'Gran Turismo 5' still one year away?

The director of development team Polyphony Digital has stated that the eagerly-awaited racer Gran Turismo 5 may not now be released until as late as winter 2008.

With a demo already available on the PS3's PlayStation Network, gamers were gearing themselves up for the next instalment of the best-selling series so the news will come as a bitter blow for fans of the franchise.

Polyphony director Kaunori Yamauchi has stated that the earliest the game could arrive would be Spring 2008, but claims Sony is more than willing to push the release back so the game is as good as it possibly can be.

The developer claims one of the key reasons for the delay is the level of detail that is being given to the cars in the game. In GT3, the firm says it took 30 days to create one model, but with GT5 Polyphony claims it takes an incredible 180 days to design each car for the game.

Yamauchi also stated that crash damage will not appear in the game, but he did add that post-release downloadable cars are a certainty.