Project Motor Racing Devs Announce Plans To Tackle Launch Issues

After years of teasing and hype-building, Project Motor Racing, a spiritual continuation of the lineage of the Project Cars and GTR games, launched yesterday to a response that could charitably be called ‘mixed’. Our review concluded that “the sparse track roster, barebones structure, and sometimes iffy physics hold it back from being something truly great,” and that was one of the kinder critiques we’ve seen online.

Developer Straight4 Studios, though, isn’t shying away from this criticism. It’s released a statement on its website acknowledging that it “didn’t hit expectations” with the title, and that it plans fixes for the biggest issues.

Specifically, it highlighted the game’s inconsistent performance and its AI opponents that often seem to forget about the ‘intelligence’ part of ‘artificial intelligence’. It doesn’t make specific mention of the title’s often bizarre physics, which range from super-sensitive brakes and inconsistent grip levels to the Le Mans Hypercars being nigh-on undriveable on a controller.

It does, however, say: “We’ve built this on a new generation of simulation technology, with AI on player-level physics, a deep handling model, and systems designed with longevity in mind. We’re still shaping it, still refining it, and we’ll keep doing that with you.”

Straight4 says that over the next few days, we can expect a full roadmap outlining planned performance updates and bug fixes plus updates on community-requested features like triple-screen and VR support. Meanwhile, its short-term priorities are looking into peripheral issues on the PS5, reports of the game failing to launch on Xbox and stabilising the online servers.

From a player point of view, it nevertheless feels like it’ll take a lot of work to get PMR to the quality of game it can show hints of when everything comes together, but it’s reassuring to know the developers aren’t facing the issues lying down.