PC3 Project CARS 3 to Change Focus?

[Paul Jeffrey]

Slightly Mad Studios Head Ian Bell recently revealed PCARS 3 is in development, and now hints have been dropped that the direction of the title might change for the next release.

The Project CARS series of games have, up until this point, been heavily focussed on a wide selection or road and race cars from a wide variety of different disciplines of motorsport - giving players the opportunity to drive such varied machines as top tier open wheel cars, to stockcar, touring cars, GTs, historic and road going performance machines.

Although the scope of the previous two versions of the game are indeed admirable, some could argue that potentially Slightly Mad Studios looked to become a jack of all trades with their game content, and as a result became the master of none.

This appears to have been noted by the decision makers back at SMS, as Ian Bell once again took to the internet to drop a few hints about the next release - suggesting that maybe Slightly Mad Studios would look to return to their roots somewhat, and produce an experience more akin to the earlier Need for Speed Shift release of 2009.

“I’ll let you know that pCARS3 will be more ‘focused’… More ‘fun’…" said Bell over on the GT Plant forums. "We went to insane lengths with variation in pCARS2 and with that comes infinite balancing issues. We’ve learned a lesson here and although we have no intention of reducing content, we know what we need to fix, where we made design decisions that were, let’s call it, ‘sub-optimal’…​

“pCARS3 will be more of a spiritual successor to Shift, but with all of the sim goodness everyone appreciates… The key focus though is on fun and not biting off more than we can properly chew and digest.”
​

Ian Bell does refer to the desire to retain the "sim goodness" of PCARS 1 & 2, however the shift (ha ha) towards an experience more closely aligned to the Need for Speed series does suggest that the new title could take itself a little less seriously than has been the case in the past, and leads one to wonder if a more arcade slant is to be applied to the title than has been the case in the past.

With PCARS 1 & 2 failing to match the quality of other sim racing titles the likes of rFactor 2, Assetto Corsa, RaceRoom and AMS, and with new games from Reiza Studios and the Early Access Assetto Corsa Competizione from Kunos in the works, a move towards a more fun and light hearted experience is probably not a bad idea for PCARS and the new title - quite how the end result will pan out remains to be seen.

One thing is for sure, however SMS pitch the new title, it will be very interesting to hear and read what is said on the build up to release of what is surely going to be another very interesting piece of software from the prolific game studio.

Check out the Project CARS 3 sub forum here at RaceDepartment for more news, discussion and features on this sequel release to the hugely popular Project CARS franchise of games.

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[apex11]

Did you see the one where he broke down in tears because of all the money people were sending him?
I like Jimmy btw just the situation is pretty crazy.

No didn't see that one.
Thing is i would make a snap judgement that the people who can sit for 4 hours watching someone else play games are the least likely ones who can really afford £30 to throw at someone... they will be living at home with Mum and Dad and giving the job seekers cash ie tax payers money to Jimmy.... why don't they actually at least save up some cash and you know get a game system to play on......

Jimmy is a brilliant example of why games devs can take the piss out of its audience..... they literally have huge amounts of losers with nothing else to spend their benefits on and loads of spare time to waste...

 

[Timmy UK]

‘Project Cars to change focus?’
You guys are missing the big story, if true..
The whole company is changing focus..
They are bringing out a gaming machine, to compete with PS4 etc.
‘I started in hardware 28 years ago. Building PC's. Modern consoles are basically proprietary PC's. The 'noodles' are in the backend systems and support software/architecture. We will ship a multi-platform engine to all developers free of charge and we're lining up the rest now’. As stated by Mr Bell.
Maybe he is unwell..x

 

[thepharcyde]

Ignore me!

 

[Koen Verlinde]

Best to wait and see before any Pre-ordering happens and season pass purchases happen too...

That is ALWAYS the best option.

 

[Deleted member 379375]

Lets imagine the scene in the SMS boardroom.

SMS Sales Director: Guys, steam sales figures up to June 2018 have been accidentally leaked. Lets look at the numbers for the "big" PC sim racing games.

Reiza have sold 49,000 copies of Automobilista (including those given to Game Stock Car Extreme owners).

