14 DAY TRIAL // The racing game genre is in a slump at the moment. according to a veteran of the genre. and only the launch of completely new hardware could drag it out.
Gareth Wilson, who is the former leader of Bizzare Creations and who now works at Sumo Digital on the new Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing Transformed, told the Official Xbox Magazine that, “Racing games always do well when a new console comes out, and you do a new physics engine and improved graphics, but towards the end of a console cycle it’s always quite hard to push racing games.”
The developer believes that the first DiRT game was able to meet most gamers' needs and that sequels did a little more than simply dilute the brand of the racing game series.
He added, “So with the next hardware we should be able to create features with another level of immersion and quality. There’s stuff we can do with this generation that we couldn’t before, and with the next we can make everything that bit more awesome. Racing games need that.”
Wilson has mentioned Blur, Split/Second and Motorstorm as the kind of solid racing intellectual properties that should be getting more recognition but have not managed to sell enough copies in order to get sequels.
Bizzare Creations was shut down by Activision during 2011 and the corporate leadership of the publisher admitted that the racing game was just not popular enough to keep creating titles in the Blur series.
The Need for Speed series from Electronic Arts has managed to continue to perform well during the current console cycle, even if the most recent release, The Run, has been received worse than the development team expected.
Activision has struggled to create new intellectual property in the last few hours and has relied on proven series like Call of Duty.