For several years now, the partnership between Japanese automaker Nissan and game developer Polyphony Digital has captured the imagination of gamers all over the world, giving them the chance to enter the Nissan GT Academy.
The reason for this appeal is simple: gamers could win exciting experiences just by playing Gran Turismo on Playstation. Some skill is required, of course, but other than that pretty much anyone can have a shot at it.
For 2018, Nissan announced it would be taking the top drivers in the new Gran Turismo Sport PlayStation game to Japan, for an experience not many have the chance of getting: a free trip to the NISMO Festival at the Fuji International Speedway and a visit to Polyphony Digital’s headquarters in Tokyo.
Aside from the trips, the best gamers would also receive Nissan team clothing and coaching from a Nissan/GT Academy mentor at the World Final.
To be able to enter the competition, gamers would have to race in the Gran Turismo Manufacturers Series Championship while using Nissan as their brand of choice.
"We proved with the Nissan GT Academy that some of the fastest drivers in the world might never have had the opportunity to compete on a race track if it weren't for gaming," said in a statement Nissan's global motorsport director, Michael Carcamo.
"These guys have gone from the couch to the cockpit and broken the traditional model of how to become a successful racing driver."
Nissan is very serious about taking gamers away from their desks and placing them in the cockpit of a real car. Since the GT Academy’s inception, 22 gamers were promoted to the rank of real-life racers.
The gaming community has taken note of this, as year after year the numbers of entries increases. Perhaps the biggest number of participants in the competition was registered in 2012, when a total of 830,000 gamers competed for the prize.
Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies. Full profile
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