Slightly Mad Studios, the folks behind Need for Speed: Shift and Shift 2: Unleashed, will be bringing its upcoming Project CARS to Sony’s Project Morpheus virtual reality headset, the developer confirms. The game was previously confirmed for Oculus Rift support on the PC side, so it’s not a huge stretch to see it making the jump to Morpheus as well. It’s still good news for gamers, though, if only to help make the freshly announced Morpheus feel like a more concrete proposition.
Project CARS is set to launch in November 2014 for PC, PlayStation 4, SteamOS, Wii U, and Xbox One, but that doesn’t mean the Morpheus version will be available at that point. Sony hasn’t announced a release date for the headset yet, and there’s nothing in Slightly Mad’s confirmation that suggests the VR version of the game will be ready in time for the November release.
You don’t actually have to wait until November if you want to get a sense of what Project CARS is. The game is already available on Steam via Early Access. It’s a racing game, but the “CARS” in the title is actually an acronym for “Community Assisted Racing Simulator.” Slightly Mad is basically going the “Minecraft route,” developing the game using community funding and releasing bits and pieces of the game in Early Access to see how it performs and channel development resources accordingly.
Once an established studio in the AAA development space, Slightly Mad has set out on the very sane course of trying out new development and publishing models. In addition to Project CARS, the team is also in active development on World of Speed, a free-to-play racing game that’s coming to PC sometime in 2014.
