Motorsport Games Announces INDYCAR Partnership

IndyCar Game Motorsport Games.jpg
Motorsport Games have announced a partnership with INDYCAR and are aiming to release a new title based on the race series in 2023.

It has been a big year for game developer and publisher Motorsport Games. They made waves in the sim racing world in the spring with their acquisition of rFactor 2 developer Studio 397, and earlier this week they announced that the next NASCAR title will utilize rFactor 2’s physics engine to complement Unreal Engine based graphics.

The latest from the ambitious Motorsport Games studio was a press release confirming they had partnered with the NTT INDYCAR SERIES to bring a much-deserved racing title to Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. Although few details are known at this time, the team is targeting a 2023 release date.

INDYCAR has been conspicuously absent from the gaming and sim racing market in recent years. Titles such as iRacing and the Project CARS series have featured the cars, and mods for Assetto Corsa and rFactor 2 have been released by Race Sim Studio and Virtual Racing Cars to help fill the void. What INDYCARs fans have been missing is a complete title with the drivers, teams, and tracks.

Dmitry Kozko of Motorsport Games says, “Motorsport Games and INDYCAR are thrilled to provide fans with a long overdue dedicated gaming experience.” So, it seems like this will be the complete title fans have been looking forward to, and akin to the Codemasters’ F1 series or the NASCAR titles Motorsport Games is now overseeing.

Sim racing’s ties to INDYCAR go way back. Older games and sim racers may remember playing Papyrus’ IndyCar Racing in 1993. IndyCar Racing was a well-loved simulator in its time, and designed and programmed by Dave Kaemmer, now best known as the founder of iRacing.

The current generation of INDYCAR is a fiercely competitive spec series. Through the first 10 races this season, eight different drivers have claimed victory.

The current cars are powered by a twin-turbocharged V6 engine, which is mated to a 6-speed paddle shift transmission. Dallara provides the carbon fiber monocoque to the 16 active full and part time teams, with engines provided by either Honda or Chevrolet. There are changes expected to be implemented for the 2023 season in INDYCAR, including the move to a hybrid 2.4l engine.

Would you play an INDYCAR title? What features do you hope Motorsport Games includes? Let us know in the comments.
About author
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

Comments

Woohooooooo!!!

Details are obviously a bit thin at the moment, but I'm going to choose to be optimistic! I would be thrilled with a true sim title but also very, very happy with "F1 20xx" type gameplay, too.
 
Dedicated game / sim over a myriad of series in a single title is a good thing.
What i would hope for is a title with subsequent years be DLC so you could have custom championships with the cars of tracks past and present opposed to a franchise like F1 where no release contains enough of the historics of a single year.
 
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Dedicated game / sim over a myriad of series in a single title is a good thing.
What i would hope for is a title with subsequent years be DLC so you could have custom championships with the cars of tracks past and present opposed to a franchise like F1 where no release contains enough of the historics of a single year.
Considering that Indycar is a spec chassis it's a lot more achievable to have DLC for following years. With F1 all the chassis change annually, and that means everything has to be remodeled. At worst, subsequent years in Indycar would require one new model and the skins that go with it.
 
Shovas
Premium
Glad to hear MG seems to have the money and will behind them to stack up these licenses and plans.

We might regret it one day when they become the EA of sims but for now they seem to have an ear to the ground for what simmers are interested in.
 
Dunno what to say. Glad to see something is working on it, on the other side, the cars are so f**ing ugly i don't know if i could ever enjoy them.
 
Finally! I've been hoping for a title like that for a long time. The last sim dedicated to Indy was Indycar 2, I believe, and that was in the golden era of the series, the mid-90's. Then came the split between IRL and CART and the dark era that followed. In my opinion, Indy features the best-looking cars and the most competitive racing right now. TV ratings are up this year.

Anybody interested in Indycar like I am should read this book:


I finished it last week. It is a very detailed story of the IRL/CART split, going back to the roots of the whole thing in the fifties.
 
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A good question is why a bunch of sim devs simply stopped making single-series games for upwards of a decade. If it was really that easy for Motorsport Games to swoop in and announce NASCAR, Indy, BTCC, & Le Mans games, what was stopping everyone else?
I think the trend for a while was to design sims or games that featured many different types of cars, like rfactor, AC, R3E, Project Cars, GT or AMS. But the success of the F1 games or of ACC probably proved that there is a market for single-series games. They are probably a bit easier to make, because one only has to model a single type of physics instead of multiple ones. Just a guess...
 
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