Gaming

Pikes Peak has had a bit of a checkered history with the Gran Turismo franchise. The 12-mile hill climb made its first (and only) appearance—in a condensed form—in Gran Turismo 2 and since then has remained absent from the series. In what seems to becoming a common occurrence though, Pikes Peak International Hill Climb continues to threaten a return to the franchise thanks to an article by media outlet Eurogamer and a peculiar choice of words within.

We’ll call this a surprising start to the week: Youtube user Vortlas SimRacing has uploaded a never-before-seen unofficial trailer for Slightly Mad Studios’ Project CARS 2. While we must stress the unofficial aspect—nothing has been confirmed by SMS at this point—this is the first footage we’ve seen of the game that is scheduled to release in 2017, and there is a lot to digest.

February’s just about here, and for Forza Horizon 3 players, that means another series of Forzathon events. The shortest month of the year is packing in the challenges, with seven separate sets running from this upcoming Friday to the day before March.

If you’re keeping tabs on the Virtual Reality space within the sim genre, you’ll probably know the name Marcel Pfister. The racing enthusiast has created some great mixed reality videos in the past including a tour around DiRT Rally’s snowy Sweden and Assetto Corsa’s Green Hell. The newest of these videos center around Kunos Simulazioni’s racing title once more, this time taking the Porsche 911 Carrera S for a spin around Italy’s Vallelunga circuit.

If you play Assetto Corsa on consoles, chances are you’ve had a bit of a grass-is-greener feeling of late. The PC platform—the original home of the game—welcomed the third Porsche Pack DLC a few days before Christmas 2016, and over a month later, there’s still no firm date for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It sounds like that will be changing soon, however.

Rally fans got a big surprise yesterday when Codemasters announced DiRT 4 would be releasing this summer. The game promises a lot of content, with over 50 off-road vehicles and the official World Rallycross Championship license. Now, a pair of Youtube videos from the Erased Citizens channel give us a better idea of what to expect from the game.

https://youtu.be/xy4G7qeSTw8

News first broke of Porsche coming to iRacing at the beginning of the month, but in recent tweet on the official iRacing Twitter account, it was announced that the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup will be coming to the game today.

2017’s impressive line up of racing games just got even better as Codemasters just announced the fourth main-line iteration of its DiRT series. Fresh off the success of DiRT Rally (which is getting a PS VR update soon), it seems Codies isn’t wasting time, and has set a release date of June 9 this year, with the game hitting PS4, XB1, and PC.

With recent Xbox sales going on, and Project Cars being confirmed as free on Games with Gold for February, you must be wondering when Sony will come for your wallet. Worry no more, as the company has just launched the PS Essentials sale!

Polyphony have pulled the trigger on the latest Seasonal Events for Gran Turismo 6. This week’s events are a combination of time trial and drifting challenges, testing your mettle at a variety of racing venues. Whether it be tuned or purpose-built racing machines, this week’s events has a little bit of something for everyone.

4K gaming is already on the rise thanks to the PlayStation 4 Pro having an early start. Released last year in November, the higher-spec Sony console already has a number of titles taking advantage of the additional headroom, and is further enhanced when VR is factored into the equation. The other half of this 4K race remains absent for the time being: Microsoft.

Last week, we reported on the many Driveclub discounts you can currently find on the PlayStation Store in the EU, If Evolution Studios’ title doesn’t quite tickle your fancy, there’s also some other racers on sale until February 8 across the PlayStation ecosystem. If you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber, you’ll get a further 10% off these prices too.

Earlier this month, in the midst of the release of the Rockstar Car Pack for Forza Horizon 3, Turn 10 accidentally gave its PC users a whole lot more; an entire debug version of the title, exclusively saved for development purposes for the in-house team.

Another money-saving opportunity for racing fans has arisen, as Microsoft announced a new Xbox One S bundle containing a download for Forza Horizon 3 (which can be used for both PC and Xbox). Two packages with varying hard drive capacities will be offered starting at $299 for 500 GB and $349 for 1 TB. Both bundles also include a 14-day Xbox Live Gold trial.

This year has certainly been kind to racers on the Xbox One so far: just earlier this month the Forza Horizon 3 Car Pass was up grabs to Live subscribers for 40% off, and it appears the Xbox team has already outlined its plans for February. Another racing game will be the highlight, this time offered for free through the Games with Gold program.

Gran Turismo Sport was playable at the Taipei Game Show this past weekend—on the new PlayStation 4 Pro no less. While the build doesn’t appear to be much different from the one shown at the PlayStation Experience last December, it nonetheless shows us some new aspects of the game.

In recent years, Formula 1 has faced the harsh challenge of trying to engage a young audience. Due to the high prices of the events themselves, and the general barrier of interacting with the series, F1 can often feel like it’s in a world of its own. However, Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost believes that there is an answer for developing the relationship between the younger generation and the historic motorsport—and it involves the world of eSports.

With the spotlight being shined on racing eSports events like the upcoming ESL Multi-Class Championship, it should come as little surprise that Project CARS’ successor will be featuring a driver rating system to help filter different players by their abilities in online races.

Late last week, news broke that Assetto Corsa developer Kunos Simulazioni has been purchased by 505 Games parent company Digital Bros. A salient detail was hidden within the comprehensive Trend Online report, however: sales figures.