Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has announced that an exclusive competition for owners of the Gran Turismo®5 Signature Edition will go live at 09:00 GMT on Monday, 27 December 2010. The racing competition will see the ultimate winner get their hands on a brand-new, real-life Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG worth €180,000. With 15 regional winners from across 22 countries set to benefit from a stint at the Mercedes-Benz Driving Event, the winner of the spectacular gull-wing, 6.2 litre supercar will have to demonstrate to the judges that he, or she, is best placed to handle the SLS’s 571hp that delivers acceleration of 0-100km/h in 3.8 seconds and a top speed of 317km/h.
The limited-release ‘Signature Edition’ of Gran Turismo 5 included a number of exclusive and collectable items, both virtual and real, but the voucher code contained in the GT5 leather wallet is the key to entry to the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG competition. To enter the competition, owners of the Signature Edition should make sure they have downloaded all the latest updates to GT5. Then they will need to redeem their voucher code via PlayStation®Store on their PS3™ and register their details on Gran-Turismo.com.
Once they have completed these steps they will be able to access the Signature Edition Challenge from within Gran Turismo 5. The Challenge takes place in Gran Turismo 5’s innovative B-spec mode – where players take the role of team director with their own AI drivers doing the racing. The Challenge is being held over a series of five races on different circuits. The choice of B-spec mode opens the competition to more than purely the fastest GT5 racers, and there will be no limit on the number of times entrants can complete the races. In-game leaderboards for each region will display the top 50 race times for each circuit, as well as the top 250 combined times across the five races.
Entrants with the fastest total time from each region[2]at the closing time (23:59 (GMT) on 31 January 2011) will be invited to take part in the second phase of the competition – the Mercedes-Benz Driving Event where winners from each international region will compete against each other in a series of real driving challenges under the scrutiny of judges. Points will be awarded for each challenge with the winner taking home the stunning SLS AMG.
Gran Turismo 5 has shipped 5.5 million copies worldwide since launching on 24 November, but limited copies of the Signature Edition were available throughout the 22 countries participating in the competition, with the majority being snapped up on launch day. With the SLS AMG featuring on the cover of GT5, it was a natural progression for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Mercedes-Benz to develop the Signature Edition Challenge, a manifestation of PlayStation®3’s (PS3™) brand promise that ‘the game is just the start’.
Commenting on the Signature Edition Challenge, Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi said: “We have enjoyed a brilliant working relationship with Mercedes-Benz throughout the production of Gran Turismo 5 and the stunning prize that they have offered for this competition is a testament to that. I am particularly happy that we have developed such a balanced challenge which both newcomers to the Gran Turismo brand, and more experienced racers, will find equally enjoyable.”
