In an official blog post, Codemasters has announced that it is ending development support for EA Sports WRC, which released in 2023, and that it has also ended its partnership with WRC, with the exclusive license having spanned just one game. Not only that, Codemasters – the studio behind the likes of Colin McRae Rally, Dirt, and Dirt Rally – also says that, at least for now, it has no plans to make more rally racing sims.

“Every great journey eventually finds its finish line, and today, we announce that we’ve reached the end of the road working on WRC,” the developer writes. “After releasing EA SPORTS WRC in 2023, the 2024 season, including the recently released Hard Chargers Content pack, will be our last expansion.

“For now, we are pausing development plans on future rally titles. Rest assured, EA SPORTS WRC will continue to be available for existing and new players. We hope it remains a source of joy, excitement, and the thrill of rally racing. We’ve poured our hearts into making it for fans, and we know you’ll keep the passion alive.

“Our WRC partnership was a culmination of sorts for our Codemasters journey with off-road racing, spanning decades through titles like Colin McRae Rally, and DiRT. We’ve provided a home for every rally enthusiast, striving tirelessly to push the boundaries and deliver the exhilarating thrill of driving on the ragged edge. We’ve brought together incredibly talented racing developers, worked with some of the sport’s icons, and had the opportunity to share our love of rallying.

“Thank you to all the fans who have and continue to be part of our rally journey.”

How this change will affect Codemasters remains to be seen. There’s currently no word on whether the studio will be eliminating positions.

EA confirmed on Wednesday that it had laid off roughly 300 employees across a number of studios. Reports have claimed about a hundred of those affected were employed at Respawn Entertainment, and that the studio also cancelled a Titanfall extraction shooter.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Is Red Dead Redemption 2, one of the greatest games of all time, really the best Xbox One and PS4 title? Yes, it is, because even with the hardware limitations, Rockstar Games delivered an excellent open-world action-adventure. The story is fantastic; the characters, especially protagonist Arthur Morgan, are fantastic; and the gameplay, while not for everyone, is realistic and incredibly detailed with a wide range of activities.

As reported by Insider-Gaming’s Tom Henderson, it seems like EA has internally cancelled the long-running DiRT franchise as well. The rally-racing focused DiRT Rally titles are apparently viewed as redundant, seeing as Codemasters will be releasing officially licensed WRC titles starting in 2023. Meanwhile, the arcade-focused DiRT games seem to have no future at the company either.

A report earlier this year (also written by the aforementioned Henderson) claimed that Codemasters had cancelled DiRT Rally 3.0 in favour of ramping up development on 2023’s AAA WRC title. Read more on that through here.

EA or Codemasters have yet to make an official statement regarding the status of the DiRT franchise.

Burnout Paradise Remastered

Burnout 3: Takedown was a major change in direction for the series with its speed, wrecks, and overall addictive gameplay. Criterion’s Burnout Paradise went even further with an open-world environment and the freedom to progress at one’s own pace. This is on top of fully customizable race settings, a reworked damage model, streamlined progression that rewards new cars consistently, and much more. Crash Mode could even be accessed at any time via the new Showtime Mode. With an incredibly well-designed urban playground and fun gameplay, Burnout Paradise stands the test of time.

This announcement comes shortly after EA’s acquisition of Codemasters, which is hard at work on its upcoming GRID Legends. The studio recently also shipped F1 2021, which received great reviews and has been enjoying solid sales.

Xbox has now hit its stride with Xbox Game Pass, which seems to be growing larger by the day to such a degree that fans consider it to be the quintessential part of owning an Xbox console. The upcoming Halo Infinite also wrapped up its first flight test, which has been well-received by fans all around the globe.

https://twitter.com/EAPlay/status/1422240783772573696

Once again, the Humble Store is doling out Codemasters’ DiRT Rally for free on PC. The offer is currently available until September 1st, 10 AM PST or until supplies last. So hurry up, claim your Steam key and enjoy one of the best racing games ever made.

DiRT Rally offers six rallies with more than 70 stages, from Greece and Monte Carlo to Sweden and Wales. You can drive over 40 cars, both classic and modern, as you race through harrowing turns. Rally Championships are also available to get you into driving events and earning money to ultimately rule over the division.

If that weren’t enough, you can take part in custom events, whether single or multi-stage. The strength of DiRT Rally is in its unforgiving realism, helping the game stand out from the mainline DiRT series. Check out our review of the first game here. DiRT Rally 2.0 released earlier this year for Xbox One, PS4 and PC – check out our review for that as well.

Codemasters’ DiRT Rally will be getting support for VR next week in a free update- a patch for the existing game will make it compatible with the Oculus Rift headset, and DiRT Rally will also be added to the Oculus Store, so that owners of the device can buy themselves a VR enabled version of the game as well.

Given how immersive the game is already, the VR version of the game is probably overkill at this point (and it may even make some people nauseous- let’s hope Codemasters have sorted this out already). But hey, it’s also going to be the most extreme version to play what is already supposed to be a very extreme game.

DiRT Rally is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Only the PC version is getting VR compatibility for now, and only for Oculus Rift for the time being- compatibility with other VR headsets was not announced yet.

Evolution Studios was in dire straits after publisher Sony Computer Entertainment sought to shutter it following internal reviews. Thankfully, the DriveClub developer has found a new home with Codemasters, the creators of Dirt Rally.

