The Wii U version of crowd-funded racer Project Cars has now officially been canned.

In a statement provided to our friends at Nintendo Life, developer Slightly Mad Studios explained that it had now abandoned the platform.

"The official line is that we're awaiting an announcement from Nintendo on new hardware," a Slightly Mad spokesperson explained.

"As of now Project Cars is simply too much for the Wii U."

Development of the game's Wii U version has looked shaky for a while. Back in February, Slightly Mad admitted that it could only get the racer running "at about 23fps".

"Honestly, unless we really cut the looks back I think we're looking to Nintendo's next console," studio boss Ian Bell said at the time.

"We still haven't given up on Wii U 100 per cent but if we can't make it work we will move to the next Nintendo machine."

It's unclear if that means a version of the existing Project Cars is headed to NX, or the game's just-announced sequel. We're guessing the latter, since the NX will not even be discussed by Nintendo until at some point in 2016.