Sony

How many copies of Gran Turismo have been sold? — 2023 statistics

Speeding ahead with Gran Turismo's numbers.

Fact-checked
First Released
December 23, 1997
Genre
Racing
Developer
Polyphony Digital
Publisher
Sony

Gran Turismo has been around since 1997 and has presented the world of gaming with some of the most high-quality racing simulation games to date. The first Gran Turismo game was developed by Polys Entertainment (later renamed Polyphony Digital) and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. There are eight mainline releases in the Gran Turismo series with sixteen total games considering alternate releases with the newest game being Gran Turismo 7. The series, as a whole, has created a name for itself as a marvelous representation of everything a racing simulation game needs to be, so we’re going to take a look at some Gran Turismo statistics to see how the series began, how it’s doing, and where it’s going in the future. If you want to learn something new besides this, we can also tell you how big the gaming industry is.

Gran Turismo key stats

This section is going to take a look at some of the general facts and interesting information regarding the Gran Turismo series, from sales and revenue statistics to relevant news and extra info relevant to the game. Since this is a massively popular series and is one of the oldest racing simulators in gaming, there is a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get into it!

The Gran Turismo series has sold 90 million copies.

(Source: Traxion, VG Sales, IGN, Engadget)

  • Gran Turismo 1-3 sold 35.11 million copies.
  • Gran Turismo 4 sold 17.83 million copies.
  • Gran Turismo 5 sold 17.3 million copies.
  • Gran Turismo 6 and Sport sold 13.22 million copies.
  • The series has grossed over $4 billion in revenue.

Firstly, some baseline sales stats. Although the Gran Turismo series has not accumulated the 150 million sales the Need for Speed series has, 90 million sales is still an astronomical number and it is showing no signs of stopping. We can see that the first three games, cumulatively, have 35 million copies sold, but individually, the newer games have many more sales than the first games had, which bodes well for the series.

It usually takes 300 days for the developers of Gran Turismo to make a car.

(Source: GameRant)

  • At the current output, Kazunori Yamauchi that the car quota should be around 60 per year.
  • The studio has approximately 200 employees working there.
  • The developers constantly try to add fan-favorite cars.
  • However, Kazunori has stated that there is a gap between what he imagines for the cars versus what the fans want, so it’s not a guarantee that fan-favorite cars will always be added.

One of the biggest things a game developer should have is dedication and attention to detail. Of course, when Gran Turismo had just launched, designing a car and implementing it in the game was much easier, but the level of detail it takes to design a car in Gran Turismo 7 is astonishing. Adding high-performance cars is a standard for many racing games, but the developers of Gran Turismo also try to add cars that fans want to see in the game.

Gran Turismo 7 had a horrible launch with a rating of 1.7 on Metacritic.

(Source: Eurogamer, CBR)

  • The game implemented steep microtransactions coupled with terrible server performance that limited the playability of the single-player campaign.
  • Microtransactions were omitted from Gran Turismo 7 review copies by Polyphony Digital.
  • Fans also complained about the amount of grinding you had to do for in-game credits.
  • In response to this, the developers gifted each Gran Turismo 7 player with 1 million credits and announced that a quality-of-life update would be released soon.

We’ve gotta be honest here, microtransactions are not good for gaming. A vast majority of the games that come out today have microtransactions in some form, and that means that the gameplay is going to suffer because some aspects of it are going to be locked behind a paywall so it’s much harder to progress. Because of this, you get grind-intensive games where you have to play for hundreds of hours to get basic things. This is what happened with Gran Turismo 7, but the developers have apologized and tried to lessen the blow to the community.

You need over 400 million credits to purchase all of the cars in Gran Turismo 7.

(Source: GT Planet)

  • The game has 427 cars.
  • It would take you 430 million credits to buy each of them.
  • Three of the cars in the game cost 20 million credits.
  • 21 of the game’s cars account for 50% of the total credit price.
  • It is possible to earn 2.2 million credits per hour.
  • This means that it would take you 190 hours to grind the 430 million credits.
  • Were you to choose to use real-life money, all of the credits would cost you $4,297.85.

We already know that Gran Turismo 7 is a very grind-intensive game and that there are many cars to unlock, but over 400 million credits is pretty steep, even by today’s standards. This means that you need to spend hundreds of hours on the track just to unlock one car, and you can imagine why that is not appealing to casual gamers that want some more variety in the games they play.

The cars in Gran Turismo 7 have 500,000 polygons each.

(Source: GT Planet)

  • The first Gran Turismo game’s cars had 300 polygons.
  • Gran Turismo 5 had a similar polygon count for its vehicles, but the cars in Gran Turismo 7 are much more detailed.
  • The PS4 and PS5 can comfortably run GT7, with each console processing 1.6 billion and 8.9 billion polygons per second, respectively.

This is another detail-oriented point that we wanted to make to show you just how insane the progress has been between the first Gran Turismo game and the newest installment, Gran Turismo 7. Since the first game came out at a time when you could still find arcade machines around, the game’s design was quite simple and the cars did not have that many polygons, which is normal for the game’s time. However, when you look at the cars in today’s games, you can see that the difference in the number of polygons is monumental.

Gran Turismo 7 players figured out an exploit to get millions of credits.

(Source: Dexerto)

  • Even though Gran Turismo 7 has been called a very high-quality game, it has received criticism for its steep car prices and harsh microtransactions.
  • A player named Septomor shared a script that allowed players to generate millions of credits while not even playing the game.
  • It involved using a script that took advantage of PlayStation’s Remote Pay feature.
  • The script yielded 550,000 credits per hour.

While a highly acclaimed racing game, Gran Turismo has faced criticism for its expensive car prices and microtransactions. As a result, players have discovered an exploit using a script to generate millions of credits.

