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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Damage Inc
Huge potential sadly not realised due to various reason already discussed to death. I'm amazed how so many people can have a hissy fit over a ****ing game, enough to post stupid remarks. A lot of incredibly talented people worked on the games, I hope they get new jobs.
 
maranello78
Well when you treat simracers like idiots and you think add 6 new cars is enough to launch a PC3, and delete boxes but not random weather, i think u need to use more tobacco on that things you smoke. Maybe they need to know that racing games is now for people more adults that spent wheels from 300-600€, but they still are selling racing games for child from 6-8 years, maybe if they take a look at the competence like Rf2, ACC, Ams2 or Iracing they knew how people must sell that kind of racing games. I´m more sad than happy to read this news but we all saw the crash with Pcars3 before they release selling smoke promises.
 
BearWalken
Who cares? PC was dead long ago. Really tried to love 1 and 2 but that was impossible. Visuals and VR experience were good. The rest was way behind the competitors. Impressiv what Reiza achieved with the same engine. AMS2 is what PC should have been.
 
R
kondor999 said:
They had a great idea: An actual, feature-complete racing sim (with one the absolute best car selections in history in PC2). All they needed to do was finish it.

Instead, they decided to make it into a half-baked Forza clone (PC3).

What a waste.
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Absolutely agree on that. Pcars2's car selection is imo the best ever. This was the identity of the franchise, legendary cars of many dedaces of racing, with every possible weather conditions anywhere in the world, on track, on dirt.

But it is just a name, an IP, I really do not care about that. What bothers me is how slighy mad teams has been destroyed, EA putting employees in other teams working on other projects. That's not the way to manage talents. These people have a history together. When you treat people like that, the best talents just go elsewhere, well done EA and Codemasters, ypu're foing to lose people who have already made better racing games than all the teams which have worked or have been working for you, except ISI, let's be fair, but which is also at the base of the madness engine, and which you never owned.

The best decision now would be updating pcars 2 to fix some of its flaws (there are not so many of them, but they are so annoying) and to sell some new content to finance the operation (and the licence of the cars and tracks). And, EA and Codemasters, pay the subscription for the real weather, I think you have enough money for that.

Apart from this, it would make sense to use the madness engine for the F1 games and the WRC or Dirt rally titles, on track and on dirt, on every aspect, it is much better than this ego engine. I'm surprised they were working on a pcars4 title I thought they were working on this transition of engines.
 
T
Project Cars should have been a direct competitor to Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo.
Instead of trying to make it a "hardcore simulator", they should have focused more on the consistency of the already acceptable physics the engine could provide, and increasing the content.
Imagine PC2 with a little bit more simplistic but consistent physics (like Forza and GT) and with double or triple the number of cars and customization. It would have been the simcade King. At least for PC where the only competitor was Forza Motorsport.
Or rather i should say, imagine Shift 2 with better physics and even more cars and tracks. That would have been an awesome simcade.
Talented developers but with a stupid Boss.
 
T
gianlucaP said:
That's exactly what they tried to do: competing with Forza and GT. They said that clearly inside the WMD.
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Nope. They might have said whatever they said but it's quite obvious by now that they tried to compete with proper simulators, and that's why they failed. We've been having that debate ever since it was released, ok? Let's just not continue it because it's pointless.
 
delpinsky
I'm glad I joined PCARS crowdfunding in 2011 :inlove:
Not only I had great fun joining the forum and see for myself, from the inside, how a game is developed, but I also had revenues coming from my participation to the project as backer!

Too bad they completely destroyed the franchise with PC3...
 
Damage Inc
gianlucaP said:
Yeah, especially after pCars 3, a clear contender for rF2. :roflmao:
I continue whatever I want. Putting the word "simulator" in the cover of the game doesn't make it a simulator. If you, developer, dumb down the handling to help the casual gamer, you are killing the simulation. Real time weather or a complex tire model doesn't matter anymore if you take that road.
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If it tries to "simulate" reailty then it is a "simulator". a game with perfect driving phsyics but no weather or dynamic track evolution could be argued to be not a simulator because of the latter omissions. Also adjusting "setups" to make cars easier to drive is not dumbing down the handling.

To put it bluntly.....NO game we play is a full simulator. People just have a preference to what area they want to be simulated more fully than other areas.....but that is not the criteria for whether or not a game is a "simulator"
 
Damage Inc
turbo86 said:
Nope. They might have said whatever they said but it's quite obvious by now that they tried to compete with proper simulators, and that's why they failed. We've been having that debate ever since it was released, ok? Let's just not continue it because it's pointless.
Click to expand...
Where Pcars 1+2 failed was in the area of time vs content. The biggest strength (amount of cars and tracks) was the also the biggest problem. If SMS had fine tuned EVERY car to the level of the best cars in the game they would be the best sims ever. Or if they'd dropped some cars and tracks to concentrate on fewer cars to fine tune.

