Back in the day, Codemasters (or “The Codies” as they were known) were famous for two things. The first was the ‘Dizzy’ series featuring a permantly bouncing egg , the second was that the two blokes in charge we called Darling. These days the Codies CEO is called Rod Cousens so zero chance of any General Melchett style japery, instead he has outlined his vision for the future..

“Let me give you a scenario that could happen in the next three-to-five years,” he said. “That’s that games aren’t at GBP 50 – they’re at GBP 20-30, but they’re unfinished. You then have to download future levels or packs to progress through the game, and within those downloadable packs you also have micro-transactions.

“You can do that directly, or you can do it in conjunction with retail, where they have a code to unlock future packs and they participate in the margin.  That is a far more constructive and value added approach than if they’re simply churning pre-owned software out, which I believe in terms of content creation disadvantages us – and actually, further, stagnates the industry.”