As you might expect, the Gran Turismo team was on site at the SEMA car show in Vegas to promote the game. Creative director Kazunori Yamauchi was there running demos and talking to the press. He dropped a big bomb on a small audience when he estimated the cost of Gran Turismo 5 development at $60 million.

The massive price tag mostly came from the need to develop a new engine for the game. “We threw away the legacy code from GT4 and started from scratch … It’s been five years [since the release of] GT4, and that’s the same amount of time it took to develop the first GT4,” he said. Yamauchi also deferred the issue of release dates outside Japan to Sony marketing, claiming it’s their decision when the game will get a date. Most people, myself included, are anticipating a first half (though probably second quarter) 2010 release.

Source: VGChartz