When GT Sport launched in October 2017, one major criticism was the relative lack of content. Just 168 cars and 39 tracks (at 17 locations) made the game the least content-rich since Gran Turismo 3.

Kazunori Yamauchi had originally stated he wanted to expand the game’s car list to around 500 vehicles, all with PS4-friendly and future-proofed models. What we didn’t know at the time was that Polyphony Digital intended a regular update cycle to bring that new content to players.

As of the v1.31 December content update, this now totals 103 additional cars and 32 more tracks with seven new locations. Let’s take a closer look at how this has played out, and what more we can expect as we head into 2019…

What’s the frequency?

Although the latest game version is 1.31, that doesn’t mean we’ve had 31 content updates. There’s been a few bug fixes and patches along the way, but there’s been 13 updates that brought new cars or tracks.

The first of these, v1.06, arrived just over six weeks into the game’s life, adding the Shelby Cobra, Audi R18 and the Zagato Vision GT car. Since then, the content updates have dropped on more or less a monthly schedule, with a 28.7 day average gap.

In fact, over the game’s life, the longest we’ve ever had to wait for new content is nine weeks, with that initial six-week spell after launch the second longest fallow period. Following the massive 1.19 update in May 2018, which brought Circuit de la Sarthe, no more content arrived until the end of July. Perhaps Polyphony Digital was giving us plenty of time to enjoy Le Mans?

Not all updates are equal though. That first update in November 2017 brought just three cars, while April’s two content updates only brought three between them — the two Audi Vision GT cars and the Toyota GR Supra Racing Concept — albeit with the Dragon Trail Gardens circuit.

This means that, on average, GT Sport gains 7.9 cars and 2.5 track layouts with each update. That translates to roughly one new car every three days and one new circuit variation every 12 days.

Tracks and Locations

11 of the 13 content updates brought new tracks with them. There’s been a bit of a mixture of track types across these updates, with six new real locations, one new fictional location and five expansions to existing original locations.

The keen-eyed among you will spot that adds up to 12 new sets of track layouts. That’s because the second circuit content update, v1.11, brought both Monza and six new layouts to the fictional Lago Maggiore track.

For a brief spell — okay, six months — it looked like Polyphony Digital was following a pattern with the circuit updates. Following the 1.13 update which brought the additional Blue Moon Bay Infield layouts, the updates alternated between new real circuits and new fictional layouts.

That ended with the 1.28 update and Fuji Speedway, which followed on from the Red Bull Ring update. Another real track followed — Barcelona’s Catalunya circuit to coincide with the GT Online Championship European Final in Madrid — before we saw the next original track expansion.

All but one of the new real locations — the aforementioned Catalunya track — have been circuits we’ve previously seen in the Gran Turismo series. On the other side of that coin is the total absence of previous fictional circuits from the game’s history.

A Ton of New Cars

A hundred new vehicles is no small feat. It means that the car count has expanded by almost two-thirds, and you couldn’t drive 38% of current list back in October 2017. Along with the 80% expansion in the track list noted above, it almost makes GT Sport a completely different game.

Given the initial focus of the game — esports — it wasn’t much of a surprise that race cars outnumbered road cars. At launch the 114 “Gr” category racing machines dwarfed the 54 “N” class vehicles. It has to be said that 34 of the race cars were of the uncategorized “Gr.X” class though.

The DLC ratios are a little different. Of the 103 cars added so far, 67 are N-Class road cars, bringing that balance to 121-91 in favor of the street machines, with 53 Gr.X cars. This gives the car list more of an old-school GT feel.

That’s helped along somewhat by the number of cars coming back from the PS3 era. 74 of the 103 are reworked cars from GT5 and GT6. This includes seven even older models from the days of GT4, part of GT5‘s “Standard” car list and GT6‘s “Simple” interiors, like the Subaru Impreza 22B and the Toyota Supra RZ. Another 27 cars are making their series bow, but come from existing manufacturers, while two are all-new: De Tomaso Pantera; and Zagato IsoRivolta Vision GT.

There’s been 13 new manufacturers, including De Tomaso and Zagato mentioned above. This doesn’t include the Gran Turismo brand as, although not initially available in the Brand Central section, the Shifter Kart has been in the game since the beginning. It’s been one of the busier brands though, as Polyphony adds the SEMA show winners like the 2015 FuguZ, 2012 Mach Forty, and the 2013 Chevy Nova. Only Nissan has more DLC cars, at eight, while Ferrari’s seven — including the F50 and GTO — tie the Gran Turismo garage additions.

So what’s the average update?

Taking all of the content updates into account, there’s roughly eight cars and between two and three track layouts, every 28 days.

The track locations are a 50:50 mix between real and original, although real tracks sport an average 1.7 layouts and the fictional ones come in at 3.7.

Making up the eight cars are roughly five N-class street cars, with the other three evenly split between the catch-all Gr.X category and the other “Gr” racing classes. Three are Japanese, 1.5 come from Italy, there’s 2.5 split between Germany and the USA, and one from the UK or France — with only the KTM X-Bow as an outlier so far. Just under six of the cars will be previous GT5/GT6 vehicles, with most of the rest being new cars in manufacturers already seen in the Gran Turismo series before.

It’s something to bear in mind when it comes to guessing the next set of Yamauchi’s famous Twitter silhouettes!

Featured GT Sport image by RL_23.

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