Last month Sony took a much anticipated first step toward getting GT5 in the hands of the public by releasing the demo. Since that time, Sony was proud to say the demo has been downloaded over a million times.

First question in my mind: where the hell is the game? It’s been in development forever. And sure, they’ve got new engines and all that, but Microsoft has dumped two new versions of its racing sim on the world in the time it’s taken Sony to get GT5 together.

Then there’s this: A million times? Like one? Only one? Granted, it’s a single platform release, but that’s still ridiculously low for a top tier title. Oh, but that’s only stats for 17 countries participating in some crazy Time Trial Challenge, which doesn’t include Japan, the States, or Canada.

Last question then: why should we care?

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