Gran Turismo Sport closed beta begins March 17

Sony Interactive Entertainment will host a closed beta for Gran Turismo Sport, the company announced. The initial phase will start on March 17 and only be open to select U.S. PlayStation Network IDs.

Here’s an overview of the closed beta, via Gran-Turismo.com:

Participants will be able to choose from a select rotation of cars and tracks each day to race online against others during the BETA phases. Track and car selections will vary during this period, and we made sure to offer different race class categories and course configurations to properly test our Gran Turismo fans!

This will also be the first time users will see how the Driver Profile is integrated within Gran Turismo Sport. The introduction of Sportsmanship Rating (tracks a player’s behavior and manners on-track) and Driver Rating (represents the overall speed of the player and how well they perform in races) will ensure those that race online will be equally matched, naturally creating a balanced group of competitive drivers for every race.

The initial phase of the closed BETA, starting on March 17th, will only be open to selected US PSN IDs, so be sure to check your “Messages” on the PS4 dashboard to see if you’ve been invited.

As with most BETA programs, in order for the development team to capture data in an optimal manner, the sample size needs to be increased gradually and in stages. While we begin to roll out the BETA, we have decided that the time differences across the U.S. are best matched to the development team in Tokyo.

During the initial phase, our servers will be open for users during specific times across the day. We will share these times closer to the BETA launch across our social channels and GT.com.

U.S. users can sign up for the closed beta here and European users here.

Gran Turismo Sport is due out for PlayStation 4 in 2017.

Watch a trailer for the closed beta below.