This week, Polyphony Digital officially announced the worst kept secret in gaming. Gran Turismo 6 will be hitting store shelves this holiday season, assuming in doesn’t suffer the same eight month delay that Gran Turismo 5 had.

Despite the fact that the PlayStation 4 is coming out this fall, Polyphony Digital’s latest effort isn’t going to be a launch title for the next-gen system. Instead, Sony’s signature racing series, that has sold enough copies of GT5 that they’ve sold one copy for every eight PS3 consoles sold, will be a PlayStation 3 exclusive.

Polyphony Digital is promising the moon with this one. They’re talking about improved everything with this effort. That’s a necessary task considering many critics have suggested that the Forza series has overtaken Gran Turismo in terms of quality.

At the heart of Gran Turismo 6 is a brand new engine. Polyphony describes it as a more “compact” engine that will “improve operation.” What I’m hoping that means in plain English is that the load times are shorter and doesn’t require a 7 GB install to make for just tolerable load times. This coincides with a new physics engine which includes a new tyre model based on data from Yokohama and suspension model based on data from KW Automotive.

As for the content, the car count is said to exceed 1,200 cars which is a slight improvement over the just under 1,100 cars in GT5. There will be seven more tracks and 19 more track layouts than featured in Gran Turismo 5 to bring the totals to 33 and 71, respectively. The course maker is supposed to be revised with a new generation algorithm. I would have preferred something a bit more customizable but given the detail of the tracks Polyphony gives us, that might have been asking a bit much.

There will also be some social aspects to the game this time out. Players can create various communities and community events. Supplementing this is a new multi-platform compatibility feature that includes PC and mobile device compatibility.

As a huge racing game and Gran Turismo fan, I’m hoping that this turns out well. GT5 was a bit underwhelming. It often felt like a confused game. Some cars had great graphical details while others were good but not to the same extent. The AI wasn’t particularly good unless you loved pre-2010 Formula One. All the emphasis on customization is fun but if I don’t have fun racing, I just won’t be bothered. Playing Shift 2 again is fun because of the tight and dicey racing. GT5 just didn’t have that and I think that should be the focus this time out.