Slightly Mad Studios is currently weighing its options

May 26, 2015 13:30 GMT  ·  By

Bad news for those who are still waiting for the Nintendo Wii U edition of Project Cars, as the project might end up postponed or even canceled.

Developer Slightly Mad Studios focused on bringing its impressive racing video game to the PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 platforms, and the Wii U edition was sidelined.

Granted, most developers choose to eschew publishing on Nintendo's latest home console, and the hardware's power is often cited as one of the primary reasons, alongside the Wii U's relatively small install base.

According to a discussion on the Project Cars forums, it seems that Slightly Mad Studios is struggling to realize the proper experience that the driving simulator offers on the other platforms on the Wii U.

Studio head Ian Bell notes that the video game runs in 720p resolution and barely manages to reach 23 frames per second, which makes its future on the Wii U problematic.

The team is currently considering cutting back on the title's lavish visuals in order to have it perform better, and Bell has also suggested that they might even go as far as to wait for Nintendo to announce the NX project, the company's next console.

The Wii U has lost almost all third-party support

"I can't say too much but we're awaiting E3 with baited breath. Don't read wrongly into that… OK I'll come clean. At the moment we're running at about 23FPS on the WiiU. We're awaiting/hoping for more of a hardware announcement at E3," Bell wrote on the forums.

This is definitely bad news for fans of Nintendo's console who were looking forward to something a little more serious than Mario Kary 8. If the console is struggling around 23 frames per second at 720p, there's little chance of the game actually making it to market, due to the huge amount of work required to dial its visuals back in order to reach a steady 30 FPS.

Nintendo making any hardware related announcements during this year's edition of the E3 convention is a longshot at best, especially since the company has already said that the NX won't be just a replacement for the Wii U, which might mean that the Big N is not going to simply put out a more beefy iteration of its home console, but instead an entirely new concept.