Get real world - this game will never exist on the psp as we know it.

It will certainly not exist in a relevant timescale.

This was advertised by Sony as a launch title in the UK prior to PSPs release, how rediculous is that?

Here's my theory on the matter:

Kazunori Yamauchi has as his main driving passion in the creation of the Gran Turismo series the accurate moddelling of the driving experience, in a way thet is foremost enjoyable, but also representative of the actual experience.

As such, I personally can not see him / his team being motivated to hack the entirely analogue control scheme down to rely on the one analogue stick offered by the PSP hardware.

Sony on the other hand, one would assume would really have liked to have seen a high profile title like Gran Turismo appear on their handheld system, for the simple reason that it is popular enough to sell PSPs. I fell for it, I impatienlty bought a Japanese implort PSP 1000. This was a direct response to the UK launch date being knocked back due to under production until a date which was after the holiday I wanted to use it for. At that time though, Sony had glossy brochures in retailers which showed that same front of box shot we've all been clinging to for the last 2, possibly even 3 years.

In that time, I broke my psp, bought a slim and lite. Gran Turismo 4 on the PS2 has become Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3, which itself is suffering from heavy delays due to the time taken to produce the high-res vehichle mapping.

Again, given Yamauchi's consistently communicated approach over the last 10 years (happy anniversary GT!) do you think, he's going to be more inclined to continue to push towards making the most technically advanced simulation he can on the cutting edge hardware, or in watering down the vision in order to shoehorn it into a portable system that fundamentally lacks the technical specifications to be able to reproduce the feel of a Gran Turismo game?

No, me either. It's back to taking solace in the TOCA series in the meantime. But that's ok, because they're not bad games on the PSP.