In the 78 months rFactor2 has been on sale they've sold 75,000 copies. This is an underestimate as I'm sure some people did not transfer their non-steam copies to steam. For the sake of argument lets double it to 150,000.

In 57 months Assetto Corsa has sold 826,000 copies.

In the 34 months since the launch of PCARS1 we have sold 1.339,000 copies of PCARS1 & 2 on PC.

Ian Bell: We just can't compete with these "big" sim racing games. They are wiping the floor with us! What were we thinking? We have to get out of the sim market!

SMS Sales Director: It gets worse boss. Kunos are going to launch a new sim with day/night transitions, dynamic track, dynamic weather, lateral tyre flex, brake heating and cooling and brake heat affecting the tyres!

Ian Bell: You are right. We just can't compete even though we've had these features for years. and with ACCs 20 cars and 11 tracks there is just no room in the market for our sim with its 180 cars and 60 tracks. Lets get out of Dodge - the sim market is too competitive.

SMS Sales Director: But the biggest worry of all is that Reiza are bringing out a new game. I don't know if it will be the Ayrton Senna game or Reiza 17 or what engine it will use but I do know that given their previous titles have sold about !% of ours, we should be quaking in our boots.

Ian Bell: If I had any doubts about changing direction and competing directly with Turn10 and Polyphony, this news seals the deal.

The chronology isn't quite right as you have lumped PC1 and 2 sales together.
It would be a better read if they were separated.

I want to get to the bit were they explain the reason for the difference

 

[Case_]

I came across a stream by Jimmy the other day and people where donating him 30, 50,10,10 etc pounds, that was in 5 mins of me watching it...

What in Gods name are these people doing sat watching a person play a game for 4 hours let alone giving him money??
Its utter madness.... we may moan about games like PCars 2 but at least for £30 you get something..... £30 to watch Jimmy turn his FFB up to 100% and drive a pixelated car around a track?! Huh what?

I find myself praying for Pretend Race Cars to come back.......please Austin we need you...

I will pray with you (despite not being religious in the slightest), just because if it ever comes back, we just might get less posts like this on general simracing sites.

 

[thepharcyde]

No didn't see that one.
Thing is i would make a snap judgement that the people who can sit for 4 hours watching someone else play games are the least likely ones who can really afford £30 to throw at someone... they will be living at home with Mum and Dad and giving the job seekers cash ie tax payers money to Jimmy.... why don't they actually at least save up some cash and you know get a game system to play on......

Jimmy is a brilliant example of why games devs can take the piss out of its audience..... they literally have huge amounts of losers with nothing else to spend their benefits on and loads of spare time to waste...

Bit of a sweeping assumption; why do you care so much?

No didn't see that one.
Thing is i would make a snap judgement that the people who can sit for 4 hours watching someone else play games are the least likely ones who can really afford £30 to throw at someone... they will be living at home with Mum and Dad and giving the job seekers cash ie tax payers money to Jimmy.... why don't they actually at least save up some cash and you know get a game system to play on......

Jimmy is a brilliant example of why games devs can take the piss out of its audience..... they literally have huge amounts of losers with nothing else to spend their benefits on and loads of spare time to waste...

Not sure this makes sense unless Jimmy gives all his donations to game Devs?

If said ''losers' were spending all their cash donating, then they are not spending money on said games they are watching in the first instance let alone the mechanism to play them on?

Very odd

 

[Case_]

why not offer some kind of test Drive Unlimited, this time based on a real world location?

What do you mean by "this time"? Both Test Drive Unlimited games were based (and quite accurately for their time and for what is basically an arcade game) on real world locations - TDU 1 featured the entire island of O'ahu and TDU 2 featured both O'ahu and Ibiza.

 

[Jonny Austin]

What I like in Pcars' topic is reading the nonsense and toxic comments

It is amusing to read these threads when some ppl have such strong allegiance to their favorite sim that they have to rubbish the opposition.It is like following a football team for some.I enjoy most of the sims & could not care less who the developer is & how they market the game.I cannot believe how many ppl on this thread thought PC1 was over hyped,bought the game,thought it had to many faults that were not fixed & then went out & bought PC2! Probably on Day 1.

