The Realities Facing The Desire for Racing Sims To Go Mainstream

It's busy times in the world of the racing game that strive to replicate reality. Three new titles are set to join the ever growing roster that are all circling the same drain and vying for the same eyeballs and dollars in Project Motor Racing, RENNSPORT and Endurance Motorsport Series. The competition they're facing is forever adding new content, systems, and ideas as they too strive for the exact same thing: relevance and survival in the space as they go up against the most financially successful name in the space in iRacing. But there's more to it than just going against iRacing, there's a vacuum that has been created outside of this realm of the racing game expression.

The AAA segment of video game industry has all but exited the racing game space. Microsoft just has Forza Horizon remaining after mothballing any future development of Forza Motorsport and the gutting Turn 10 beyond keeping the lights on. Electronic Arts has zero intention of making a new Need For Speed or Burnout, and there's an impression that they may be letting the Formula 1 license and Codemasters fall by the wayside. Rumors of a new Midnight Club out of Rockstar have all but stalled, and may never come to fruition with the weight of expectation laying on the shoulders of Grand Theft Auto VI. But why? Who is at fault for this?

It is not simply, as "Biggest sim racing esports fan in the world" Luca Munro put it in his piece on overtake.gg that, "...if two of the biggest names in the racing game genre are no longer making the money, perhaps racing games are no longer satisfactory for that audience," because we need to ask ourselves: who is the real audience that killed these racing games, and the studios that made them? And more directly with Luca's desire for "racing sims" to become more mainstream, what is that audience going to do to them?

That audience that I'm talking about might not actually play racing games in the first place, let alone play video games at all. They see the titles of these games as a document displaying a bunch of numbers, charts, data in a broader company portfolio that they benefit from financially. In benefiting from these games directly at a financial level, there is this desire for that return to keep growing and for the line to keep going up. These games and franchises that have been set to pasture were still making money, still captivated audiences, moved at a volume off of store shelves to where you have to believe that they were profitable, because they were. The difference is, particularly with Electronic Arts, is that they weren't profitable enough for shareholders even with the post-launch support and revenue that Need For Speed Unbound made with the reduced staff at Team Kaizen.

Racing games are not built for that exponential growth that has become the expectation in the AAA gaming space by shareholders. If it is not the safest, safest, safest of bets, like a Forza Horizon, Gran Turismo, or Formula 1, it simply is not going to happen anymore from these publishers. The expectations from shareholders and CEOs like Andrew Wilson has grown too great, to where even successful games will have their development teams laid off in the desire for less expenditures after reaping the benefits for themselves. With that in mind, would a AAA publisher want to greenlight a hyper-realistic racer or "racing sim" with those expectations that it must overcome?

With any of these titles, and individual content for iRacing or DLC for other titles, there will always be this subset of the userbase that will just buy everything unconditionally. This is their hobby, all that they play, and all that they race. Then there are secondary groups beyond that, such as groups who will always buy the game or content based on what it actually is. This is why particularly GT3 and open-wheel racing games and content is always made available, everybody and their dog in this space wants to race GT3 at Spa-Francorchamps or race anything that leads to or is Formula 1 and why more niche and actually interesting cars to drive and race, such as the international NASCAR series cars, are a tougher sell when their audience is a mere fraction of a fraction in comparison. But the real challenge comes from getting people beyond those groups involved, and getting the mainstream to buy in as well in both the game itself and with post-launch content and content passes, which seems difficult with how these games tend to be.

There are additional hurdles that must be crossed too before profitability is a possibility, as license fees and requirements for real cars and tracks becomes more strict as these brands refuse to have their image be tarnished in any light. The games themselves are very resource intensive from a programming standpoint, as the forever chase for realism gets more and more expensive even as a true 1 to 1 experience to the art of actual driving never gets closer to how it is in reality, with graphical demands similarly forever creeping higher to the detriment of the player. Unless there is a perfect storm in terms of the expenditures and overhead being a molehill rather than a mountain with ample funding already in place, even the most sensible of sales targets for shareholders of a AAA publisher couldn't possibly look modest in retrospect unless it is something we know is going to sell in droves.

This also comes before the additional barriers that these games require, with new consoles or high-end PCs and steering wheel and pedal peripherals putting the price tag into the thousands of dollars before buying the game or paying for a subscription in the first place. Oh, and you're paying for your internet right? What about rent, or a mortgage. Car payments? Student loan debt? Have your wages kept up with inflation if you don't have a union fighting for you?

I struggle to believe AAA shareholders and executives would greenlight one in the first place, and would rather just tack on their name to the product and assist in publishing like SEGA is with Project Motor Racing.

