This is a terrible decision on their part, and I hope it doesn't blow in their faces.
As a marketing decision this is will only alienate their market. There is a reason why game sequels are not announced: announcing a sequel too soon WILL EAT THE SALES OF YOUR CURRENT GAME. Even annualized series don't do this. It's super amateur to think that you will educate the market otherwise since people buy videogames almost always on a sentimental basis.It's probably better to wait until sales of the first game have dwindled down before announcing sequels. It also erodes customer confidence. What will happen when pCars2 is released? Will I be asked again for more money for pCars 3? How long do they need to hold my money for?
This is for early adopters and supporters!
This would be acceptable if they only sold for early adopters and supporters. Unfortunately, they also sell to the regular market, and the regular market does not like to feel they are being "milked".
But this is crowdfunded, they need the money for 3 more months while they get paid!
Why is this an issue? They didn't take into account the post-release 3 month period in their original estimate? It doesn't matter if you have 100 or 10 staff, can't the company handle only 3 months of expenses? They already must have a lot of receivables with the 4 Million sales that they got.
But they need our help for development!
It's a good thing that they are taking into account the end user in the development of the product, and this truly is the way R&D is being handled right now, but in the end 3 or 4 months is not going to make or break a game that is still some years apart. They must have SOME artistic vision of the game before starting it. I am sure they can find things to keep their devs busy in the meantime, as most devs do
Some devs just need a kickstarter-addiction intervention