Project CARS is Officially Dead

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Project CARS, the project started by sim racing business veteran Ian Bell, will not live to see another game. After 3 games, Slightly Mad Studios announced the demise of the franchise today.

Slightly Mad Studios posted to their Twitter the following picture today:

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This message announced the imminent demise of the Project CARS franchise, a once shining star on the sim racing horizon.

Currently, it is unclear what exactly led the studio to drop the development of the next game. What's for certain for many people, however, is that this is only one more nail in the coffin of, what many sim racers have seen for a long time, a waste of a franchise.

What started out as an enjoyable introduction for some to the sim racing world, became an arcade title by the most recent and third instalment.

And as seen by the message above, it seems like there will not be a fourth instalment coming.

In a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, an EA spokesperson said: "Today we announced internally an update to our racing portfolio. Following an evaluation of the next Project CARS title and its longer-term growth potential, we have made the decision to stop further development and investment for the franchise.

"Decisions like these are very hard, but allow us to prioritise our focus in areas where we believe we have the strongest opportunity to create experiences that fans will love. We are focusing on our strengths in our racing portfolio, particularly licensed IP and open-world experiences, and expanding our franchises to be more socially-led with long-term live services that will engage global communities. Games are at the heart of sports and racing entertainment, and with shifting fan expectations, we recognise the need to evolve our games beyond pure play, providing experiences for fans to also watch, create and connect with their friends.

"We are working with everyone impacted by this decision to place them into suitable roles across our EA Sports and racing portfolio, as well as other parts of EA, wherever we can. Our priority now is on providing as much support as possible to our people through this transition."

Personally, I first started sim racing with a wheel on Project Cars 2, before switching to Assetto Corsa and Assetto Corsa Competizione. So this announcement doesn't go past me without any emotion.

But more importantly, what do you think of this announcement? What is your history with the Project CARS franchise? Let us know in the comments down below!
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About author
Julian Strasser
Julian Strasser
Motorsports and Maker-stuff enthusiast. Part time jack-of-all-trades. Owner of tracc.eu, a sim racing-related service provider and its racing community.

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Comments

testdriver77
There was a moment in time where Pcars1 was in early access (dont know the build anymore) and the physics were quite good.
But from next build it went just downwards.
After release the things went even worse.

Later on where Pcars2 was announced and released my collegues just talked too much about it and we were so dumb and bought it too.
It was maybe not the game which we had expected but after 30h it landed on the virtual dump.

But one thing we have anyway to thank SMS for a good base for AMS2.
Also all the car models and tracks were for that time very good.
Physics were f...d up but everyone know this history.
Its a shame that most of the cars did not made into AMS2.....
 
Shovas
Premium
b)b said:
We will never see what future iterations of the Madness Engine could have been, in term of advancing physics, graphics and other stuff. I hoped to see it implementing ray-tracing...
Really sad and a technical waste.
(that's assuming EA will never use the Madness Engine for upcoming games, which is more than likely since they are disbanding the people who made it).
Click to expand...

Automobilista 2 using the same Madness Engine is exactly what you're looking for and getting better all the time

They've accomplished what SMS would not or could not do
 
Last edited:
THK84
Offtopic on a sim that aged more like fine wine than milk:

where to get this track mod :D

ACvegas.png


As for arcade racers, looking forward to the new NF1S Underground!

NFSUG3.png
 
R
I actually made money on PC1 in that investing idea they had.. not only did I get dividends that paid for the game in full but made about $20.00 more dollars in the process of having fun racing the game. I loved PC1 and raced it many many times.....It wasnt perfect but it was close enuff to have fun and that is all that counts in a game... (to have fun)...
 
P
"Community Assisted Race Sim". Shame they'd abandoned that original "Community" by the time 3 came out and sought the arcade crowd instead.
I invested in the first, so it paid for itself and number 2 as well. I never really fell in love with either version, so not really sad to see it go. It failed to live up to it's early promise and aside from more content, I don't think the second did much to correct the faults of the first. But it was essentially a bit of free fun for a short while, so thanks for that at least.
 
N
Premium
Made a couple of bucks on PC1, played it very little and will not miss the series as it went. Much on account of there being so many great games out there.
Nice spiel from EA though.
 
B
Shovas said:
Automobilista 2 using the same Madness Engine is exactly what you're looking for and getting better all the time

They've accomplished what SMS would not or could not do
Click to expand...

I know, I have AMS2 and enjoy it.
But Reiza is just using the Madness Engine pretty much as it was when they got it.
They are not going to technically improve it significantly (physics and maybe sounds aside) like SMS had probably planned for PC4, especially on the graphics side (for example adding raytracing, DLSS, even better VR) and other evolutions that require deep specialized technical knowledge and much more programmers that Reiza currently has (compared to SMS).
 
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VirtuaIceMan
I think they should have put GRID in caps in their Twitter post.

It was always a bit obvious one or other of the franchises would take over the other one. But they don't seem to market GRID that much, so who knows about the future.

I'm hoping WRC turns out alright, at least. Unless you have to decorate your home in that one and choose road cars to put in your house.......
 
RyokoMaruyama
It's very strange to me that PCARS1 and 2 got delisted so close to each other, when other games that get delisted due to licensing go down with a year or two of space. What's more strange was that apparently PCARS1 was up on the Steam store until yesterday.

All of this is really fishy, and Ian Bell probably had no idea that this would happen to the extent that it did. Perhaps it was a threat to comply to the live service model that Skate and The Sims did?

Also, it would be nice if anyone uploaded the WMD builds for 1 and 2 just for archive's sake, since the IP is pretty much dead in the water now. RIP.
 
Austin Ogonoski
VirtuaIceMan said:
I think they should have put GRID in caps in their Twitter post.

It was always a bit obvious one or other of the franchises would take over the other one. But they don't seem to market GRID that much, so who knows about the future.
Click to expand...
I'm curious as to what will happen to GRID.

Legends was a failure, after GRID '19 which was a failure, after GRID Autosport was a failure, after GRID 2 was a failure....

Will they reinvent GRID as a simulator, or has that been killed too?
 
James Cook
Project Cars always was a 'Jack of all trades, master of none' kind of series. It looked pretty, drove ok and provided a large variety of content without offering any kind of depth (it's downfall in my opinion).

In the end they decided to chase the mass market console audience but that space is owned by Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport.

Bell originally crowdfunded a PC simulation but strayed away from that as time went on. I'm not surprised this is how it ended.
 

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