The big reason that the racing games that exist in this part of the space haven't tried to really break through into the mainstream outside of Project CARS, is because they can't. Those barriers of entry for the user as capitalism as decayed, paired with the demands from those who forever want more capital through whatever means possible would make the sales demands and market share it would need to take from the entire genre are just too much to overcome. And there is only so much Max Verstappen can do to supposedly broaden the appeal of realistic racing games into the mainstream simply by driving a GT3 car when the fact of the matter is this: all of these games are incredibly mundane and have an extremely short expiry date in the mainstream if they don't have a pull beyond the act of driving a car on a track itself, especially when they all do the exact same thing the exact same way. They are not built uniquely to be good video games first, as was my complaint in replaying EA Sports WRC.

Much to the chagrin of Michael Cosey Jr. when he fires up the latest release of a Codemasters's Formula 1 game, there is a reason that it has all the extra accoutrements and modes before you actually get a car on track: the mainstream video game player needs that more than they need the car need to drive as close as it can to the real deal on a four-figure steering wheel setup. What matters in the mainstream racing game regardless of how it expresses itself in the racing game spectrum is that it drives generically good and fun, does so on a gamepad, using the exterior chase camera views and gives the player a lot more to do off the track while giving them a pull to want to go back on track. It's why the upcoming NASCAR 25, being developed by iRacing, has been firmly planted where it is; not going anywhere near that far extreme of the realistic expression as the title where it gets most of it's physics and racing data from while also providing a thorough Career Mode worth sinking time into. And perhaps, that's the big take away from all this. When even iRacing knows and accepts what's too far, given who owns them, maybe that's a sign of the direction this end of the racing game genre should go, or shouldn't? Maybe the hyper-realistic racing game is as fair mainstream as it should go, for it's own good?

There is this ethereal ecosystem within the games that get released across the entire industry that exists in it of itself within the racing game genre as a whole. There is this ebb and flow as trends, themes and tropes come and go, as holes in the marketplace are created and games inevitably fill that vacuum that's been created, and then sees itself get bloated as more games try to fill that space before that flow goes elsewhere. We saw that in a big way after Milestone's foray with the WRC license revealed that there was a demand for new, more serious off-road and rallying racing games with DiRT Rally leading that ensuing charge before GRAVEL, V-Rally 4, DAKAR 18, and yearly WRC titles among others came onto the scene before that demand naturally dried up when the supply became too much. At the same time, there is nearly a dozen still fully viable modern hyper-realistic racing games that exist in this space as is, with another three more on the way with older titles still worthy of being played themselves. NASCAR 25 and INDYCAR 26 see this coming from a mile away, while still expressing a fully sufficient realistic experience themselves.

Perhaps we are already seeing the peak of the hyper-realistic, of the conveyance of the "racing sim" in the marketplace; but with the hardcore's forever demand for further realism and relevance no matter the cost, will going mainstream even satisfy them at all? What's going to remain and survive when the chickens of this already over-saturated market finally come home to roost when the adults in the room come to count the cost?

I truly believe that the vacuum that's been created by the resignation by the AAA gaming companies from making racing games and so called "arcade racers" is already being filled. But if you only read from Overtake.gg or Traxion.gg, you're not going to get the full picture of what's going on. We already have Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, JDM: Japanese Drift Master, Tokyo Xtreme Racer and Formula Legends to start as bigger titles in the space, but there is a whole world out there if you dare to dig and explore through what's being developed by people in their own home or by a small team if you browse on Steam, the Epic Games Store, or itch.io. Much like with F-Zero and Wipeout laying dormant didn't stop other people from making their own play on the anti-gravity racer, the demise of Need For Speed and Forza Motorsport isn't going to stop people from making their own racing games in that space.

So-called "racing sims" have their own host of problems to deal with, and perhaps should be content that they are experiencing a golden age within their realm and how it has already gained a level of respect within the genre. That forever desire for more if it does go mainstream will cause lasting harm to the genre as a whole, make future games worse, and will be a financial disaster to those who spent money on required peripherals instead of more important things. Even passively thinking that they could make "arcade racers" obsolete shows a patronizing disdain for this genre as a whole that we all love in our own way, and perhaps reveals the ulterior motive by both Luca Munro and Yannik Haustein at the behest of the website they've written for.

But the reflection on that desire needs to start with a simple question: who are all these games being made for again? And do you really think hardcore "sim racing" will satisfy them? Perhaps it is better if they don't get involved.

For an additional perspective on this matter from the point of view of someone who's worked behind the scenes at major sim racing events, please read this supplemental piece that was written by friend of The Powerhouse, Aenore Rose.

https://aenore.fr/blog/posts/202510040251-you-do-not-actually-want-simracing-to-become-ma/

And give her money too. https://ko-fi.com/aenore