It really looks like EA will be taking over Codemasters. The acquisition deal is still pending, but EA have already laid out plans on how they will make use of the racing games specialists once they join the EA fold.
Most of them sound great from a business point of view. But for racing game fans, this might sound less appealing.
In the presentation slide for their Q3 financial report, EA believes that with having Codemasters joining in, they can be “a global leader in racing entertainment”, and enabling them to have a racing game released annually.
Codemasters have the official F1 game license, and by 2023, the license for the World Rally Championship. So that’s a really easy target to achieve. Codies have also been pumping out a bunch of arcade/sim-cade racers over the past years including a new entry to Dirt, Grid, and Project CARS.
EA COO Blake Jorgensen also believes that racing games as a genre is “one of the best growth opportunities there is.”
“On top of the fact that the Dirt Franchise, the Grid franchise, all of their franchises are incredible games, but none of them are actually taking advantage of a large publishing organization and the marketing muscle that we are able to deliver,” he added. “And we think that has growth to it.”
EA CEO Andrew Wilson added the EA will be looking into expanding live service elements to Codemasters’ titles, stating that “F1 plus live service plus our marketing muscle is a profound opportunity.”
Oh no.
At least the good news is that EA believes with the vast resources they have, Codemasters and the existing EA teams can benefit with shared expertise, not only making better Codemasters racing games, but also EA’s own racing game IPs like Burnout, Need For Speed, and Real Racing.
There’s very little players in the mainstream racing games genre, and we shall see if this acquisition truly uplifts the quality of racing games, or seals the fate of this niche genre.
Source: IGN