Gran Turismo Sport has over 14 million lifetime players.

(Source: GT Planet, Racing Games)

  • The game crossed 3.3 million users within its first eight months.
  • Forza Horizon 5 surpassed Gran Turismo Sport with 18 million lifetime players.
  • However, Forza Horizon 5 is available on more platforms.

We also have to talk about the second-to-last release in the Grand Turismo series — Gran Turismo Sport. This game is extremely popular in the racing community and it has very similar gameplay elements as all of the other games in the series, so you know it has to be good. Its main competitor is Forza Horizon 5 which beat it in lifetime players, but you also have to consider that Forza is available on multiple Xbox platforms as well as PC, while Gran Turismo Sport is a PS 4 exclusive.

14.7% of Gran Turismo Sport players are from the United States.

(Source: Kudos Prime)

  • 8% of players are from the United Kingdom.
  • 7.2% of players are from Germany.
  • 7.1% of players are from France.
  • 5.3% of players are from Japan.
  • 5.2% of players are from Spain.

There isn’t much to say here other than the main majority of Gran Turismo Sport players are from the United States, which is a common occurrence as it is a game primarily marketed for the Western world. Other than that, the rest of the user base is distributed among various European countries and other locations in the world.

Gran Turismo released a 25th-anniversary update with new content.

(Source: Dualshockers)

  • The update was rolled out on November 24th, 2022.
  • The update added a Monaco Demo Event, as well as a community event where players could predict the winner of the Gran Turismo esports event, potentially winning 1 million credits.
  • 4 cars and one new track were added in the update.
  • Multiple events were added to the World Map.
  • 5 new series were added.
  • Various other miscellaneous additions were added in the update.

As we’ve said in the introduction, Gran Turismo is an age-old franchise that has been around for over 25 years, creating excellent content and providing its community with racing games they can come back to time and again for many years. Because of the dedication of the fanbase and the general success of the Gran Turismo series, the developers decided to release a 25th anniversary update to include a ton of new content, from races and tracks to new cars and so much more!

To sum up

Alright, now you know everything you need to hit the track and put some miles on your favorite cars! It’s an amazing thing to see old game franchises continue to bring only the best to the table, albeit with some hiccups here and there. Gran Turismo was started in 1997 and has continued to provide the gaming world with top-notch racing games that are timeless and unforgettable. We’re very glad that we can to touch upon these topics and we sincerely hope that you have enjoyed the content presented here and that you have learned something new!

Sources

  • “Gran Turismo”. VG Sales, 2023, https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Gran_Turismo
  • “Gran Turismo 7 has helped the series surpass 90 million sales”. Traxion, 2022, https://traxion.gg/gran-turismo-7-has-helped-the-series-surpass-90-million-sales/
  • “Gran Turismo Reaches 90 Million Sales As Polyphony Digital Celebrates 25th Year Anniversary of the Series”. IGN, 2022, https://in.ign.com/gran-turismo-7/177792/news/gran-turismo-reaches-90-million-sales-as-polyphony-digital-celebrates-25th-year-anniversary-of-the-s
  • “‘Forza’ is a billion-dollar success story for Microsoft”. Engadget, 2017, https://www.engadget.com/2017-02-14-forza-is-a-billion-dollar-success-story-for-microsoft.html
  • “It Takes Almost 300 Days for Gran Turismo 7 Developers to Make One of the Game’s Cars”. GameRant, 2023, https://gamerant.com/gran-turismo-7-300-days-make-car/
  • “Gran Turismo 7 players get a million free credits and ability to sell cars as Sony addresses troubled launch”. EuroGamer, 2022, https://www.eurogamer.net/gran-turismo-7-players-get-a-million-free-credits-and-will-be-allowed-to-sell-cars-as-sony-addresses-troubled-launch
  • “Gran Turismo 7 Update 1.26 Adds Four New Cars And Events”. DualShockers, 2022, https://www.dualshockers.com/gran-turismo-7-update-126-adds-new-cars-events/
  • “Gran Turismo Franchise Celebrates 25th Anniversary With Over 90 Million Copies Sold”. DualShockers, 2022, https://www.dualshockers.com/gran-turismo-franchise-90-million-copies-sold/
  • “Gran Turismo 7’s Car List Costs Over 400 Million Credits”. GT Planet, https://www.gtplanet.net/gt7-car-list-prices-20220518/
  • “Gran Turismo 7’s Car Models Use 500,000 Polygons Each”. GT Planet, 2022, https://www.gtplanet.net/gran-turismo-7s-car-models-use-500000-polygons-each/
  • “Gran Turismo Sport Reaches 9.5 Million Players”. GT Planet, 2021, https://www.gtplanet.net/gt-sports-9-5-million-players-20210201/
  • “Gran Turismo Sport surpasses 14 million players”. Racing Games, 2022, https://racinggames.gg/news/gran-turismo-sport-surpasses-14-million-players/
  • “Gran Turismo 7 exploit turns players into credit millionaires in hours”. Dexerto, 2022, https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/gran-turismo-7-exploit-turns-players-into-credit-millionaires-in-hours-1789888/
  • “Gran Turismo Sport Stats”. Kudos Prime, 2023, https://www.kudosprime.com/gts/stats.php?stat_preset=nb_players_by_country
  • “How Gran Turismo 7 Became Sony’s Worst-Reviewed Game”. CBR, 2022, https://www.cbr.com/gran-turismo-7-worst-reviewed-playstation-game/
  • “Gran Turismo 7 Adding Microtransactions After Launch Is Terrible”. ScreenRant, 2022, https://screenrant.com/gran-turismo-7-microtransactions-after-launch-terrible-manipulative/