Codemasters to Make Racing Games Only

Codemasters announced today that the company has decided to work solely on their racing games. The Operation Flashpoint and Bodycount publisher has decided to shift its focus towards its more successful racing series such as GRID, F1 and DiRT and drop development projects for all other genres.

The news is not entirely surprising as many of Codemasters’ non-racing games have met with disappointing reception and sales. Both Bodycount and Operation Flashpoint: Red River released last year to middling reviews and an unenthused consumer base, so much so that they were forced to shut down the studio behind Bodycount.

The shift in focus is not a sign of financial trouble at Codemasters either, but a move toward a more efficient and sensible workload. Over 75% of the games they’ve developed have been racing games and almost every single one has met with critical acclaim and heavy fan response, especially the DiRT series, so the company is instead playing to their strengths instead of rearranging against economic storms. In fact, they’re adding over 100 new development positions to their 700 strong headcount as well.

Codemasters is looking to be the world’s most renown developer for racing games, as communication chief Richard Eddie tells MCV:

In racing, we are No.2 in Europe and that’s not good enough. We want to take racing games across multiple platforms and genres. So that players can play anytime, anywhere and on any device. Racing is our DNA, it is our heritage, it is our specialisation and it is our absolute focus going forward.

To meet that goal, Codemasters is introducing Race Net, a browser hub for their racing games so that players can maintain statistics and data and share with their friends, challenge other players and keep track of various information. The service will be launching with DiRT Showdown next month.