Thinking that one of the greatest upcoming racing games couldn't get any better, Slightly Mad Studios goes and makes an announcement that Project CARS will get better because it's coming to the Xbox One, PS4 and Steam's recently announced SteamOS.
The good news is that the game is arriving for the new generation consoles and SteamOS, but the bad news is that the switch from current gen consoles to new gen consoles means that the game has been delayed to fall 2014.
Nevertheless, it's still great news that the game will get proper treatment across the new consoles and not just the Xbox 360 and PS3. Ian Bell, Head Of Studio also chimed in on the good news (for fanboys of next-gen consoles) stating...
Project CARS has always led the pack in terms of insane detail. Whether that’s graphically in the craftsmanship of our cars and tracks, technically in the way we’ve approached weather and time of day, or emotionally in how each car feels and responds to your touch. These powerful new platforms allow us therefore to not compromise on the quality of our vision and ultimately that means players are going to experience something truly breathtaking when they get behind the wheel.”
In addition to this, the game is being optimized for the SteamOS to allow for those of you with early access to the current alpha builds of the game to start playing on Valve's Linux-based operating system set for release later this year (or sometime in 2014, because you know... Valve time). Anyway, this is a great way to help move people over to Steam's new OS because I can tell you right now, if the game features close-to-the-metal GPU optimizations in SteamOS or even has Mantle support, then Project CARS could theoretically be more optimized on PC than any console port. That is sickly awesome.
There is a bit of concern for the game, though. Given that it's coming to the new generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony and there are some serious worries about the performance of one of those consoles, could Xboners be in for a rude awakening when it comes to resolution and frame consistency? We already know that to maintain the stuttery 60 frames per second in Call of Duty: Ghosts Infinity Ward had to gimp the game's resolution from 1080p down to 720p.
We already know, as a benchmarking standard, the Wii U version of Project CARS will run – with many DirectX 11 equivalent shader and shadow functions – at a breezy and consistent 720p and 30 frames per second. The real telling part about this game's port to the Xbox One will be if Slightly Mad Studios will be able to match parity of the game on the PS4 or if the Xbox One version – due to the weaker hardware – will be closer to the Wii U version, running at 720p? I would assume with an educated guess that the game should at least be able to run at 60fps on the Xbox One version.
Still, I think it would be a fanboy atom bomb if it turned out that Project CARS on the Wii U and Xbox One both ran at 720p and 30fps. I'm sorry but I would never let that go. It would make all those other sites claiming the difference between the PS4 and Xbox One's resolution “not mattering” look quite foolish.
Anyway, future owners of the upcoming consoles should at least be happy to know that they're on Slightly Mad Studios' radar. You can learn more about Project CARS over on the official website. And here's a video below to showcase to those of you unfamiliar with the title just how freaking awesome it is.
