Polyphony Digital | Code Like It's 198x

When Edge gave Gran Turismo ten out of ten in February 1998, it credited the game to “In-house (Polys)”: Kazunori Yamauchi’s team inside Sony Computer Entertainment in Tokyo. Two months later the team had a company of its own. Polyphony Digital has spent almost its whole life since on one series, and the games have grown with the machines: about 140 cars on the PlayStation, 650 on the PlayStation 2, cars modelled down to how their suspension shifts the body on the PlayStation 3, and a series that Polyphony counts at more than 100 million copies sold.

Fast facts

Founded: 2 April 1998, from the Sony team that made Gran Turismo.
President: Kazunori Yamauchi, producer of the series.
Based: Koto, Tokyo, with a second studio in Fukuoka.
Owner: Sony Interactive Entertainment, which owns all of it.
Games: the Gran Turismo series (1997–2022), Omega Boost (1999) and Tourist Trophy (2006).

From Polys to Polyphony

Yamauchi’s team began with Sony’s cartoon racers, Motor Toon Grand Prix and its sequel, before it made Gran Turismo; the Gran Turismo entry tells that story. In June 1998 Edge printed a gallery of the game’s car renders and described the team as “former internal SCEI team, now an independent outfit”. Independent meant a company of its own rather than freedom from Sony. Polyphony Digital Inc. gives its founding date as 2 April 1998, and it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment.

When Edge visited in early 1999, it found Polyphony’s offices “right in the heart of the capital, and conveniently just around the corner from SCEI’s headquarters”. In the meeting room the company’s BAFTA for computer programming sat inside a racing helmet that had belonged to the Formula One driver Olivier Panis. Yamauchi, then the company’s executive vice president, told the magazine his favourite racing game was Geoff Crammond’s Grand Prix on the Amiga. For Gran Turismo 2 the original team stayed together and took on 30 part-time graphic designers, and Yamauchi was aiming for about 400 cars. Edge later put the sequel in its list of the 100 best games, as “the most complete, most engrossing and thoroughly convincing racing videogame the world has ever seen”.

Omega Boost

The one complete surprise in Polyphony’s catalogue came in 1999. Omega Boost was a PlayStation shoot-’em-up in which the player pilots a robot, and Polyphony made it while it was also busy with Gran Turismo 2. It came out in Japan in the first half of 1999 and in Britain that July. Edge noted that it came from “a developer normally associated with driving titles” and called its graphics “absolutely magnificent throughout”. The studio’s only other game outside the series is Tourist Trophy (2006), a motorcycle racer for the PlayStation 2.

The PlayStation 2 and the car count

Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, the series’ first game on the PlayStation 2, and had fewer cars than its predecessor, close to 190 by IGN Unplugged’s count. It still sold. Famitsu reported about 468,000 copies on its first full day in Japan, in the last week of April 2001.

Gran Turismo 4 went the other way. By then Polyphony had moved to new headquarters south of central Tokyo, on the edge of Tokyo Bay. Yamauchi told Edge in December 2004 that the game would have 650 cars. A designer took about a month to model one car and about 30 designers were working on them, so the studio could make about 30 cars a month; more than 200 cars from the earlier games were rebuilt rather than simply carried over. All 650 shared “one central car physics model”, adjusted for each car’s specifications. Gran Turismo 4 added a B-Spec mode, in which the player manages a race from the pit wall rather than driving it. It also lost a feature at the last moment. Online racing was “up and running in our office”, Yamauchi said, but after talks with Sony’s European and American arms he cut it days before the game was finished: “First we need to sell GT4, and then we’ll work on building an online service worldwide.”

The long waits

The gaps between main games grew, filled by smaller releases such as Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (2007) and Gran Turismo for the PSP (2009). Gran Turismo 5 arrived on the PlayStation 3 at the end of 2010 after five years in development, with a 133MB patch to download before it would play online. Edge found Polyphony’s “biggest crime” was “one of inertia”: menus that had become “positively labyrinthine”, and a car list split between detailed “premium” models and “standard” ones with no cockpit view. It still praised the handling as the game’s “most notable triumph”.

Gran Turismo 6 followed on the same machine three years later, in 2013. Its reworked suspension made cars lean away from corners and lift their wheels over kerbs, and Edge wrote: “No racing game has ever felt like this.” Gran Turismo Sport (2017) moved the series to the PlayStation 4. Gran Turismo 7 came out on 4 March 2022, nearly a decade after Gran Turismo 6, with more than 420 cars and about 90 tracks, for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Yamauchi announced that December that the series had sold more than 90 million copies. Polyphony’s own history puts it past 100 million in 2025.

Sources

Edge issue 55, February 1998, pp. 86–89: Gran Turismo review (developer “In-house (Polys)”).
Edge issue 59, June 1998: gallery of Gran Turismo renders by Polyphony Digital, “former internal SCEI team, now an independent outfit”.
Edge issue 68, February 1999, pp. 44–47: Gran Turismo 2 preview and studio visit (offices near SCEI’s headquarters; the BAFTA; Yamauchi as executive vice president; Grand Prix; 30 part-time designers; about 400 cars).
Edge issue 70, April 1999: Omega Boost preview (made while Polyphony was busy with the Gran Turismo sequel).
Edge issue 73, July 1999, p. 90: Omega Boost review (developer Polyphony Digital Inc.; out in Japan, UK release on 23 July).
Edge issue 80, January 2000: “100 Best Games”, Gran Turismo 2 (Polyphony Digital, 1999).
IGN Unplugged issue 2, May 2001, p. 3: Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec tops the Japanese chart for 23–29 April 2001, about 468,391 copies on its first full day (Famitsu figures).
IGN Unplugged issue 4, July 2001, p. 13: Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec review (close to 190 cars).
Edge issue 143, December 2004: Gran Turismo 4 interview with Yamauchi (new headquarters by Tokyo Bay; 650 cars; about 30 car designers; one physics model; B-Spec; online play cut).
Edge issue 223, January 2011, pp. 90–91: Gran Turismo 5 review (five years in development; launch patch; premium and standard cars).
Edge issue 263, February 2014: Gran Turismo 6 review.
Wireframe issue 60, February 2022, p. 25: Gran Turismo 7 preview (more than 420 cars, about 90 tracks, release on 4 March 2022).
Polyphony Digital, “Company” and “History” pages (web, secondary): founding on 2 April 1998; Yamauchi as president; Tokyo studio in Koto and the Fukuoka studio; ownership by Sony Interactive Entertainment; release years from Gran Turismo to Gran Turismo 7, Tourist Trophy (2006), Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (2007) and Gran Turismo for the PSP (2009); series sales past 100 million in 2025. https://www.polyphony.co.jp/company/ and https://www.polyphony.co.jp/history/
Wikipedia, “Polyphony Digital” (web, secondary): Gran Turismo Sport on the PlayStation 4 and Gran Turismo 7 on the PlayStation 4 and 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphony_Digital
Kazunori Yamauchi, “Celebrating 25 years of Gran Turismo”, PlayStation Blog, 22 December 2022 (web, secondary): more than 90 million copies sold. https://blog.playstation.com/2022/12/22/celebrating-25-years-of-gran-turismo/