iRacing have released a teaser of their latest licensing conquest, Porsche. After dipping their toes into the Forza franchise – twice – and then going full-fledged sim racing with Assetto Corsa, Porsche are now partnering with iRacing, and most likely, all the other big players in sim racing.
This is less a change of heart and more straight business. 16 years ago, Porsche signed an exclusive license with EA Sports that prevented the brand from moonlighting with any other developers.
The length of the exclusivity license was not known to the public, but speculation of it’s impending demise began to circulate the community when the Forza Porsche DLC packs began popping up. Then the rumor mill became very hot and heavy following the Assetto Corsa licensing announcement.
It’s one thing to have high priced DLC show up in Forza – with the high priced assumed to be credited to having to not only pay Porsche but EA as well – but it’s another thing to have it show up in a fairly niche – compared to the Forza franchise – title like Assetto Corsa for a reasonable price.
Something was afoot and it was soon discovered.
In December, GT Planet picked up on a story from the German outlet, SpeedManiacs, that had a quote from Porsche brand manager, Sebastian Hornung, that confirmed that the EA license is over and that the Porsche brand was interested in expanding it’s virtual reach.
Since then we’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and now it has.
The iRacing trailer emphasizes that the 911 GT3 Cup car is not only coming to the sim, but coming this month. This is excellent. For as much as we see comments about how many GT3 cars there are, they always lead the participation counts, so in our opinion, bring them on.
Plus, if you agree to a license with Porsche, might as well lead off with a 911.
But beyond the fancy exploded graphics of the 911 GT3 Cup car, there’s two other cars featured, the 2016 919 LMP1 – 24 Hours of Le Mans and championship winning – prototype and the brand spanking new, 2017 911 RSR featuring a mid-engine layout thanks to new WEC aero regulations.
We assume, both models weren’t tossed in just to “pump up” the trailer.
As excellent as the 911 GT3 Cup car is, having the 919 and 911 RSR for events like the 24 Hours of Le Mans on iRacing, is fantastic, and fills one of iRacing’s few remaining content holes.
And you can always hope that getting one LMP1 car or one GTLM car – as the 911 RSR is classified in the US’s WeatherTech IMSA Series – only brings in more manufactures to compete against, like the Toyota LMP1 car or the GTLM Corvette or Ford GT.
All three brands already do have licensed content in iRacing. Just saying…
But back to Porsche. If you do not race the Forza franchise or Assetto Corsa or iRacing – which begs the question why not since all three are excellent in their own ways – you shouldn’t panic. There’s already been rumblings of Porsche coming to Project CARS 2. And while that’s the only rumblings we’ve heard, clearly the licensing department at developers like Sector3 Studios and ISI have contacts, since there’s plenty of licensed cars in both titles.
And if we take what Porsche has said at face value, this new flurry of licensing activity shouldn’t be an exception to the rule.