Sony announced that Gran Turismo 6 will have micro-transactions. They did not give any information about how much these credits would cost in dollars or I guess I should say euros, since the announcement was made on the European PlayStation.Blog. This is what Sony had to say about the credits,

(F)rom launch at retail you’ll find a new option for building your ultimate fantasy car collection in-game credits will be purchasable through PS Store or your friendly local retailer at the following denominations: 500K, 1 million, 2.5 million or 7 million credits which you’ll be able to apply in-game for cars and parts. To know how much your credits will get you, take a look at the menu of choices. For 1 million credits you could get all the cars below.

Nobody is surprised that Sony is moving in this direction, especially considering how much money Forza makes on DLC and how well iRacing.com has been doing recently. Sony has been talking about doing this for years, so this shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that they finally dropped the hammer. The real surprise will be whether GT players will fall into the DLC trap that catches so many of us with one game or another. We will all have to wait with bated breath to see how much they will be charging for these credits, and if their player base is willing to pay what they are asking. (Especially, when we keep in mind Patrick's great article about Skullgirls DLC.)

Along with this announcement, Sony announced that Gran Turismo 6 Standard Edition and Special Edition are available for pre-order on PSN. In the bulky Special Edition, you’ll get the full GT6 Game, 20 extra cars (Torque, Performance, Adrenaline and Velocity packs), custom PSN avatars, paint chips, race suits and race helmets. If you do choose to pre-order the game on PSN you will get the cars included in the Precision Pack for free as well.

These cars are:

• GT-R NISMO GT3 15th Anniversary Edition
• R8 LMS ultra 15th Anniversary Edition
• Corvette Stingray (C7) 15th Anniversary Edition
• Model S Signature Performance 15th Anniversary Edition
• Viper GTS 15th Anniversary Edition

20 extra cars seems like a lot of cars, plus the five in the precision pack. This almost seems like it might be a season pass in disguise. If Sony is giving away 25 free cars for Special Edition purchasers, then it might be a little premature for people to freak out about their DLC plans.

I am pretty excited for Gran Turismo 6. I spent a good amount of time playing Gran Turismo 5. GT5 was a great game, but it did have some glaring flaws. I think, in the end, the amount of time that the game spent in development compared with the overall quality of the game leads me to believe that the game was probably an overall failure for Sony. Hopefully, GT6 will be a step back in the right direction for the GT series.