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They say they’re going to concentrate on racing games but they will still screw the PC community by not giving us the tools to have dedicated servers so leagues can have no lag league racing  

Good interview, thanks.

It might have been better to keep the two articles separated even if vaguely related, to keep the comments relevant
Loved the interview Alan, more of those type would be welcomed by me at least.

As for racenet,
Fix your buggy games and give them better support if you must ship then in that state

If Codemasters don’t have something of their own to copy they will just copy what 
other companies are doing ie COD. Will the hub will come with the same netcode 
as their gaming making it kinda pointless. 

Seen that question about dedicated servers on their forums but it was deemed too expensive for a small company, they didnt even acknowledge that they could just release dedi server software to the masses without incurring any different costs that their p2p implementation.

All I want is Grid or TOCA already.

They better concentrate very hard because they lost a lot of credibility with everything except for DiRT, which I find to be poo to be honest. Stephen Hood, who leads the F1 game, has no credibility whatsoever.

Hard to argue that from a sim-racers point of view.
But if they concentrate solely on racing we can at least hope that practice makes perfect ;)

Never thought I`d ever see the words ‘ZX Spectrum’ on this site :)    Loved my old ZX.   

the more arcade racers the more will make the transition to sim. this is good news for pCARS iRacing AC GTR3 and so on!

No more Mr. Nice Guy!

No dedicated servers = PC game DOA

So much negativity, I’m not going to try and claim Codemasters games are very realistic, but they achieve what they set out to do and in my opinion are very successful, looking at critical reception. I’ve had great fun with every Codemasters racing game since Dirt 1, even Grid. 

Just because they aren’t simulations doesn’t mean they are bad games. Whether they belong on this site is a different conversation!

I hope they’ll never make any dirt shitdown or something similar

Interesting interview.  Maybe invest in a few clip-on wireless mic’s for the future though :).

Its not realism or arcade that is the problem. its the way the codies ignore all who is playing there games. F1 2011 has so many bugs and some of them was first there after the patch they made. and then the problem comes, because after that there have been nothing done about the game. It wouldnt be a problem if it was small bugs and stuff. but in a racing games like f1 with clear and stricked rules its not okaii to have bugs making you go on new tyres when you chose to use those you already used, or have cars in the race that does not use both tire compounds even tho its a rule in f1, or getting penalties for other drivers crashing in to you. I mean the base of the games are okaii. but the bugs are so massiv that it pisses you of, and that destroys the fun and thats why a sport like f1 should not be made by codemasters if they do not follow up on the bugs

CodeFAILURES is a better name for them i think. 

Let´s also guess how many here will be brainwashed into thinking F1 2012 is something new and better then F1 2011 like they did with people who bought F1 2010. 

To much focus on the consoles. Nothing wrong with that, i might say, but it does also mean its never going to be something that gets a wow in the sim scene. 

Interesting enough, see all company’s these days get interested in the subscription based business models. All publishers seem to have seen the light. 4 years after iRacing was slandered for having a subscription based system, now they all smell the long term revenue.  Racing games and neo sims seem to be in the market these days. So i guess this wont be the last statement we read.

when they announced the F1 license they promised it would be a sim they even showed some pics of Spa being laser scanned one month later they started to change their talk and I never accessed their forums to this day. guess  i did the right thing! 

neo sims? lol are they being financed by the neo cons? lol. Obama is giving wall street so much love maybe give neo sims some love as well! 

Whatever about the sim arcade argument, Id have to aggree they and he has no credibility regarding testing their game and supporting the players that buy their game. Everyone be they from any racing genre should call them out on it.

A bit of a bummer. While Codemasters still sets the gold standard for console racing games, the Operation Flashpoint series has a great heritage. Operation Flashpoint: Red River is the best first-person shooter on the Xbox 360, with ease. Far better than Modern Warfare 3 or Battlefield 3.

I agree bugs in games are annoying, but… The F1 titles they have made have been very complicated. All these features, graphics, rules and physics can’t be easy to code. I’m not saying we should accept the fact there are things wrong, but I do feel we shouldn’t condemn codies for not getting everything perfect. I believe they are under pressure from FOM to produce these F1 games (hence the yearly releases, for cash DLC wouldn’t bring?).

For example: iRacing penalizes you when somebody crashes into you and it’s not a problem, mainly because of the simplicity and long term nature of the safety rating, F1 and the nature of the codies game doesn’t have that luxury, there’s no point in waiting for a steward inquiry after the race because people tend not to play full seasons online in the game. I think they will get there (or close to it) in the end, if they have the time before the contract ends, and the rules of the sport do not constantly change every year.

When you look at all the features they have brought to this genre of F1 racing games (Kers & DRS systems, dynamic weather, etc)  it is quite impressive for such a short space of time. I think they deserve at least some respect for that.

I know it’s doubtful, but maybe now they are concentrating on racing games only, they could spend more time/resources on the PC market side if things, instead of more or less straight console ports. Seeing as PC gaming is on the rise again a lot of devs and publishers are starting to take notice.  
(Wow big post, most of it rubbish lol)

Yeah, a Toca game would be nice.

 Operation Flashpoint HAD a decent heritage on PC until they decided P2P was the way to go instead of dedicated servers, previous fans of the series left it for the ArmA series, it may be ok on console but what isn’t?

Codemasters, if it just listened to the PC community on just ONE issue, would keep the PC community happy, that being dedicated servers. I understand they make most money from the plebs on console but with a little effort would keep a fair amount of the PC fans happy and they would get the nice money bonus from it as well.

