PlayStation 4 fans are going to have to wait a little longer for the first Gran Turismo entry on the system.
The creator of the racing series, Kazunori Yamauchi, announced today on the PlayStation Blog that the auto-racing sim game Gran Turismo Sport is now delayed to 2017. It was supposed to come out on November 15. This means that the PlayStation 4 is now losing an exclusive during the holiday season, the most important time of the year for video game sales.
“However, as we approach our planned release date in November, we realize we need more time to perfect GT Sport, which we’ve already dedicated so much effort towards since announcing the title,” Yamauchi said in his post. “We do not want to compromise the experience in any way. While we cannot confirm a new release date at this time, we are more committed than ever to making GT Sport the best Gran Turismo game to date.”
The Gran Turismo series is one of Sony’s biggest, having sold over 76.5 million copies since the first one came out for the original PlayStation back in 1997. Many gamers missed the last entry in the series, Gran Turismo 6, because of bad timing. It came out on December 6, 2013 for the PlayStation 3, just a few weeks after the launch of the PlayStation 4.
Losing such a big exclusive should hurt the PlayStation 4 this holiday, but Sony has come out of similar situations unscathed. Last year, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End was moved from the fall to a 2016 release date. The PlayStation 4 still outsold its competitor, the Xbox One, even though Microsoft had Halo 5: Guardians as a major exclusive.