 

[Furious Panda]

What I like in Pcars' topic is reading the nonsense and toxic comments

Most of all, it shows how it is hard to enter the simracing market with a high self esteem community, lying, bashing... It's fun but awful.

Many simracers have been stating project cars series were.do8ng too much things and si none perfectly. The have been listened to, SMS is going to focus on simolar categories and not try to do evrything in one package. So now I read they are bad developers, dumbing down the game, the ohysics, everything, they disrespect the community, they're worse than ever! Seriously... Will this community become serious???

The simracing community asks for respect but doesn't have any respect for its own hobby, bashing, complaining, lying. It's impossible to trust us simracers. Why developers should be trusted? In this small and growing market, largely sufficient to make a living for many companies, a close relationship between companies and customers is necessary.

People have been racing gt3 cars and asking dor more during years, kunos bring them a dedicated sim, well, what a disappointment for many of us. Rfactor2 brings more gt3 but did not release everything but will deliver it soon, it's a disappointment and a cash grab.

An other example, from the past, simracers did not use weather and night & day cycle. So the latter was removed from gtr2 to race07. How scandalous!!! Simbin had removed something almost no one was using! And in 2018 the most played sim is AC, whi has just cut weather and day&night cycle, and the most criticized is pcars2, who includes these features. But now ACC is bringing back these features but... It's badly received.

Coming back to pcars, now SMS states that they will give less diverse content to be able to refine the physics, and... it's bad, it's arcade, it's outrageous, they should die all! And as they mentioned Shift, it's going to be bad because they for sure will include more incentive mechanics like in bad arcade games because bad arcade games sell 10 times more copies and have always been based on incentive mechanics.

But as forgotten by many, gtl and gtr2 had brought incentive mechanics to attract more people. They were basic but you had to unlock content. It was something new, well received but the simracers just found a simple way to get rid of this system to have a 100% unlocked sim like in their goold old sims.

Codemasters is also a good example of how the community is unfair and unreliable. No wonder they just ignore the PC elite who claims it knows everything about racing IRL but is not willing to pay for a small amount of money to get content it will use and enjoy hundreds of hours.

What I see is that not any developer should read or listen the community, and that's what some do a lot of times. They just can't trust us.
Unreliable people get unreliable products and this is what we have been getting for years, except automobilista, a good refined product, including content the community generally don't know about, and doing its own thing and saying NO to the community when needed (VR). And at the end Reiza is respected. Did it sold enough of the title? It's another thing. Getting respect and not enough money, that's good for your ego.

SMS proposes to make a sim with more homogeneity, answering to the community, and is accused of trying to grab more money by selling future dlcs ot games with more diverse content. Yes, probably, but this is what you've asked for.

We seriously as simracers need to become more mature in front of people still willing to answer our needs before they just quit the market. These companies are not solid companies, they are involved in a risky business, they need mature customers. One day or another they will just say, ok goodbye simracers, just stick with free developers who will make your products for glory (but do not expect them do listen to you, it's free, they do what they want) this is what we deserve as a whole.

Well, that was my first 2019 rant, thanks to our positive and optimistic community

agree simracers are a toxic bunch, thankfully as I only play project cars 2 and I keep reading how its pure arcade... maybe simcade at the very best I don't consider my self to be in that toxic simracer camp

 

[mantasisg]

Well you should very well know that AC 2019 is alive and very well thanks solely to modders especially the content manager and custom shaders light patch.....

Yeah, that must be the only way to use AC these days...

 

[protonv5]

E

Project Cars 2 was really nice and all that until december 17, than the patches from hell commenced and every time we got tires working differently etc. Im not bothering with PC3, especially when it goes for a more SHIFT feel

Exactly

 

[protonv5]

If you by "handling model" mean tire model then you must be living in another world.
Even most of the RL racing drivers that is using iRacing for fun does admit that iRacings TM (and car behaviour) has nothing much to do with RL car behavour.

Well that's just a huge load of shite, isn't it? But thanks for posting

 

[protonv5]

What I like in Pcars' topic is reading the nonsense and toxic comments

Most of all, it shows how it is hard to enter the simracing market with a high self esteem community, lying, bashing... It's fun but awful.

