Gran Turismo 5 Ships 5.5 Million

Sony shipped 5.5 million copies worldwide of Polyphony Digital's PlayStation 3 racing simulator Gran Turismo in the 12 days following launch, bringing the total number of units shipped across the series to 60 million. The game sold 486,389 copies in Japan as of December 5 (according to Andriasang), implying that the majority of copies shipped have been outside of Japan -- though the shipment number will significantly outstrip the sale number. Sony claims that cumulative worldwide sales of the Gran Turismo franchise on PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and PSP hit 61.41 million units as of December 6, 2010. The first game in the series released for Sony's original PlayStation in December 1997. Gran Turismo 5 is the ninth installment in the series while the best-selling entry thus far was Gran Turismo 3 A-spec, which secured 14.80 million sales on PlayStation 2. Gran Turismo 5 was the eighth best-selling game in the US for the month of November and led both the Japanese and UK all-formats chart upon release, despite attracting criticism for widespread technical issues with the online portion of the game.