Slightly Mad Studios has announced that the upcoming version of Project CARS on the Wii U has been cancelled as the console does not have the processing power to cope with the game's graphical demands. The company has hinted that the racing sim may get a release on Nintendo's upcoming NX console, providing the new hardware is capable.
A representative for the UK studio, creative director Andy Tudor, has apologized to Wii U owners who hoped that the popular game would ship on Nintendo's machine. The full statement reads:
Despite much perseverance on the Wii U version of Project CARS we will no longer be actively pursuing development on it as the quality does not meet our own high standards nor our intended vision for the title on this platform.
We eagerly look forward to any announcement of further hardware from Nintendo but right now Project CARS is simply too much for Wii U despite our very best efforts.
Apologies to our Nintendo fans out there that have been waiting for further news on this but have no desire to release a product that isn't at the very least comparable with our highest-rated versions on other platforms. We optimistically look forward therefore to what the future may hold.
Earlier this year, studio head of Project Cars Ian Bell admitted that it was a big challenge to launch the game on the Wii U, amid reports of the frame rate dropping to "about 23 frames per second" on the console.
Project CARS was released in May on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC to mostly positive reviews. Critics praised the game's immersive, beautiful graphics, but the high fidelity racing sim pushed consoles, and some PCs, to their limits.
The game was funded by backers using the World of Mass Development platform, which raised over $4 million for the project. Less than a month after the original's release, Slightly Mad Studios started a crowdfunding campaign to make Project CARS 2.