Codemasters’ SVP of Production Jamie Macdonald and VP of Studios Gavin Chesire recently sat down with Develop to discuss the company’s plans for the near and slightly-more-distant future, revealing that the publisher is working on sequels to a number of its franchises, as well as introducing new IPs.
“We’ve got a major launch with F1 coming up in September and developed at our Birmingham studio, and we hope to draw new IP from there. Our Guildford studio is working hard on Bodycount, and we will be looking to to take that franchise further and further with the addition of more IP,” said Macdonald, discussing current projects at its studios. “In Southam it’s full steam ahead with the next iteration in our Flashpoint series, as well as the next Dirt and Grid.” If you’re keeping count, yes, that is three as-yet-unknown sequels just casually tossed into conversation. [Update: As I post this, The official UK PlayStation mag has tweeted a picture of next month’s issue’s cover, which appears to show “Op Flashpoint” as a reveal, so I guess we should be hearing about that sooner rather than later.]
Cheshire also mentioned that the company is working hard on the next evolution of the technology behind many of its recent successes: “The next F1 will show where EGO has got to at this stage. I think people will agree that it has probably got the best weather of any game ever seen…We are focused on EGO 2.0 at the moment, which will be coming in with a massive title that we can’t talk about just yet. That will really keep us cutting-edge.” Yes, that’s another upcoming reveal too.
Also discussed in the interview was the recent purchase by India-based Reliance Big Entertainment of a fifty percent stake in the company. Calming fears that Codemasters would be shipping off abroad, Cheshire confurmed that UK development is still very much the focus of the company: “I can safely say that this is absolutely not the case. There are obviously some ‘strategic’ moves for both partners, but in terms of development at the level we’re at, it’s very much about Reliance investing in our skills and abilities over here in the UK.” In fact, the company is looking to significantly expand its operations, says Macdonald: “We are currently in the middle of a major recruitment drive across all three of those sites [Birmingham, Southam and Guildford]. There will be major expansion in that sense over the coming year.”
Certainly seems like it’s a busy time at the publisher – it’s good to hear that companies are sticking with the UK scene.
Source: Develop
ClubberLang
Lets get moves enabled Cannon Fodder on the go!
shakengandulf
Looking forward to F1 2010.
cam the man
Yeah, can’t wait for the best ever F1 game.
Also looking forward to the next Dirt and Grid games.
colossalblue
Yuh huh, all good Codies but haven’t you heard that there’s a groundswell (well, I keep banging on about it) of desire for a PSP Mini version of SWoS to be ported?
It could be released to build hype for a future release of an updated, HD-ised PSN/XBLA SWoS.
I’d like that very much.
Cannon Fodder too, please.
Danza Di Fuoco
Why sensible soccer?
colossalblue
because it’s awesome.
And Sensible WORLD OF Soccer. It’s a very important distinction ;)
newsky87
More Dirt, more Grid. That’s all I needed to hear, can’t wait.
hazelam
another overlord game would be nice, except without anything like that frakking spider temple bit ever again.
seriously, did they even test that level?
sesameseed
Come on… a next gen version of Music/MTV Music Generator has to be high on that list… please?
SpikeyMikey23
woohoo, GRID 2!!, i hope they put a whole touring car mode in, or even better, just create/bring back TOCA!
the_greeze
^^^ What he said! :)
Blayney
I personally think that they should scrap op flash sequel. First one was crap.
Concentrate on GRID2. And make that the ego 2 debut. Don’t need anymore DiRT.
Gaztee
Bring on the new F1 game – it had better be a big improvement over the f1 2009 on the wii!!