Many simracers have been stating project cars series were.do8ng too much things and si none perfectly. The have been listened to, SMS is going to focus on simolar categories and not try to do evrything in one package. So now I read they are bad developers, dumbing down the game, the ohysics, everything, they disrespect the community, they're worse than ever! Seriously... Will this community become serious???

The simracing community asks for respect but doesn't have any respect for its own hobby, bashing, complaining, lying. It's impossible to trust us simracers. Why developers should be trusted? In this small and growing market, largely sufficient to make a living for many companies, a close relationship between companies and customers is necessary.

People have been racing gt3 cars and asking dor more during years, kunos bring them a dedicated sim, well, what a disappointment for many of us. Rfactor2 brings more gt3 but did not release everything but will deliver it soon, it's a disappointment and a cash grab.

An other example, from the past, simracers did not use weather and night & day cycle. So the latter was removed from gtr2 to race07. How scandalous!!! Simbin had removed something almost no one was using! And in 2018 the most played sim is AC, whi has just cut weather and day&night cycle, and the most criticized is pcars2, who includes these features. But now ACC is bringing back these features but... It's badly received.

Coming back to pcars, now SMS states that they will give less diverse content to be able to refine the physics, and... it's bad, it's arcade, it's outrageous, they should die all! And as they mentioned Shift, it's going to be bad because they for sure will include more incentive mechanics like in bad arcade games because bad arcade games sell 10 times more copies and have always been based on incentive mechanics.

But as forgotten by many, gtl and gtr2 had brought incentive mechanics to attract more people. They were basic but you had to unlock content. It was something new, well received but the simracers just found a simple way to get rid of this system to have a 100% unlocked sim like in their goold old sims.

Codemasters is also a good example of how the community is unfair and unreliable. No wonder they just ignore the PC elite who claims it knows everything about racing IRL but is not willing to pay for a small amount of money to get content it will use and enjoy hundreds of hours.

What I see is that not any developer should read or listen the community, and that's what some do a lot of times. They just can't trust us.
Unreliable people get unreliable products and this is what we have been getting for years, except automobilista, a good refined product, including content the community generally don't know about, and doing its own thing and saying NO to the community when needed (VR). And at the end Reiza is respected. Did it sold enough of the title? It's another thing. Getting respect and not enough money, that's good for your ego.

SMS proposes to make a sim with more homogeneity, answering to the community, and is accused of trying to grab more money by selling future dlcs ot games with more diverse content. Yes, probably, but this is what you've asked for.

We seriously as simracers need to become more mature in front of people still willing to answer our needs before they just quit the market. These companies are not solid companies, they are involved in a risky business, they need mature customers. One day or another they will just say, ok goodbye simracers, just stick with free developers who will make your products for glory (but do not expect them do listen to you, it's free, they do what they want) this is what we deserve as a whole.

Well, that was my first 2019 rant, thanks to our positive and optimistic community

Thanks for the novel.
Ian Bell started it with his hatred of his customers. I realize he thinks he's Kojak, but in actuality is just a salesman.

 

[theravenousbeast]

Well that's just a huge load of shite, isn't it? But thanks for posting

I guess Nicki Thiim talks out of his arse then.

 

[mr Sw1tchblade]

I guess Nicki Thiim talks out of his arse then.

Well he found every sim unrealistic

 

[melanieuk]

A New game, and now the worlds most powerful New Console all coming from SMS, they sure have their fingers in all the pies.

Good luck to them.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

A New game, and now the worlds most powerful New Console all coming from SMS, they sure have their fingers in all the pies.

Good luck to them.

Just found that too https://www.gamespot.com/articles/a-new-game-console-is-on-the-way-to-compete-with-x/1100-6464117/
"120 frames-per-second for virtual reality play". Why, because ours goes to 11?

 

[roadyroad]

A New game, and now the worlds most powerful New Console all coming from SMS, they sure have their fingers in all the pies.

Good luck to them.

And in december 2019 SMS will announce their first manned mission to Mars, yeah.

 

[melanieuk]

And in december 2019 SMS will announce their first manned mission to Mars, yeah.

As I said Good Luck to them, I support everything SMS and Ian do.

I'm not here to indulge in your bashing of individuals or developers.