For anyone who has  been a fan of the Gran Turismo series throughout its nearly twenty year history, you know that release date delays are as much a part of the GT experience as the racing itself.

With the calendar about to flip to September, the November release date for the latest in the Gran Turismo series Gran Turismo Sport  was screaming around the development corner, however, the developers at Polyphony Studios have decided to put the brakes on the game’s release for the time being. Series Producer Kazunori Yamauchi took to the official PlayStation Blog Tuesday to announce that Gran Turismo Sport will need to sit in the garage a bit longer, and will miss its planned November release date.

Yamauchi cited the “high expectations” that players and his team have for Gran Turismo Sport, as well as the ambitious technical aspects of the racing sim.

The most interesting tidbit from the blog post however, was Yamauchi’s reluctance to give a new release date, or even a window as to when we could expect Gran Turismo Sport to be released.

“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. 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 delay comes weeks after a hands-on report by NeoGaf user, GlamFM, who said that the game felt “rough” and that there were a number of frame rate issues in the build he had demoed at Gamescom in Germany.

“Rough. Everybody picked the Nordschleife – I went for some daytime Tokyo city-track.
Environment looked super bland and every car on screen seemed to reduce the framerate significantly.”

While it’s unlikely that this post alone had a direct influence on Tuesday’s delay of Gran Turismo Sport, it does at least back-up Yamauchi’s assertion that the game was not ready to hit the track.

Here’s some sweet car porn of the Mitsubishi Lancer in Gran Turismo Sport…

One other possibility for the delay lies in the looming announcement of the PlayStation 4 Neo, the upgraded premium PlayStation 4 model that is scheduled to be revealed on September 7th at a special press conference held by Sony.

Rumors regarding the release window for the PlayStation 4 “Neo” have pegged the system potentially hitting retail anywhere from later this year, to March 2017.

This leads to a possibility (and this is completely speculation on my part) that the game is being delayed, in part, to implement enhancements for the more powerful “Neo”.

However, like I said, that is all speculation on my part – at least until Next Wednesday when Sony officially talks about “Neo” for the first time.

As for now, we’ll just have to take today’s  Gran Turismo Sport delay announcement with an ounce of good humor. After all, it’s tradition.

“It simply wouldn’t be a Gran Turismo game without a delay.”