The president of Computer Entertainment UK, Andrew House, has said that he never feared that 5 wouldn't make it's 2010 release.

After numerous delays at Digital as they polished up the game for release he would be forgiven for thinking that the opus might not have seen release this year but House never lost the faith.

House explained to MCV: "We had good conversations with Yamauchi-san and the Polyphony team at Gamescom about the milestones. And there was always very strong confidence it would be out this year."

He continued: "But with a game of that size and complexity, sometimes you can encounter a few bumps in the road as you approach the end. We have successfully overcome those and were careful of not communicating a revised date until we were certain."

The last figures reported for the of had it sitting at 5.5 million copies worldwide pushing total sales for the series over the 60 million unit mark.

By Ewan Aiton