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Almost two and a half years after the NTT IndyCar Series announced a deal for a new IndyCar racing sim ro be released in 2023, Penske Entertainment now finds themselves where they were before July 2021 announcement – nowhere. After more than a year of rumors of financial struggles with Mortorsports Games, Inc (MSG), the developer hired to design and produce the game, the plug has finally been pulled on the game – for now.

It seemed that Penske Entertainment was trying to avoid embarrassment by hoping against hope that MGI would get things turned around. They had waited it out this long, and didn’t really want to start over; so they stayed the course. Even earlier this week, when TOCA’s British Touring Car Championship bailed from their arrangement with MSG – Penske Entertainment President Mark Miles said they would make a decision by the end of the year on what they would do regarding their deal with the beleaguered MSG.

I guess IndyCar thought that severing ties would’ve been a public admission that a mistake had been made by going with MGI, and they could avoid public embarrassment by sticking with their decision. Well now they have to live with the embarrassment that it was MSG who pulled the plug on the deal. Marshall Pruett reported in an article on Tuesday night that Motorsports Games has had the decision to suspend development of their IndyCar game. Pruett quoted from their announcement: “the suspension of the development of our previously planned IndyCar game, to decrease operating expenses whilst also removing projects that are underperforming or are unlikely to generate revenue.”

This announcement coincided with MSG’s third-quarter earnings report that revealed to no one’s surprise that MSG had incurred losses of millions, on top of similar earnings reports that listed millions more in losses.

It’s embarrassing enough that MSG ended up being the one to sever the relationship with IndyCar. Added to the embarrassment is the amount of time wasted on this venture. IndyCar was a little late to the party when they finally signed this deal in July of 2021. Even then, it had been almost a couple of decades since an IndyCar-licensed game had been released. Now we afre heading into 2024 and we are no closer to a new games than we were three years ago.

What’s worse is that IndyCar cut ties with the only platform that was keeping IndyCar video fans satisfied – iRacing. Once IndyCar got in bed with MSG, they forced iRacing to stop allowing Indy cars to appear on their platform. IndyCar fans would have to wait until the MSG video game was released.

I will say this…the screen shots from the game that were released by MSG, meant to tease us looked stunning. Of course a screen shot is no indication of how a game plays, but I’ve seen similar screen shots from other games that don’t look near that good. Unfortunately, it seems the screen shots were just about as far as they got.

Fans looking for someone’s head to roll probably won’t like this, but I don’t necessarily blame Mark Miles for this. I think he is the easy target that will come out looking hesitant and indecisive, but I think there is a lot more to this story. I think he is the recipient of a lot of bad advice that snowballed into a series of missteps.

There were a lot of red flags when IndyCar first entered into this agreement. Whoever did their due diligence on MSG, did not do their homework. Someone at the level of Miles is not doing the due diligence himself, so he has to rely on the information given to him. Once IndyCar jumped in with both feet, I can understand the reluctance to immediately sever the relationship. When a long-suffering fan-base like IndyCar’s sees the series ending a relationship that was just signed a year earlier, it’s not considered to be a good look. It’s an admission that the series may not have known what they were doing. That’s a public relations nightmare they would have loved to avoid.

It’s hard to know when to pull the witch in that situation. If you bail at the first sign of a bad earnings report, it looks like you respond with a knee-jerk reaction to everything. But as thing s continued to get worse, more and more fans were clamoring for Miles to end the agreement. Instead nothing was done for months. Then this week was the perfect opportunity to bail, when TOCA announced they were ending their contract with MSG. Instead, Miles continued to stay the course.

Wednesday afternoon, Nathan Brown of The Indianapolis Star posted an article further explaining the timeline of events leading up to the suspension of the project. He goes into great detail of how much progress has been made with the game. He also mentions another little nugget that could further delay any IndyCar video game coming down the pike anytime soon. MSG has not defaulted on any of their financial obligations to IndyCar. That further explains why Miles stayed the course. To sever a contract when MSG has fulfilled their obligations, would put IndyCar and Penske Entertainment in a breach of contract situation. Roger Penske is not one to seek out litigation.

So here we are two and a half years later. We hear there is a game that may be as much as 80% complete, but development is suspended indefinitely. But as long as they are making whatever payments to IndyCar on a timely basis – IndyCar can do nothing. It’s complicated.

Whoever decided it was a good idea to sign with MSG, should pay the consequences. I am not a Mark Miles apologist, but I don’t think this was his decision. His name is probably on the contract, but I doubt he acted alone in this. He was probably just going off of bad advice from someone who was really advocating for the deal. Now that we know there are some pretty severe legal consequences for terminating this deal, things now sit in limbo. So in actuality, we are in even worse shape than we there two and a half years ago. At least then, we expected things to move forward when the deal was struck with MSG. Now that the project has been suspended and after a lot of embarrassing missteps, Penske Entertainment is in legal limbo for moving forward with anyone else – IndyCar fans are simply stuck in neutral. Stay tuned. The plot could really thicken.

George Phillips

Please Note: With today being Veterans Day, first I would like to recognize and thank any military veterans who might be reading this. My office is closed today, so I have a day off. I have a full weekend planned of hanging gutters. Since I’ve never done it before, this could be an adventurous undertaking. Since I am going to be tied up with home projects all weekend, there will be no post here on Monday Nov 13. I will return here on Wednesday Nov 15. Enjoy the weekend! – GP

This entry was posted on November 10, 2023 at 4:03 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.