Sony today announced that the Gran Turismo franchise has shipped over 50 million units as of the end of April 2008.These sales figures have been achieved in the 10 years and four months since the original Gran Turismo was launched in December 1997.

The seventh installment in the series, Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, features new modes including online head-to-head racing for up to 16 players and an in-game online channel known as Gran Turismo TV which delivers video and downloadable contents.

Gran Turismo 5: Prologue was launched in Japan in December 2007 followed by North America and Europe in spring 2008. Since then it has shipped over 2 million units worldwide.

SCEI and developer Polyphony Digital have promised to continue to “vigorously promote development of the Gran Turismo series, which can be expected to evolve even further through the PS3 platform and broadband network environment.”

“Initially, Gran Turismo was an ‘alternative’ racing game, kind of an outsider in the genre. And we made it thinking that it would be okay as long as it reached out to ‘the select few who would agree with us.’ So this figure, 50 million units - is simply astounding,” said Kazunori Yamauchi, Producer of Gran Turismo.

“If you go to a game store and look for a particular package, and pay for it at the cash register, though the time may be very brief, it still takes at least 3 minutes or so. It’s simply mind boggling and hard to believe that this has been repeated 50 million times all around the world in the last 10 years.”

“I would really like to thank all the fans who have supported the Gran Turismo series over the years, for all their passion and love of the game. We’d like to continue making every effort to create cutting edge, high quality games, so that we don’t disappoint anyone’s expectations.”