Has Sony finally thrown in the towel in this console generation’s online wars? Accounting for the recent news surrounding the Gran Turismo serie, the answer may be yes. Not that Sony ever really had a chance to begin with. The company has generally treated online gaming as a mere afterthought, as complicated setups, clumsy interfaces and, worst of all, middling performance seem to be the norm. A few Sony titles shown through the din of online mediocrity, SOCOM and its sequel being the brightest of the bunch. The ace-in-the-hole however, was the certainty of SCEA’s premiere racing title--Gran Turismo 4--and its corresponding online mode scoring the company some much needed online cred.

Then came last week’s Tokyo Game Show, where Sony made their shoulder-stooped announcement that online functionality in GT 4, a selling points since the game was announced, had been removed (presumably so the game could make a critical pre-Christmas shipping date, currently targeted as December 14). Online racing, according to the Sony reps, would be held back for a new entry in the Gran Turismo series, tentatively to be released in 2005 for the PS2; "tentatively" being the keyword. Judging by past results, however, "2005" might turn into "2006" (or later) and "PS2" might just as easily morph into "PS3".

Even limited online capabilities, such as racing against downloadable ghost cars (as in the Xbox title Project Gotham Racing 2) or posting top times to central servers (a feature found in 2000’s F355 Challenge for the Dreamcast, for God’s sake) would have been a welcome addition to GT 4. As it is, we’ll be stuck racing the doofus AI, taking time trial laps around the gorgeous tracks, two photo modes and something called "B-spec" mode--where you don’t actually drive the cars, which sounds about as fun as a chastity mode in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

On the other hand, the exclusion of online racing isn’t a show-stopper for me. After all, what was promised? Six cars on track at one time? A nebulous online "community" concept that hasn’t yet taken shape? Games like PGR 2 and the underrated TOCA Pro Race Driver 2 have already trumped GT4’s promised online features, and both were released months ago. Also, don’t forget a little title known as Forza Motorsports, the Xbox racer which promises to take the fight to GT 4 on its on gear head turf--with online functionality built in.

Because of the notoriously aggressive mentality of the series’ AI-controlled opponents, it’s pretty difficult to consider a Gran Turismo game a racing title. It’s a damn fine driving simulation, maybe the best of its kind in the past decade, but its racing "engine"--for lack of a better term--is pretty flawed. Opponents take practically identical lines each lap, are nearly immune from bumping and scraping, and are completely willing to play bumper cars all day long with you. The AI that Polyphony Digital has hyped ever since Gran Turismo 2 has never really made its appearance. Whether it will do so in the fourth release in the series remains to be seen. Maybe we’ll see it with Gran Turismo 4.5, or when Gran Turismo 5, or 6 comes along, Until then, I’m happy to play it as a driving simulation series; and will scoff at Sony’s attempt to hype it as anything but. In this case, the fruits of their developmental labor speak far louder than their marketing machine.

If this--the removal of the online capabilities from one of their premier games of the holiday season, a flagship title no less--isn’t the online console gaming equivalent of Sony raising the white flag, I don’t know what is. An online Gran Turismo for the PS2 will likely either be a slightly re-tooled version of GT4--similar to what developers Wow Entertaming did with Sega GT 2002 (the offline version) and its semi-sequel Sega GT Online (same offline game, more or less, but with online capabilities), or a brand new title. Based on the development cycles at Polyphony Digital, which are better measured in geological spans of time, it would not surprise me in the least if Gran Turismo 5 arrives on our shores on the Playstation 3.

I vividly remember waiting in line in front of the Playstation Store at the Sony Metreon, the morning Gran Turismo 3 A-spec was released, excited as hell to be finally playing the newest in a series that, next to the Final Fantasy games, I’ve probably put more hours into than any other Playstation game. The exclusion of online racing from GT 4 is disappointing but, in the end, maybe it was a good idea, especially if that mode was bound to be trumped by currently released games.

The playing field has changed. As my colleague Jeff said, online racing is a near standard in every other racing game of this console generation. Because of this, the burden is now re-doubled on SCEA and Polyphony Digital, as delaying online play in GT 4 means they will have to do something revolutionary to even be noticed the next time around.