GTPlanet

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GTPlanet is the web's largest online community dedicated to the Gran Turismo racing game series for the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3.

The site was originally created as an MSN group in 2000 by Jordan Greer.^[1] It became a fully-fledged website in May of that year^[2] and has undergone several functional and visual changes since then. The current version, colloquially referred to as "GTP9", was released on January 20, 2008.^[3]

The site currently has 100,000+ registered members, with number 100,000 going to member "jwane" on September 23, 2007, and features over 2.5 million articles posted so far.^[4]

[edit] Features

Prior to the update to GTP8, GTPlanet featured sections for videos, car list data, prize car list data, race data and screenshots for Gran Turismo 2, Gran Turismo 3, Gran Turismo Concept and Gran Turismo 4 – the first Gran Turismo having preceded the site's existence by several months, and the Prologue version never reaching US shores. Now, rather than having such a complicated tree of information, all of this has been merged together into the Game Guides section – a Wiki, rather than a library. The original Gran Turismo, along with Gran Turismo 4 Prologue as well as: Gran Turismo HD and Gran Turismo 4 Mobile (the latter for the Sony PSP console) all now have their own sections, filling the gaps that previously existed and allowing for future releases.

The forum section of the site could well be considered to be the core. Though a minority of registered users actually visit the forums, almost all of the information in the other sections of the site is generated by forum users. This also has an interesting consequence in that all of this information is peer-reviewed by the same forum users.

The site has also released, from January 15, 2006 onwards, a mobile-device-friendly version, available at http://mobile.gtplanet.net/.

As of November 2007, GTPlanet owner Jordan Greer is the owner of the address GTPlanet.com. While the site remains at the .net address, typing .com will redirect to GTPlanet.net. The recently acquired address previously belonged to the now defunct Gifts and Toys Planet.

On January 20, 2008, GTPlanet updated to GTP9 giving the site & forums a completely new look. GTP9 also introduced GranTurismoTV, a section containing of videos of GT:HD & GT5:Prologue.