It was announced today that Gran Turismo 5 will not be available this November 2nd as originally announced, but the game will be coming this holiday season.

We sincerely apologize to GT fans for the delay. Creator Kazunori Yamauchi and the team at Polyphony Digital want to make certain they are creating the perfect racing experience, and we are all confident that this ambitious game will exceed expectations when it launches.

Check back here on the official Gran Turismo website for further updates.

An insider close to Sony is chalking up the recent delay of Gran Turismo 5 to the recent PS3 hack that has made waves over the last few months, pinning blame on a last-minute SDK switchover. This comes following yesterday’s revelation that GT5 would miss its November 2 release.

A source on the Blu-ray.com forums suggests that looming fears over piracy prompted the setback. Shortly after PSJailbreak and its variants made the rounds, SCE issued a mandate requesting that titles with a post-October release date must be compiled with 3.50 SDK libraries. Here’s the post in full, which has since been removed for reasons unknown:

Certainly sounds plausible. While a switchover to the new SDK is hardly a big deal, you have to factor in QA testing, which can easily take an upwards of a few days to complete, depending how extensive. That, factored in with setting a revised manufacturing date, can easily lead to a delay of this nature.

Fans can rest assured, however, that GT5 will make 2010. While Sony has not yet pinned down a firm date, it’s still on for a “holiday release.”