Gran Turismo 7 pre-orders ship early for some lucky racing fans

Amazon US has seemingly started shipping Gran Turismo 7 ahead of its street date – although its "always online" connection means few players will get much of a head start on the racer.

Shipping a full week ahead of its formal release date, March 4, the racing sim is already in the hands of eager fans, and whilst online activities are restricted, presumably until servers go live next week, players are already feeding back on their experiences. 

"Been playing all morning. Just can’t redeem any codes or do anything online," explained one happy player. 

"Game's gorgeous. Great soundtrack. No B-spec mode, but that always seems to come later anyway. They set it up as a career mode, so you level up and open up new things like races and new parts in the tuning shop by collecting cars."

Not everyone's happy, though.

"It's amazing how many times I preordered games through Amazon only to have them arrive the following Monday, I stopped preordering through then because of this," added another Redditor. "Now they're getting sh*t delivered a week early??? Ffs…"

As for why there's an always-on connection? Although this isn't unique to the franchise – predecessor GT Sport also required an internet connection – Sport was slightly different in that it had been positioned as a competitive racer from the outset. Gran Turismo veterans, however, may have been expecting to access the single-player campaign offline, which has not traditionally required an always-on connection. The reason there's one now, apparently, is to help combat cheating and stop less scrupulous players from trying to modify their save data offline. 

"It’s been many years since Gran Turismo had this air about it," we said in the GamesRadar+ Gran Turismo 7 preview. "Not since its PS2 heyday has the series truly felt whole, complete, and utterly self-assured. 

"Five years in the making, Gran Turismo 7 looks set to demonstrate exactly what PS5 is capable of and, personally, I haven’t felt this excited about a racing game in years. I’ve just seen an hour of the game being shown in exquisite detail and I’m here to tell you it looks magnificent."

Not long to go now, racing fans – Gran Turismo 7 is out on March 4, 2022. It's a significant slip from its original release window of 2021, but development – like so many others – was impacted and delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Read up on our new games 2022 guide for a complete look over all the other games launching over the next few months.