Which studio developed the original 1997 Gran Turismo before Polyphony Digital was founded?

The studio that developed the original 1997 Gran Turismo before Polyphony Digital was founded was Polys Entertainment.

Gran Turismo’s development began in 1992 under Kazunori Yamauchi, then an employee of Sony Computer Entertainment Japan. The project started with a small team of five and eventually grew to about seventeen people. The group was known as Polys Entertainment while the game was being created.

The team had already worked on the PlayStation racing games Motor Toon Grand Prix and Motor Toon Grand Prix 2. Those projects helped establish the technical and creative foundation for Gran Turismo, which took roughly five years to complete. The original game eventually became one of the PlayStation’s defining titles.

The naming can cause confusion because later releases and modern reference works often credit Polyphony Digital. When Gran Turismo launched in Japan, however, Polys Entertainment was still an internal development group at Sony Computer Entertainment. It was reestablished as Polyphony Digital in April 1998, before the game’s Western release, which explains the differing credits across regions and editions.