In many respects Pcars found a middle ground, much better phsyics than the likes of Forza and GT, but less cars. Having a larger roster of cars and tracks than usual in PC sims, but not having all cars and some other areas up to a high enough level of polish.
 
M D Gourley
Premium
Snow in Racing Sims, preposterous :confused:....visually / graphically it is very well done and unique in a Sim:inlove:...personally enjoyed it

Another one of my favorite driving cars in PC3...Mitz Evo VI:cool:
00 PROJECT CARS 3 LANCER EVO VI RACING at NORDS Snow copy.jpg
0 PROJECT CARS 3 VENOM F5 at AZURE CIRCUIT copy.jpg
1 PC3 BMW ESCORT at CADWELL PARK in SNOW copy.jpg
1 PROJECT CARS 3 BMW Procar at WATKINS GLEN GP copy.jpg
1 PROJECT CARS 3 MERC 190E at BRANDS HATCH GP crop copy.jpg
2 PROJECT CARS GT3 at NORDS Snow copy.jpg

0 PROJECT CARS 3 ALPINE A442B at NORDSCHLEIFE copy.jpg
 
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THK84
gamer19 said:
:confused: :cautious:
guess this means Project CARS 2 will stay on my PC forever :whistling:
Click to expand...

As long as steam exists and you've bought it there, you should be able to redownload it.

Otherwise there are other means to reacquire software you've already legally bought.
 
T
Damage Inc said:
Where Pcars 1+2 failed was in the area of time vs content. The biggest strength (amount of cars and tracks) was the also the biggest problem. If SMS had fine tuned EVERY car to the level of the best cars in the game they would be the best sims ever. Or if they'd dropped some cars and tracks to concentrate on fewer cars to fine tune.

In many respects Pcars found a middle ground, much better phsyics than the likes of Forza and GT, but less cars. Having a larger roster of cars and tracks than usual in PC sims, but not having all cars and some other areas up to a high enough level of polish.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't call it the "middle ground". The middle ground would have been to have at least half the cars and slightly better physics than Forza and GT (but still simple), plus tuning and customization.
They chose to have a lot less cars, much more realistic physics (for the most part) and no other features except progression. So obviously they didn't aim for the middle ground. They were way over it and in simulator territory.
The problem is that they failed. They said it themselves that they bit more than they could chew. So, saying that they tried competing with simcades with HUGE content or aiming for a "middle ground", is like living in denial or something.
 
Richard Wilks
turbo86 said:
I wouldn't call it the "middle ground". The middle ground would have been to have at least half the cars and slightly better physics than Forza and GT (but still simple), plus tuning and customization.
They chose to have a lot less cars, much more realistic physics (for the most part) and no other features except progression. So obviously they didn't aim for the middle ground. They were way over it and in simulator territory.
The problem is that they failed. They said it themselves that they bit more than they could chew. So, saying that they tried competing with simcades with HUGE content or aiming for a "middle ground", is like living in denial or something.
Click to expand...
I would like to know in what exactly they "failed".

The AI had problems with various combos yes. Show me one of the so called "big sims" that doesn't.

Sales wise, Pcars2 did pretty well, but it was a slow burner in that regard, probably not helped by the army of haters and youtubers that vouched anything Ian Bell is involved is to be hated long time ago.

Physics? They all make compromises, they all dumb down a few things. Let's be real here, you can tell yourself "race cars are easy to drive" as much as you want, but the cold hard truth is most "simracers" can't even haul a bunch of pixel triangles in their screen properly, much less a real fire breathing machine. So talks about which one dumbed down the better (or worse) is as silly as it sounds.

Unfortunately the slow sales initially sealed the fate of it's successor, PCars3, with the lead designers at the time just giving up on "hardcore sims", and cutting down the "unecessary" elements of it, because everybody just seemed to want to do 5 lap races online, right?...
 
T
gianlucaP said:
Yeah, especially after pCars 3, a clear contender for rF2. :roflmao:
I continue whatever I want. Putting the word "simulator" in the cover of the game doesn't make it a simulator. If you, developer, dumb down the handling to help the casual gamer, you are killing the simulation. Real time weather or a complex tire model doesn't matter anymore if you take that road.
Click to expand...
Who the hell is talking about PCars3? Let's just ignore this one. I'm talking strictly about PCars2. Even the developers said that in PCars3 they wouldn't be aiming for simulation at the level they did in PCars2. They said that in PCars2 they "bit more than they could chew". It was their first or second statement about PCars3. So just forget about it.
As for the PCars2 physics, no they didn't dumb it down. It does have simulation level physics, but incomplete and inconsistent and with an FFB that didn't match.
Seriously now, one would except this silly argument on whether PCars2 has simulation physics or not, to be OVER since the release of AMS2, which took the PCars2 physics and fixed them or at least made them more consistent. Does AMS2 have dumbed down physics too?
 

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