Codemasters Not Annualising GRID Franchise; Talks Physics Engine and Next-Gen Projects
GRID: Autosport has been recently unveiled and set to release in June, 2014, only a year after the release of GRID 2. This worried many fans that Codemasters intends to annualise the franchise like Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed, but Clive Moody, Codemasters’ senior executive producer, refuted it in an interview with Redbull.com:
“I wouldn’t say that necessarily – the main thing is the opportunity presented itself. It’s about the fact we had the team and the tech ready to go, there was a brief window we felt we could do another game and address fan feedback, so that was the reason we decided to go again with another Grid title. Everything was in the right place. But it’s not part of a bigger strategy to annualise the Grid games.”
He explained that Autosport is a result of listening to a lot of fan feedback, that couldn’t be just patched into GRID 2. Considering they already got experience with the last generation and the necessary tech, Autosport was just a right thing to do.
He also pointed out how dedicated they are to modelling and differentiating the cars included in the game:
“A lot of it is about race set-up rather than just raw numbers, and it can make a massive difference to how a car behaves, so there’s that element that comes into it which is where our car handling guys come into their own. These are a bunch of designers that will day in, day out sit setting up these cars, playing with all the parameters we’ve got, and we’ve got 100 different parameters in our physics model, from how the suspension reacts right down to how the tyre modelling works.”
Aside from the upcoming GRID: Autosport, he talked about what future has in store for them and their projects:
“I don’t think it’s any trade secret that next gen is knocking on the door pretty hard, and that’s something we’ll be looking at and making sure our next-generation of technology is the best that’s out there, in terms of an engine built specfically to make racers on. We shouldn’t just expect racers. That’s what we do and what we do best. Having said that, without mentioning any specific projects, we are looking at some other interesting gaming concepts, there’s a couple of ideas, we’ll perhaps see how those pan out in the future.”
After finishing with PS3 and X360; they are dedicated to making a true next-gen engine for future racers but they also won’t limit themselves to what they do best. What else could we expect from them? Perhaps a simulator of some sort or a shooter? Be sure to follow us and find out.