Project CARS heading to SteamOS, PS4, Xbox One

Slightly Mad Studios, the developers of Need for Speed: Shift and Shift 2: Unleashed, have announced that they are now targeting a 2014 release date and Project CARS will be available on for the PC platform on Windows and SteamOS, as well as on the Wii U, the Xbox One, and the Playstation 4.

Slightly Mad announced that the game would be available for the Wii U and Windows PCs in late 2014. No launch date details were available for SteamOS and the next-gen consoles.

Project CARS is the first AAA game to announce support for SteamOS and is also the first to be completely next-gen focused. A port for the PS3 and Xbox 360 has now been removed from the list of possible platforms for the ambitious racer.

“Project Cars has always led the pack in terms of insane detail,” said Slightly Mad Studios head Ian Bell. “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, we’re going to be leading the pack.”

“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,” Bell added.

As a racing fan, Project CARS gives me the most butterflies in my stomach since I booted up Gran Turismo 2. Slightly Mad promises a realistic physics model, granular damage simulations, an insanely detailed world, and the same in-car cockpit view racers have grown to love from its inclusion in the first Shift.

The game also sets out to make waves in accurate sound reproduction and, like Gran Turismo 6, will use fully tesselated models for the cars and track objects. Tesselated objects in a game require support from a good GPU, but reduce performance overhead while allowing for increased visual fidelity and better textures.