NASCAR '14, the latest entry in Activision's long-line of racing games, will not be coming to the PS4 and Xbox One, developer Eutechnyx confirmed.
Speaking to Extra Mustard, Eutechnyx's EVP, Ed Martin, explained that the potential return on a next-gen version of the game doesn't "justify the cost of development."
According to Martine, the "nail in the coffin" to skip the PS4 and Xbox One came when SCEE CEO Jim Ryan announced last May that Gran Turismo 6 — Sony's exclusive racing series — would debut on PS3 and not PS4.
"He said something like, ‘Why would we put Gran Turismo on a console that has zero units in the market when there are 150 million PlayStation 3s out there?’ Well, it’s a great question," said Martin.
"It costs us about $6 million to develop a next-gen version of NASCAR. You have to sell an awful lot of copies in order to meet the development costs, on top of all the licensing," he added. "There are about 4-5 million worldwide combined units of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, so it just doesn’t add up for us right now. We own the rights, and we absolutely have plans, but it won’t be later this year.”
Of course, there's the argument that with very few racers on PlayStation 4, Eutechnyx could establish NASCAR as the premiere racing title for the system. Then again, with the possibility of Gran Turismo 6 getting a next-gen re-release, that'd be a very risky gamble. Though some PS4 and Xbox One owners are likely disappointed, this is a smart move by Eutechnyx.
