Kazunori Yamauchi

Japan · Born 1967 · Sony / Polyphony Digital · Game Producer, Director

He followed a cartoon kart racer with Gran Turismo, the PlayStation's defining "real driving simulator", and became a figure in the car industry and a Nürburgring endurance racer.

Kazunori Yamauchi was born in Kashiwa, Chiba, on 5 August 1967. His first game was Motor Toon Grand Prix, a cartoon-styled racing game for the PlayStation in the spirit of Mario Kart, which was followed by a sequel. His ambition, though, was to make a realistic driving simulator, and that ambition became Gran Turismo. Released on the PlayStation in 1997, Gran Turismo combined hundreds of licensed real-world cars with detailed handling, tuning and a licence-test career structure, and it became one of the console's best-known games. Yamauchi became president of Polyphony Digital, the studio that grew from the team, and has led the Gran Turismo series across every PlayStation generation since. His only non-racing game is the space shooter Omega Boost (1999). Gran Turismo's success made Yamauchi an unusually prominent figure in the car industry itself; Polyphony Digital even worked with Nissan on the display technology of the R35 GT-R. He also races: he competed in the 25 Hours of Thunderhill in 2009 and in several 24 Hours of Nürburgring events between 2010 and 2016.