The development of “Gran Turismo 7” seems to be going well, as the studio is currently in the process of hiring even more people to work on the game. And from what can be seen from the job offers posted publicly, they need quite the diverse set of workers to join their ranks. It’s great to see that Polyphony are stepping up the production value of “Gran Turismo 7” so much, as fans have been asking for a proper sequel for quite a while now.
Specifically, the job postings list positions for CG artists, technical artists, software engineers and tool engineers. It seems that they have a stronger need for technical experts at this point, which could indicate an earlier stage of development – but hiring artists also means that the production is in a stage where content creation has to be stepped up as well.
Polyphony have likely learned a good lesson from the release of “Gran Turismo 6”, as the game was met far less favorably than the company was anticipating – and certainly didn’t manage to live up to fans’ expectations. While the quality of the base gameplay was, for the most part, adequate, fans were not fond of the fact that the game didn’t come out for the PS4. That mistake won’t be repeated with “Gran Turismo 7”, according to the company, as they are already planning a PS4 release for the game when it comes out.
“When” is a question that fans have been asking quite a lot, but so far, it seems that the game’s release is still a long way off. Rumors indicate that it could come out in either 2015 or 2016, but those are mostly just speculations based on the company’s previous release schedules. It’s also possible that Polyphony may delay the development of the game in order to give it more polish, which would coincide with some internal rumors according to which the company has taken the criticism towards “Gran Turismo 6” seriously.
It’s not known what size the development team for the current game has, but there were rumors that Polyphony are looking to work with a larger group of people this time, in order to create more content more efficiently, and judging by their current aggressive hiring practices, this could very well turn out to be true. If more job offers come up on the market in the future, it could possibly mean that “Gran Turismo 7” is going to be a truly massive project in scale; but it could also indicate that Polyphony are seriously rearranging their development teams and are shifting people to new positions, while filling up the old ones with new recruits.