After many years of being under the control of Sony, the Formula One Championship license has been obtained by Codemasters. The creators of the Race Driver Series and Colin McCrae Rally series hope to have the first game of the new venture out sometime during 2009. In the press release Codemasters CEO, Rod Cousens said the following:

“As a world-leading creator of driving games, this alliance with Formula 1 is the jewel in Codemasters’ racing crown and creates an undisputed segment champion. Formula 1 has gone with the best, the segment leader. It has gone to the home of the EGO Engine for quality; it has gone to the company that can host Formula 1 Online, to the company that is streaking away from the pack.”

“Codemasters’ success and recent innovations in the racing game space makes the company more than appropriately tuned for the challenge,” said Chris Deering, Chairman of Codemasters. “The combination of Formula 1’s new momentum of expansion and Codemasters’ contemporary technology and past experience is the breaking of a new dawn for the sport, on the track and on the HD game screen.”

Motorstorm 2 gets officially named…

Thankfully it isn’t the totally naff Motorstorm: Pacifica. It is instead Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, which is quite nice and acceptable. It kind of gives the sense of the destruction the vehicles (which now includes Monster Truck’s, ya-hoo!) will wreak on the island (not to mention the other competitors). Oh and did I mention it’s looking gorgeous?

PS3 Outsells 360 in Europe

The Sony bigwig’s were happily reporting today that in the European region their newest console has already outsold Microsoft’s XBOX 360, despite the latter having a lower pricepoint and 16 month headstart. It was indicated that European gamers have purchased 5 million PS3’s, 12 million PSP’s and an enormous 48 million PS2’s.

“We have sold more PlayStation 3’s throughout Europe than Xbox 360 - even though they launched sixteen months before PS3. These numbers are a testament to the strength of the PlayStation brand throughout our region, the ever-increasing number of titles being launched, the rich content on offer and its appeal to different demographics and cultures.” - David Reeves

Mirror’s Edge Gameplay Trailer

A gameplay trailer was released at PlayStation Day ‘08 and I must say it looks quite awesome to be able to experience the free running excitement from a first-person view. Will be interesting to see how this plays out upon release.

Delays, Delays

It’s something we’ve all come to expect with the ‘next-gen era’, delays. You can usually guarantee that a game will not come out on its first given release date. Recently several games have been pushed back to allow for further spit and polish. They are:

• LittleBigPlanet - moved from mid-September to sometime in October
• Prototype - Q1 2009
• Gran Turismo 5 - Q1 2009
• Killzone 2 - 2009

We may moan about delays, but think about Grand Theft Auto IV and how much it must have benefited from its extra 6 months in the shop? Delays are a good thing, it means we are getting a better quality product in the end.

And in other news…

THQ have recently announced the newest addition to their WWE game franchise. This one however is not a Smackdown vs RAW game (the first from THQ in a LOOONG time) it is a separate entity all together to tie in with the 25th anniversary of WrestleMania next year. Entitled ‘WWE: Legends of WrestleMania’, the video game will be based off of legends and alumni of the WWE, who have appeared at WrestleMania.

The game is under development by YUKE’s yet again, which means there’s a high probability that it will be all the same rehashing that we’ve seen over the past several years from the SvR series. I do hope however that they use this game as a testing ground and utilise some next gen tech (Euphoria anyone?) to make this something special indeed.

It can be expected to be released in the weeks prior to Wrestlemania XXV on the 5th of April, 2009. I will have a blog entry in the next few weeks detailing where I think the wrestling game genre should be heading to dig itself out of it’s current rut.

• 23/05/2008 - Top Spin 3
• 26/06/2008 - Battlefield: Bad Company
• 31/07/2008 - Mirror’s Edge
• 17/09/2008 - Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
• ??/10/2008 - LittleBigPlanet
• 29/10/2008 - Skate 2
• 26/11/2008 - Motorstorm: Pacific Rift

So yeah, there’ll be things on here like news, reviews, videos, screenshots and more for all the great upcoming games (and maybe even ones that aren’t great…lol) .

You will be missed.