NASCAR 14 News: Game Not Coming to PS4 or Xbox One Due to Small User Base

NASCAR 14 will not be coming to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One due to the small amount of users the systems have in comparison to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Game developer Eutechnyx has chosen to skip the consoles for now and wait until they have larger installed user bases before creating games for the systems, said Vice President for Eutechnyx Ed Martin. 

"We took a good, hard look at it, but there just isn't enough hardware out there yet to justify the cost of development," Martin clarified in the interview. "The nail in the coffin was when a guy from Sony (Sony CEO Jim Ryan) talked about Gran Turismo, and how their new game was launching on PS3. 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," Martin said, according to Sports Illustrated's Extra Mustard.

According to the latest sales figures released to the public, the PlayStation 4 has sold 4.2 million units, while the Xbox One has sold 3 million. In comparison, both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have each sold over 80 million units worldwide, so Eutechnyx has a greater chance of making a profit by developing for those consoles and waiting until the new consoles have a bigger pool of users to draw from. Martin revealed that it would take roughly $6 million to develop a next-gen NASCAR game, and that a large percentage of Xbox One and PlayStation 4 users would have to buy the game in order to make that money back.

It will be interesting to see if this strategy works for NASCAR 14, as the example cited by by Martin, Gran Turismo 6, has faced some challenges since launch. The game was launched as an exclusive for the PlayStation 3, and despite the console's large amount of users the game's sales have been disappointing. With many looking to the next generation of consoles even if they do not plan on buying the machines in the near future, games developed for older consoles will struggle to meet sales goals as the systems are replaced. Considering the sport's massive, passionate fanbase, perhaps NASCAR 14 will be able to meet sales expectations even without appearing on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.