The next big Gran Turismo 7 update is bringing some much-needed changes to the PS5 sim racer after intense player backlash. Chief among these changes will be a significant boost to in-game Credit rewards across most of the game's content, as well as a wide range of new races to experience.
Gran Turismo 7 creator Kazunori Yamauchi took to the official PlayStation blog to announce the update, which will land in early April. Yamauchi notes that he understands players weren't happy with the last update, which significantly reduced Credit rewards and brought with it a maintenance period of around two whole days. The previous update also made completing license tests and missions almost impossible, but this has thankfully been addressed.
"To improve the player experience," Yamauchi wrote, "we will be rolling out a considerable patch in the beginning of April. The number of events will be increased, and we will re-establish the reward system with greater balance throughout the game to benefit all players."
Additionally, GT7 players on both PS5 and PS4 will shortly receive an in-game reward of one million credits. That reward is obtainable for all players, so long as they log into GT7 before April 25, and is enough to buy many of the best cars available in the entirety of the Gran Turismo 7 car list.
This major update, coming sometime in early April, will make the following changes to the game according to the official PlayStation blog post:
- Increase rewards in the events in the latter half of the World Circuits by approximately 100% on average
- Addition of high rewards for clearing the Circuit Experience in all Gold/All Bronze results
- Increase of rewards in Online Races
- Include a total of eight new one-hour Endurance Race events to Missions. These will also have higher reward settings
- Increase the upper limit of non-paid credits in player wallets from 20M Cr. to 100M Cr.
- Increase the quantity of Used and Legend cars on offer at any given time
In addition, Yamauchi-san announced that several "near-term" updates are coming to Gran Turismo 7. These include more World Circuit events, online time trials, the addition of Endurance races to Mission mode, the ability to sell your cars, and an overall bump to online race rewards for limited-time events.
No release date has been announced for these updates as of yet, but as they're considered "near-term," we should expect to see them implemented into GT7 sooner rather than later.
Analysis: is Gran Turismo 7 on the mend?
After frustrated fans made their criticisms for GT7 known online, across sites like Reddit and Metacritic, it's abundantly clear that the game needed some time in the pit lane to fix its biggest issues. Thankfully, that initial reduction of Credit rewards looks like it's not only going to be rectified but significantly improved to boot.
The addition of more events, races, missions and modes is a huge plus, too, and will hopefully give players much more to do across all of Gran Turismo 7 tracks in between online Sport mode races. We're especially intrigued by these new Endurance races, which will likely demand extreme dedication and focus, and will hopefully come with a substantial Credit reward for the player's effort.
GT7 has a long road ahead of it, of course, and the upcoming patch doesn't address all of the game's woes. Fans have expressed frustration at the game's online-only requirement, and that doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon.
Not only that, but we feel that GT7's sport mode rankings could use a little more transparency. There's currently just not enough clarity on what actions affect the players Driver and Sportsmanship rankings.
In our experience, we've finished several online Sport races in a podium position, only for one less than stellar race to see our ranks plummet an entire grade. As such, we feel that real-time visual representation of ranking progress would go a long way to make us more conscious of how well (or poorly) we're racing at any given moment.
