Every Gran Turismo Game, Ranked

Important takeaways

• Gran Turismo revolutionized the racing sim genre with its meticulous attention to detail and realism, becoming one of the best-selling franchises in gaming.
• The true quality of a Gran Turismo game is measured by its impact upon release, with some shaking up the genre and others falling short.
• Each new installment of Gran Turismo delivers limitless innovation, constantly pushing the boundaries of what fans thought was possible.

With more than 70 million sales between its eight main lines, Gran Turismo franchise is one of gaming's true juggernauts. With its meticulous attention to detail and heavy focus on realism, Sony's hit series has helped revolutionize the racing sim genre and along with Forzaremains at the top of the heap to this day.

While each of the series' main installments has improved from a technical standpoint over its predecessors, a game's true quality is perhaps better measured by the impact it made around the time of its release. The best Gran Turismo games really shook up the racing-sim genre, while others only skirted the line.

Updated December 10, 2024 by Tom Bowen: The Gran Turismo series has dominated the driving sim genre for more than a quarter of a century now, offering some of the most realistic racing experiences available on home consoles. Each new installment brings boundless innovation, with Kazunori Yamauchi and his team constantly pushing the boundaries of what many fans at the time thought was possible. With the recent release of My First Gran Turismo, now seems like the perfect time to look back at some of the best Gran Turismo games to see how they all stack up against each other.

Every Gran Turismo game (release timeline)

Although included in the table above,
Concept
and
Prolog
games will not be considered for our overall ranking, as these usually served more as precursors to the next major release rather than full-fledged releases.

10 Gran Turismo Sport

Metacritic rating: 75

After four years of waiting, series fans were both eager and happy to get their hands on it Gran Turismo Sport. Unfortunately, however, much of that excitement quickly dissipated in the weeks following the game's release when it became clear just how ordinary this part really was.

To be clear, Gran Turismo Sport is far from a bad game, but it's not exactly revolutionary either. Even with its excellent post-launch support, it featured fewer tracks than its predecessor as well as a much smaller catalog of cars. This is also the game that introduced microtransactions to the series, so it loses some points for that.

9 Gran Turismo 6

Metacritic rating: 81

Despite offering more cars and tracks than its predecessor, Gran Turismo 6 sold only half as many units. This is because many potential buyers felt that it was just a little too similar to the series' fifth installment, with very little innovation to be found.

Strictly speaking, GT6 offers more depth and so is arguably the better of the two games, but much of this depth becomes superficial. Once the new cars are taken out of the equation, the two games were remarkably similar, prompting many to stick with what they already had.

8 Gran Turismo (PSP)

Metacritic rating: 74

Although first announced at Sony's E3 2004 press conference, it wouldn't be until late 2009 Gran Turismo finally released for the PSP. Whether or not the end result was worth the wait is perhaps a matter for debate, but if sales are anything to go by, most series fans would probably agree that it was.

The game ended up selling just 5 million units, making it one of the best-selling PSP games of all time. Unfortunately, it didn't fare as well with critics as it did with consumers, with the game currently sitting at a 74 Metacritic average. But despite these mixed reviews, it's actually quite impressive for a handheld driving game of its era, not only in terms of visuals, but also when it comes to realism.

7 My first Gran Turismo

Metacritic Rating: N/A

My first Gran Turismo acts as a kind of modern equivalent of Concept and Prolog games from the past, giving players a chance to lay Gran Turismo 7 through their bills without having to pay for the privilege. It features a little bit of everything from License Center tests to Music Rally races, and even allows players to transfer their cars and move on to Gran Turismo 7 if they decide they want to upgrade.

Maybe the best thing about My first Gran Turismo is that it supports virtual reality, allowing players to get a taste of what many consider to be one of the very best games on PSVR 2. While it's technically just an extended demo, players can expect to sink into plenty of time in My first Gran Turismo and therefore should be able to get a pretty good idea of ​​whether they would enjoy the whole game or not.

6 Gran Turismo 7

Metacritic rating: 87

After the disappointment over GT6 and GT Sport, Gran Turismo 7 had a lot of weight on their shoulders, especially with Microsoft's Forza series has now well and truly overtaken it in the eyes of many. The good news is that the game was able to meet these high expectations, offering a marked and noticeable improvement over the series' two previous installments.

Gran Turismo 7 is beautiful to look at and provides one of the most realistic driving experiences to date. That said, its single-player campaign can get a little monotonous, and the return of Microtransactions somewhat detracts from the experience. Even so, when all is said and done, those looking for a realistic racing sim will struggle to find better.

5 Gran Turismo 5

Metacritic rating: 84

Gran Turismo 5 is the second best-selling game in the franchise's history, and for very good reason. The increased power of the PS3 allowed for a huge step up in visual fidelity, helping the game blow all other racing games of the era out of the water.

With over 1,000 cars and 72 tracks, Gran Turismo 5 was the biggest Gran Turismo the game when it was released and also the most realistic. The amount of care and attention that went into perfecting the driving physics is clear for all to see and a big part of what made the game so much fun to play.

4 Gran Turismo 4

Metacritic rating: 89

Building on the great work of its predecessor, Gran Turismo 4 was everything series fans could have ever hoped for and more. With nearly four times as many cars and twice as many tracks, the game helped enforce the “bigger is better” mantra, while also benefiting from some fine-tuning under the hood.

Admittedly, the lack of online play was a slight disappointment, and the lackluster arcade mode held it back a bit. Even so, the sheer amount of things to see and do ensured that players could sink hundreds of hours into the game if they wanted to without ever getting bored, and more than a few took advantage of this fact.

3 GranTurismo 2

Metacritic rating: 93

The first sequel to a hit game can be a difficult thing to get right, with many developers struggling over the years. Polyphony Digital had no such problems with GranTurismo 2 however, as evidenced by the game's solid sales numbers and its impressive reception from players and critics alike.

GT2 took the number of cars from 140 to 650 and nearly tripled the number of tracks. New game modes and improved mechanics only served to further sweeten the deal and helped cement the series' position at the top of the racing sim genre. But perhaps more importantly, it showed that the first game was not just a fluke.

2 Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec

Metacritic rating: 95

Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec is the most sold Gran Turismo game to date and offers arguably the single biggest game-to-game improvements in the history of Sony's long-running franchise. Considering how impressive GT2 was by no means an easy thing for the developers to accomplish.

Although the number of cars decreased to a much more modest 181, GT3 offered more tracks and game modes than any of its predecessors. Even better, the huge jump in both power and disc capacity from the PlayStation 1 to the PlayStation 2 allowed the developers to push the details to incredibly impressive new levels.

1 Gran Turismo

Metacritic rating: 80

Other than maybe Virtua Fighter and Resident Evilthere's an argument to be made that no video game has made a bigger impact on a genre than Gran Turismo did. Its heavy emphasis on realism and unparalleled visuals allowed the developers to truly capture the fun of driving, without ever resorting to cheap gimmicks.

With only eleven tracks available, Gran Turismo might seem a little tired compared to a modern racing game, but at the time eleven was more than enough. The 140 available cars was arguably a bit too much, and many of the competitors at the time only had ten to fifteen vehicles for players to choose from.