Those Europeans must love their shiny cars — either that, or Sony’s advertising campaign has worked wonders, because according to CVG, nearly one million Euro gamers have pre-ordered Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. And there are still a full ten days to go until the game’s UK PSN launch next Thursday! This would make it the first PS3 game to “go platinum” in Europe before release.

Interestingly enough, the original story actually cited SCEE New Zealand marketing manager Dave Hine as saying that the one-million milestone had been attained. However, Sony confirmed the following to CVG soon afterwards: “...we currently have orders for almost 1 million units of GT5 Prologue across SCEE territories.” Isn’t it just like a Sony higher-up to do something like that?

For those of you considering buying the game off of the PlayStation Store, PS3 Center brings some good news and bad news. Here’s the good news: Polyphony Digital has managed to keep the download below 2 GB; it’ll weigh in at a still-hefty 1.9 GB. The bad news? In order to do that, they had to sacrifice all of the in-game cinematics. That includes the game’s opening intro video and post-event cutscenes, but fear not; they’ll be available for PSN purchasers to download from Gran Turismo TV.

Still, that seems like a minor annoyance to me, and since the Blu-ray Disc hard copy costs the same as the download, I’d just wait the extra day and pick it up in-store — if I were in Europe and wanted this game, that is. What about the rest of you European Dtoiders?

[via CVG and PS3 Center — thanks, Adam!]