Kazunori Yamauchi, CEO of Polyphony Digital and Producer of Gran Turismo 7, has stated in an interview that it takes nearly 300 days to create one of the game's cars when starting from scratch. Gran Turismo is a series known in part for the attention to detail it pays to each of the cars in its roster, so it would make sense that the timeline to create one in Gran Turismo 7 would be extensive, even if not many would expect it to be almost a year.
As a series that emphasizes immersing the player in the driving experience as much as possible, with a VR update to Gran Turismo 7 being the latest proof of this commitment, much of that philosophy revolves around simulating an accurate driving experience for all the included vehicles. Getting this experience right for every car would require exhaustive research into how they operate while keeping in mind translating that into a game and managing resources available to the developers.
Speaking to Impress, Kazunori Yamauchi has stated that it takes roughly 270 days to create one of Gran Turismo 7's cars from scratch, and the current output should be around 60 cars per year. He also stated that while he acknowledges getting requests for the return of vehicles like the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 4, because of the lengthy process it takes to create a car and limited resources at Polyphony, he asks for fans to understand if they have not. Something else he admitted to is the gap between what fans want versus what he imagines, meaning that even if he is aware of fan expectations, there is no guarantee that fan favorites will arrive in future content updates for Gran Turismo 7.
Although Gran Turismo recently broke a sales milestone, having sold about 90 million copies since the series debuted, Yamauchi could potentially be referring to what the staff of Polyphony Digital can reasonably do since the studio has roughly 200 employees working there. If the goal is to create 60 cars a year while one takes 270 days, assumptions can be made that the developers have to balance creating cars that fit Polyphony Digital's vision with the ones fans have requested.
When it comes to the gap Yamauchi mentioned, he could potentially be alluding to Gran Turismo 7''s poor reception with many fans, and while many focused complaints on monetization along with forced online connectivity and server issues, some likely also had qualms with vehicles missing from prior games. As the game receives more content and improves servers, responses to the game can potentially improve while Polyphony Digital balances resources, fan expectations, and its vision for the game.
Gran Turismo 7 is currently available for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
Source: Impress (via TheGameSpoof)