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The console release of hardcore racing sim Assetto Corsa could be “a bit of a wake-up call” to franchises like Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport when it launches later this year, DiRT Rally’s chief games designer Paul Coleman believes.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com last week about the possibility of Codemasters developing a new GRID game, Coleman said that he believes there is room for the franchise to return in the future, and that “quite a few people have been asking me, why don’t you just make TOCA as you did with DiRT Rally, so you bring it back to that original part of the franchise?”
He continued: “The only thing I will say is that if you look at games like Project CARS and Assetto Corsa, they have filled that part of the market that I think a GRID Early Access game would be trying to tap into.
“So I do wonder whether there’s something else that we need to do with that franchise that maybe doesn’t speak to those areas that I’ll be quite honest and say, especially Assetto Corsa, I think they’re doing very good things in that area. I think they’re going to be setting the cat amongst the pigeons when it comes to Gran Turismo and Forza. I think there’s going to be a bit of a wake-up call for those bigger titles.”
Assetto Corsa launched on PC via Steam Early Access in 2013 and was well received by critics for its realistic handling and physics. The game is being developed by Italian studio Kunos Simulazioni and due for release on PS4 and Xbox One this April, two weeks after the console versions of DiRT Rally.
GRID Autosport, meanwhile, which began to take the series in a more hardcore direction, was “absolutely the right game but at the wrong time and on the wrong platform”, Coleman says, speaking of the game’s release on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC months after Xbox One and PS4 had launched. Since then, however, Project CARS “has kind of captured the market that I think people wanted GRID to be in”, Coleman believes.
Gran Turismo Sport, the first game in the franchise to arrive on PS4, is due to release in beta this spring, with a full release expected to follow later in the year. The game promises to “deliver a revolution in the way that people experience driving games, a figurative ‘rebirth’ of motorsports”.