Codies treat the users of their games like crap and they wonder why they get ripped on and hated so much

Hopefully once they notice that selling dedi severs to people console is profitable, like EA/Dice, more devs and pubs will start porting the idea back to where it first came from. lmao

I think I’ve owned every game in that video thumbnail apart from the rugby & cricket titles. Still own the Colin Mcrae, and used to love Dizzy and Super Stunt Man on the 48k ZX. Ahh, the care free days of my youth. 

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/operation-flashpoint-red-river and the fact that Codemasters aren’t making any more of them would suggest that your opinion might be in the minority as that game being the better than COD3 and Battlefield 3.
But if you like it im sure its one that you will keep and not sell on.

I remember back in the days when they use to post on BHmotorsports (for those who remember), they use to claim “this new game will have the most realistic physics of any game out there bar none”  -any of the games they produced, dirt or road they would say this about… then they would come out and it would be so fake.  I use to bash them hard, even called them codecrappers, but they have come a long way since then, especially with the F1 games, but yes I think their focus on consoles will always hurt their want to have a realistic sim for the PC.  I don’t mind them making a racing game, but don’t call it a simulator if it isn’t close, and don’t tout “the most realistic physics” which I think they have been better about lately.

I remember the dizzy games on my amstrad 464, they cost like 5.99 Irish pounds where most games were like 14.99 or 19.99, their early games weren’t as good as the competition, but great value for money!

Yeah, they just seem to bounce from one gimmicky idea to the next rather than building a better product year on year.

Sadly, they never actually produce a game that has good driving in it.I think any company that releases a game by throwing it over the wall, finishing their release-day bottle of champagne and then sticking their fingers in their ears and ignoring all the problems and then working on their next game are a waste of time imo and should, like the dodo, be made extinct.This bunch are worse because they want the British taxpayer to fund their failed business plans.That seems to be their only business idea “I’m going to bleat in the press about having to pay tax”These days I’m spending my money on games that are either F2P or run like Valve do “game as a service”

Codemasters, like EA, will never release a good game, because they never fix the problems in their games. They might fool the buffoons at the Baftas or kid the review sites that the code is ‘pre release’ and bugs will be fixed, but whatever review score or award they get, their games are an awful experience to play – and this is reflected in the fact that most of them, released in September, are in the bargain bin by Xmas.

With the right attitude and business sense they wouldn’t need tax breaks nor would they need to keep closing divisions – but a company that hires some dinosaur from the zx81 days might be expected to act like dinosaurs in today’s games market.

They make good arcade games. GRID, and DiRT … But now too much focus on gynkhama and this …

 I remember BHmotorsports :)   Oh the nostalgia, heh.

So they started in the good old Sinclair days and are still here and flourishing in 2012.  So they must be don’t something right.  You can’t survive producing crap for nearly 30 years.
Their stuff may not please the sim-crowd but that doesn’t make it bad for the bigger market out there.

Very true. I won’t sell Flashpoint: Red River because it’s the most realistic military shooter for a console. Far more realistic than Battlefield or MW3.

 LOL ”long term revenue”, They will have to make the code from n2003 last another 10 years to break even if there original claims of dev costs were true.

Iracing made way more money as Papyrus selling cd retail box titles. Do the math.

Sub based games are dying not thriving. Iracing is far from thriving lol, F1 2009 alone made more money than iracing has in 4 years. Console out sells all. Not even remotely close. The F1 experience in F1 2010 and 2011 is 100 times better then iracings one outdated williams car.

I bet even hand held psp 2000 and psp 3000 f1 titles have made more money then iracing will ever make.

For the guy below ”General Rush Hour”, have you ever heard of most successful game ever? It is called madden football.  Comes out every single year and 100,000 ‘s of people actually take the day of from work the day it releases.

Codemasters please get indycar license.

Yeah, the early codemasters games were really cheap usually £2.99 sterling, I remember always looking out the the little round codies symbol and get all excited when I found one on the cassette box…. in my local newsagents lol

Man, time have changed, You can barely find games in the high street now, let alone your local corner store.

They should’ve told the neighbours to turn down the music, really annoying :P

 What, and ruin that as well ?

”
You can’t survive producing crap for nearly 30 years.”

Actually you can. Codemasters is living proof of this. 

Metacritic is so flawed… in many ways.

 F1 2010 has sold more than 2.3m units globally.

and has made more money on just f1 2010 alone then all the ISI based products and iracing put together.(which i also own and still play all the sim bin games)  Pretty sure only other single race titles with higher earning’s are GT5 and Forza.

While it may not be a sim it is still a fun game. The car modeling is good, tracks excellent and the game does what it bills itself as ..day in the life of a driver”.  Games like f1 2010,11,12  are the games that introduce people to racing
online and then some look for more in depth experience league racing.
You should be glad there is games like this that create interest to the
hobby of sim racing.

You want to call me a arcade racer do so LOL. Most of people here were not even born or in diapers when I played my 1st arcade game. As far as hardcore I own almost every race game under the sun. 

Not to mention regularly run road tracks on n2003 in hardcore mod which most of jokers on this board (including the iracer snobs) would not even be able to get out of pits with out spinning the car yet turn a lap. But I am not narrow minded to the point where I can’t enjoy games like shift or f1 games.

Not so sure I will buy f1 2012 or not i may wait and see. But I hope they make a single player Indy car game I don’t understand what you think they are ruining? Other then hole in there pocket from all the success they have had. lol.

 i use to buy ad space on there web site. shame they closed.