Sony’s My First Gran Turismo is a welcome gift and a smart move

The context of PlayStation’s 30th Anniversary celebrations may have worked as the perfect excuse for this, but if it works out for everyone involved… does it really matter? Polyphony Digital, the Sony powerhouse behind the legendary Gran Turismo franchise, has just released My First Gran Turismo, a free-to-play title built with absolute GT beginners in mind. One can think of it as a single thin slice out of the full Gran Turismo cake, as it sports the same graphics, the same handling and same attention to detail with Gran Turismo 7 while being much, much smaller in scope when it comes to depth of content and game modes.

Yours truly took My First Gran Turismo for a spin and – despite these obvious limitations – this is unmistakably a Gran Turismo experience through and through. Yes, it’s clearly geared towards first-time players or towards people who used to play some of the first GT titles in past PlayStation generations and would like to re-acquaint themselves with The Real Driving Simulator. It’s a self-contained, well-produced demo of GT7… but that’s not a bad thing. In fact, after a couple of hours of playing it, one can’t help but wonder why something like this was not offered much sooner or indeed during the days of Gran Turismo Sport.

What’s on offer may not be a lot by GT standards, but it’s been chosen carefully. There are 18 cars to be driven in three circuits – Kyoto Driving Park Miyabi, Deep Forest, and Trial Mountain, all classics within the GT series – and five different game modes: Races, Time Trials, Music Rally, Practice and the License Centre. These modes work precisely how seasoned GT players expect, only slightly modified in terms of user interface and content. There’s no multiplayer support – that’s more or less in line with what beginners would prefer anyway – but there’s full PlayStation VR2 support, meaning that current or future owners of Sony’s virtual reality peripheral will be able to get a taste of a truly remarkable entertainment experience at no cost.

One has to give it to Sony that My First Gran Turismo is a smart move. It was put together in a way that can attract new players and keep them safely entertained (instead of scaring them away with dozens of modes and options), it still gives a good idea of what modern GT titles are all about, there’s a clear path of transition to the latest game in the series – all progress in this title unlocks the same content in GT7 – and, well, it’s free.

It’s fair to say that not everybody who will play this will necessarily become a GT enthusiast. Things don’t usually work like that. But it will be hardly surprising if GT7‘s sales numbers receive a nice boost over the holidays in no small part thanks to My First Gran Turismo. The fact that GT7 is currently discounted on the PS Store – most probably for the rest of the year too – won’t hurt either.

Rounding off 2024 with the release of My First Gran Turismo, Polyphony Digital deserves a lot of credit for an impressively productive year. Not only did Kazunori Yamauchi’s team deliver no less than eight sizable updates that improved the game and added a lot of extra content for free, but it also delivered one of the most technically impressive PS5 Pro upgrades to date, complete with in-track raytracing and 8K support. With these side projects out of the way, maybe it’s finally time for the PC version of Gran Turismo 7 to break cover in 2025. Now that would be something looking forward to.