Evolution’s role will be to now create new racing IP for Codemasters, with CEO Frank Sagnier telling Games Industry International that, “We want to benefit from everything that they’ve learned as a team together, we want them to create their own games.

“Of course there will be synergies, of course we will share stuff, but we would like to make sure they retain their identity and stay together as a team to do what they’re good at.”

DriveClub director Paul Rustchynsky is excited for the partnership. On Twitter, he said, “We can’t wait to start work with @Codemasters on a new racing IP! Keep following myself & @PhenomEvolution for news.”

All’s well that ends well, right? We wish Evolution and Codemasters luck on their new partnership.

We were wondering which game would put an end to the reign of Tom Clancy’s The Division in the UK and Remedy Entertainment’s Quantum Break has delivered. It debuted in first place for sales charts across all platforms according to Gfk Chart-Track and is the first Microsoft title to debut in first place for the UK since Halo 5: Guardians.

Xbox Studios’ Jon Edney issued a statement on the same: “We’re delighted that Quantum Break has been so well received by fans and critics, it’s a testament to the hard work, ambition and commitment of the team at Remedy that the game is already surpassing expectations. The game has already built up a passionate fanbase and we look forward to seeing and hearing about their experiences in Riverport.”

Interestingly, Dirt Rally debuted in second place, with Quantum Break only nearly beating it. Tom Clancy’s The Division is in third place after spending four weeks at the top.

The rest of the top ten is as you’d expect – FIFA 16, Far Cry Primal, Grand Theft Auto 5, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, EA Sports UFC 2, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege and Star Wars Battlefront.

Codemasters are no strangers to the rally racing genre. It all started with Colin McRae Rally in 1998 on the PC and PlayStation One. I still remember spending hours with the game on my trusty PlayStation One. It was such a visceral experience back then. It’s not unfair to claim that Codemasters made rally racing a popular genre so it’s kind of nostalgic playing this game on a modern console with far better visuals than what was possible 18 years ago.

Regardless, DiRT Rally on consoles and PC is an interesting title to analyze. Unlike F1 2015, DiRT Rally runs on the company’s EGO 3.0 engine instead of EGO 4.0. We are not sure why one of the company’s greatest games is running on a three year old engine. EGO 4.0 has already been optimized for mainstream processor graphics, high end multi-core and DX12. Furthermore, it is an engine designed from scratch and is supposedly scale-able across multi-core CPUs which would have made it an ideal candidate for DiRT Rally on consoles and modern gaming PCs. Regardless, what we have with EGO 3.0 is still impressive.

To begin with, DiRT Rally runs at a full native 1920 X 1080p resolution on the PlayStation 4. The Xbox One version too at a full 1920 X 1080p too but as Codemasters confirmed to us in a recent interview; Microsoft’s version employs a dynamic buffer for resolution when it needs the GPU resources for a consistent frame rate. However the use of dynamic resolution on the Xbox One is rare and the game is more or less a 1080p title. Both versions target a 60 frames per second cap and for the most part the engine does a great job in maintaining that frame rate with slight drops and the occasional screen tearing. We are quite delighted with what Codemasters have been able to achieve with DiRT Rally especially given that it’s running on an outdated engine. It’s also fair to assume that the game is indeed utilizing the 7^th core CPU on both consoles something that both Sony and Microsoft unlocked recently via SDK updates.

Talking about the differences between two version, there is a actually very little to choose from. Mirror reflections, texture quality, crowd density, screen space reflections, shader detail and the several volumetric and alpha effects look similar across both versions. Given that you will be racing across denser forest and tracks that have a lot of foliage, minor pop ins can be observed which could be distracting for some players. Both versions used a custom post processing anti-aliasing solution which does a great job of reducing the jaggies. Overall the image quality is decent across both versions. Granted it does not give the likes of DriveClub and Forza Motorsport 6 a run for their money, but DiRT Rally looks and also plays well good on consoles. The controls are tight and the physics are spot on. It must be noted that this is a hardcore simulation game so this game may not appeal to players who are interested in arcade style racers.

So how do they compare against the PC build? Well, right off the bat you can observe better texture filtering and anisotropic filtering on ground surfaces for the PC version. Furthermore, it uses a far better and resource intensive anti-aliasing solution in MSAA resulting into crisper image quality. Shadows on the console versions seem to be of medium quality compared to the PC build and the level of detail is far better on the PC version. Further advantages of the PC build include improved shader detail, better quality water and screen space reflections and ambient occlusion. Weather effects seem to be similar across all three versions (however it’s no DriveClub).  Overall, the console versions are close to the ‘High’ Graphical Quality preset of the PC build which to be honest is a fair trade off to achieve that highly sought 1080p ad 60fps standard.

We also wanted to talk briefly about the performance of the PC build. The game recommends an AMD FX 8350 and Radeon R9 290 GPU along with 8 GB of RAM. We used the same build to test out the PC version and we are pleased to report that we were able to achieve a consistent 60fps plus experience with all settings maxed out.

Overall, DiRT Rally is a return to form for Codemasters. It’s also in many ways a testament to the fact that one should try to work on something that they love. In the last few years, Codemasters have simply become known for their work on F1 games and those games haven’t been able to improve with each installment every year. Codemasters should stick with the rally genre because as their work on DiRT Rally shows, this is where they truly shine.