According to a report by Game Industry, an Electronic Arts spokesman has confirmed in a statement that the company will "stop further development and investment" in the Project Cars franchise, a series developed by Slightly Mad Studios.

Slightly Mad Studios started the Project Cars series as an indie project and developed three mainline iterations since 2015, all published by Bandai Namco. Before Project Cars 3, the studio became a subsidiary of Codemasters, and two years later, Codemasters itself was acquired by Electronic Arts, giving the latter the rights to every Codemasters-owned IP.

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As the report reveals, Electronic Arts will try to move affected stuff at Slightly Mad Studios to their other EA Sports or racing focused-studios at the company wherever they can. It is estimated that the studio includes over 150 developers, most of which were employed after its acquisition by Codemasters.

Project Cars 2 and its predecessor were both successful hits for Slightly Mad Studios as hardcore circuit-based racing simulators, but the developers changed their approach to arcade racing in Project Cars 3, which was the main reason why it couldn't repeat the success of the previous titles. Unfortunately, the first titles for Project Cars were delisted from Steam recently as the licensing contract with circuits and car manufacturer's expired.

Before Project Cars, Slightly Mad Studios partnered with Electronic Arts to develop Need For Speed Shift and Need For Speed Shift 2 Unleashed, both of which received high critical scores at the time, but due to a disagreement between the publisher and the developer at the time, Slightly Mad Studios didn't continue the partnership with EA for Shift 3.

Now, with Electronic Arts canceling the Project Cars series, it is yet to be seen what will happen for Slightly Mad Studios, and what they will focus on next, as the studio head revealed before EA's takeover that they were working on Project Cars 4 as the most realistic simulation ever made. Prior to the acquisition, Slightly Mad Studios claimed that they were working on a new gaming console called Mad Box as the most powerful console ever. With the EA leading the studio, that project might be canceled as well.

Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson also confirmed the information above regarding the cancelation of Project Cars according to what he has heard from his sources.

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