Codemasters have announced to focus solely on their efforts in virtual racing as the studio doesn’t have any plans to develop any non-racing titles in the future.

To go along with this decision, Codemasters have launched their new Codemasters Racing label and are planning to hire an additional 100 staff members to add to their busy development team.

While Codemasters’ racing efforts in the Formula One & DiRT franchise have proven very successful, the studio’s latest action titles such as Operation Flashpoint: Red River & Bodycount failed to succeed on the market.

Currently, Codemasters are developing F1 2012, a Formula One browser-based title as well as DiRT Showdown, the company recently extended their Formula One licensing agreement for an unknown span of years.

Part of the studio’s new focus is Racenet, a new online hub that is planned to connect players of the studio’s titles across the board, offering drivers with a community profile and the chance to win extra content.

In related news, Alan Boiston of VVV Gamer recently interviewed David Darling, the original founder of Codemasters. Darling co-founded Codemasters with his brother Richard in 1986 when the company started making games for the ZX Spectrum. Darling left Codemasters in 2007 and is no longer involved in the company’s business.

Codemasters has announced an extension of their licensing contract with Formula One, allowing the company to produce fully-licensed F1 titles for multiple years to come.

The studio acquired the license in May 2008 and has since then released two F1 titles for handheld devices as well as two full-scale titles for the PC and next-gen consoles – F1 2010 & F1 2011.

The series’ next installment, F1 2012, is expected to be released this fall. Aside from that, Codemasters is branching out to new audiences by working on a free-to-play browser-based title called F1 Online The Game as well as a new family-oriented F1 title that is due to be released in late 2012.

We got off to a strong start with FORMULA ONE but we harbour ambitions to do much more. FORMULA ONE is front of mind at Codemasters and we give it the focus and attention it deserves. 

We got an extremely well made game in Dirt 3 this year, and Codemasters is back with even more! Announced today, Dirt Showdown will be a companion of sorts to Dirt 3, offering full-contact racing events, new Destruction Derby and Hoonigan events. 

Taking a more arcade route by the look of things, Dirt Showdown will feature a new lineup of off-road vehicles including Ken Block’s new Gymkhana FOUR H.F.H.V., new racing locations from San Francisco to Tokyo, and new multiplayer modes such as eight-player online racing and quick-fire party games.

While Codemasters are hard at work on the second patch for their recently-released F1 2011 title, the studio is also not done supporting DiRT 3 as a new PC patch for the rally title has been released.

 The patch weighs 503mb introduces various little fixes and improvements as listed below, DiRT 3 was released back in May 2011 and a first patch followed in June.

Changelog

-Resolved an issue which could prevent the user successfully saving with profiles that contained unicode characters.
-UI elements are no longer incorrectly displayed in Gymkhana
-Improvements to input system, supporting multi-device action maps. The user can now set button configurations to span multiple devices; previously a bug would cause these settings to be lost upon game restart.
-Corrected various spelling mistakes across all languages
-Reset line corrections to prevent potential ‘out of world’ or ‘driving into crowd’ issues on several tracks
-Corrected an issue which could, in rare circumstances, prevent the display from rendering in the event of 16xCSAA being selected.

MotoGamesTV has put together a very interesting comparison video, showing the PC & Xbox 360 versions of Codemasters’ recently-released F1 2011 title side by side.

With the current generation of consoles aging and PCs becoming more and more powerful, the console versions are starting to fall behind in eye candy. Check out the video below to see the differences in F1 2011 as the console version does not just come with lower-resolution textures and less details but also different lighting as the PC version.

KonsolenFrontTV has released a very interesting gameplay video of Codemasters’ upcoming F1 2011 title.

The video shows a full three-lap race at Melbourne in the Red Bull, using a steering wheel and no driving aids. The video has been made using the Xbox 360 version and a Fanatec GT2 wheel with Clubsport pedals, we can check out the driver’s actions via picture in picture. Furthermore, the video also gives us a short glimpse at the game’s menus.

Codemasters have released a new video of their upcoming F1 2011 Formula One title, showing Steve Hood (Chief Game Designer), Paul Jeal (Senior Producer) and Lee Mather (Handling Designer) answering questions from their Twitter followers.

The questions touch on various subjects, including details on the KERS & DRS systems and the new time trial mode.

Furthermore, the Official Playstation Magazine is the first media outlet to review F1 2011, scoring it at 8/10 (F1 2010 received a 9/10 score). The magazine calls F1 2011 “a game about appreciation for the sport” that’ll “change the way you watch the Sunday affo Grand Prix,”, frowning upon the supposedly steep learning curve, calling it “unforgiving and newbie-unfriendly”.

While that sounds promising to the ears of sim racers, reviews from mainstream gaming outlets should always be taken with a grain of salt as none of the big F1 2010 reviews picked up on the scripted AI times for example.

Play3.de released an interesting video interview with Codemasters’ Paul Jeal, senior producer of the studios’ upcoming Formula One 2011 title.

To follow up on that, the magazine has now released a new preview video, featuring more than three minutes of pure gameplay footage of the upcoming title. The video shows plenty of driving action in the Ferrari at Monza and in the Red Bull at Melbourne.

F1 2011 will be released for the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 on September 23, right in time for the final races of the real life 2011 Formula One World Championship season. The new title will come with improved graphics & handling, new features such as multiplayer splitscreen as well as a much more extensive career mode.

VVV Automotive’s Alan Boiston was on hand at Codemasters’ London presentation event of their upcoming Formula One 2011 title for the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Luckily, Alan didn’t forget to capture lots of gameplay footage of the upcoming title that was apparently used with Fanatec Porsche wheels in disguise (with a VisionRacer VR3).

As a bonus, Alan has also included a video interview with Peugeot Sport works driver & Codemasters advisor Anthony Davidson.

F1 2011 will be released for the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 on September 23, right in time for the final races of the real life 2011 Formula One World Championship season. The new title will come with improved graphics & handling, new features such as multiplayer splitscreen as well as a much more extensive career mode.