems from the pandemic.
The article Gran Turismo 7 delays its launch until 2022 due to COVID-19 .
