Slightly Mad Studios and My.com have revealed World of Speed, a new Massively Multiplayer “Free-to-Compete” Action Racing title.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kXPH441Hvc[/youtube]
World of Speed will be an arcade-based PC exclusive racing title, featuring team-based gameplay, in a variety of racing challenges that keep the focus away from just being the first car across the line. You can join or create a club, where you can customize your logos, earn access to a shared garage, and show off on the Airfield Playground. Clubs can also compete together in a variety of challenges, including high-stakes territory wars.
The title will also feature a list of officially licensed content. Cars will range from street cars to the elite supercars, including the Pagani Huayra, Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, and the McLaren MP4-12C. The track list will be a mix of official circuits as well as meticulously recreated cities and street courses, including the streets of Monaco.
World of Speed is set to release later this year, with a beta coming soon, that you can sign up for on their official site. SMS plans to regularly update the title post-release with new cars, tracks, and game modes. They have also released a batch of screenshots, which you can view down below.
What do you think of SMS working on two titles simultaneously? Do you think assets will carry over between titles?
Interesting! They must be carrying car assets and engine over from Project Cars otherwise they’d be more than Slightly Mad.
Still, if they’re creating new environments (which look pretty darn nice) then they’re making a lot of extra work for themselves being a small team, especially if it’s going f2p.
Darin…. dude what is with these developers and wandering off away from the path of finishing their primary not to mention highly ambitious projects? Slightly Mad Studios with Project Cars/World Of Speed isn’t the first to do this, look at RaceRoom Racing Experience/DTM Experience for example. We’ve been waiting a LONG time to get even just SINGLE player racing in R3E, yet they decided in the midst of this to branch off and create a whole separate and MORE completed game that DOES have single player racing in it where you can actually RACE against other cars rather than leader board times or your own ghost. Perhaps this might be something worth bringing up in one of your upcoming episodes because it seems to be becoming a trend among sim racing developers and is VERY frustrating to players who’ve invested money into their unreleased products to support them but end up waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting because the company was busy off doing something ELSE on the side.
Wandering off? SMS at no time has stopped developing pCARS.
It’s a perfectly valid point Chris and it’s not just restricted to sim developers, though there seems to significant percentage of them doing it compared to other developers. If they’ve accepted backing/funding to do something they should not start anything else until they’ve delivered unless they can guarantee the backed project will not suffer – and that means delivering regular updates, information and productivity you’d expect if they were actually working on it in earnest.
I don’t have Project Cars and can’t get it at this stage but Kunos at least are sticking to their deliverables and otherwise doing things how they should be done with Assetto Corsa.
It’s quite feasible for SMS to have more than one team of developers or a partner. Or maybe the area of expertise required to complete PCars is not the same as required to deliver World of Speed so to spout out judgements and critisise any company it might be pertinent to have all the facts.
SMS have been involved in GTR, GT Legends, BMW M3 Challenge, Need For Speed, and Test Drive so they most likely have the core engine available for World of Speed already.
PCars updates are coming at us daily so there has been no let up in the development of this game recently either.
#1. Slightly Mad Studios didn’t exist until 2008, and has a few people that used to work for SimBin – that is the only connection with GTR/GTL they have which both came out around 2004-2005. When concerning facts you may want to try taking your own advice
#2. I’m sure they DID carry over assets from pCars to WOS and is not the point as it only accounts for a fraction of the development process as a whole.
#3. Whether they have a separate team working on WOS or not, they are still going to have a fair amount of involvement with the development and release of the game.
#4. While I obviously can’t say it is fact that taking on WOS has negatively impacted the dev schedule for pCars, I can however ask how it would be logical to take on another project regardless of how the workload is designated when…
a. SMS is a relatively SMALL team / studio
b. pCars is a highly ambitious title that requires a LOT of time and effort to develop
c. pCars has been delayed NUMEROUS times from early 2013 to late 2013 to MAYBE late 2014
#5. I understand that pCars has regularly updated builds made available to those who were lucky enough to get in on it during the short time it was available, but again is not the point because…
a. They’re not too keen on filling the rest of us in who are waiting for the game to release to be able to play it
b. Despite regularly updated builds, the game has still been delayed numerous times.
c. The build updates for the most part include relatively small changes to the game, which is why and how it is updated as often as it is, but regardless the end result is still the same, a very slow development process with numerous delays.
It is not my intention to spout judgement at either of the two mentioned developers, rather to instead justify why I and many others are very frustrated with the decisions they have been making because regardless of how much or how little, they are almost guaranteed to have some degree of effect on the progress of the games we were already waiting for and in some cases have invested in financially. I especially have a gripe with SimBin because as I said they just keep saying “It’s coming it’s coming, we promise.” but can’t even give us a vague idea as to when. Not to mention when concerning SMS/pCars how Andy Tudor after crowd funding had ended responded to a question about the game’s date of release stating “It’ll be done when it’s done.” – I mean…. really?! Anyway I apologize in advance, I’m not trying to fight or argue with anyone, i’m just tired of waiting and hoping for things that seemingly keep getting put on the proverbial back burner.
I don’t want to get in a discussion on the merits of this and that but “Founded in 2009, Slightly Mad Studios is a multi-award-winning studio with a heritage and pedigree in the creation of some of the world’s most memorable and successful racing franchises including GTR, GT Legends, BMW M3 Challenge, Need For Speed, and Test Drive.” – direct from SMS website
I would suggest signing up to the WOS forum and seeing what you can glean from there, the guys are pretty open and learn from their mistakes.
It is a shame you cannot sign up to the PCars forum but I can only guess this is restricted as the game is in development and they do not wish to share the information outside of the paying community.
It’s done when it’s done sounds like an ISI quote too. I believe it will be released by autumn(fall) 2014.
I signed up to the PCars model in 2011 which shows how long the game has been in development, unfortunately they were forced to withdraw from the community funding method due to some technicalities but they have indicated there will be other ‘investment’ opportunities in future.
Historically all the sim developers appear guilty of the ever changing release date but PCars has always been slated for a 2014 release date. The main cause of later than expected release date is the decision to develop for PS4 and XBox One I suspect.
Fact is they added more staff when they were approached by my.com. The SMS Team numbers about 110 people now. Not exactly small. Some work strictly on one of the given titles others work on both. Both titles benefit from each other. I’d expect both titles to launch fully at the same time.
Far as the founding of SMS – 2008/2009 depending on where you look but nonetheless isn’t really important I suppose. If they have in fact expanded their team and the development of WOS doesn’t cause another delay in the release of pCars then I’d have absolutely no problem in retracting my statements and opinions, but should any different be the case I certainly will not be surprised. I wasn’t ever implying that development of pCars had ever completely stopped, just that it seemed to be rather slow and riddled with release date delays, perhaps for reasons relating to other projects or perhaps not. Either way the end result is still the same when the games we want to play keep getting pushed back further and further, which leaves people like myself a bit frustrated. it’s been a year or more since SMS have said they may re-open tool packs or something similar, and if the game really is coming out this fall they are running out of time. As previously stated my real gripe is with SimBin and R3E – at least those who were lucky enough to get in on pCars while signups were available can actually race against AI and EACHOTHER. Bottom line is we just want a racing sim that has GOOD graphics, physics, cars, doesn’t charge a ridiculous subscription fee on top of making you pay for cars/tracks, that allows you to at least race against AI if not other people… With the way things have gone over the past handful of years it seems like that is just FAR too much to ask, and I don’t understand why. We’ve been waiting since rFactor / Race07 which was SEVEN OR SO YEARS AGO!!! 🙂
go all in vk.com/worldofspeedfun