Project Motor Racing, the upcoming racing game by Straight4 (the new guise of ex-Project Cars developers) and Giants Software, now has a release date.
It also revealed how its single-player career mode works, and it looks to be one of the most exciting take on a sim racing game since 2008’s Race Driver: Grid.
In Project Motor Racing, Straight4 aims to recreate the “harsh reality of pro motorsport: Budgets.”
The career mode is designed surrounding this idea. When creating your team, you can pick a which part of the world you are based in (the Americas, Europe or Asia). This will influence what racing series and events you can participate, as well as the cost of entry.
This isn’t a collect-a-thon career mode like the Gran Turismo series famously pioneered either. Cars are all technically unlocked, you just have to purchase them for the team to use them. But they cost money.
The Career Mode trailer even highlights that you’re not supposed to win every race. Especially if you start with a team that has a smaller budget. That Lambo SC63 isn’t going to win a race from the get-go just like its real-life counterpart. And risking your car has dire consequences. An ill-advised divebomb may wreck the car and send the team shutting down from crippling repair costs.
Sponsors can bring in money, though interestingly the way sponsorship works here in Project Motor Racing is more elaborate than what we’ve seen in other motorsport-centric games. There are sponsors that only cover certain expenditures like travel costs. Some offer a one-time pay. And this is on top of the usual sponsor deals where you need to hit a certain result to get the full payment promised.
It’s rare to see a game challenging players to be mindful of your budget and maybe play it safe or risk an insurmountable repair bill since the Armored Core series (though the latest entry to the mecha-action game has significantly reduced the fear of crippling repair costs).
And it is an authentic motorsport experience. Passion alone can’t keep a racing team running, they need need money to operate. A lot of it. The governing bodies of sports car racing had to institute a new formula of racing, the LMH and LMDh classes we see today, to keep the costs of running a sports car team reasonable.
Project Motor Racing will feature over 70 cars spread between 10 racing classes, 27 laser-scanned track layouts, full day-night cycles and dynamic weather and a driving physics engine that updates at 720Hz.
On PC, Project Motor Racing will also support modding at launch. The game is partly built on the Giants Engine that powers the Farming Simulator games. Mods can be created using the official Giants Editor software, available at launch. Mods are hosted through ModHub, a service that has been around for at least a decade serving 4.5 billion downloads.
Project Motor Racing goes racing on November 25 for the PS5, PC and Xbox Series X|S.