Nacon and developer KT Racing developed over half a dozen WRC titles before the license was obtained by Codemasters, and Nacon now says it has acquired exclusive rights once again, running from 2027 to 2032. The publisher says its next WRC title will be a “complete reboot” of the franchise and will be “based on an entirely fresh vision.”

“We are thrilled to renew our collaboration with WRC Promoter. This iconic license provides an exceptional playground to build a highly refined driving experience that lives up to the expectations of rally fans,” said Alain Falc, CEO of Nacon. “Between 2015 and 2023, we had the opportunity to work closely with the championship’s official teams and many drivers, allowing us to gain solid and unique expertise in translating rallying into a video game experience. This new venture marks a major milestone: a fully reimagined project driven by a passionate and specialized team, with a clear ambition to elevate rally games to new heights.”

“After a comprehensive evaluation, we are delighted to have reached an agreement with Nacon,” expressed FIA World Rally Championship’s Chief Marketing Officer Arne Dirks. “Their vision for the franchise stands out, and their expertise in delivering great rally games is unquestioned.  We look forward to breaking new ground together in this collaboration, to truly turn the WRC games into epic adventures and offer gaming experiences beyond rally as we know it today.”

When we can expect a formal announcement of the game or our first look at gameplay remains to be seen, but it seems like we can assume 2027 is the year that Nacon is targeting for the first title’s release.

That’s as per known leaker @billbil_kun on Twitter, who who says EA and Codemasters’ WRC game is “ready to launch” and that an announcement for the same is expected “very soon”. Interestingly, icons for the game’s unlockable Trophies and Achievements have also been shared by the leaker.

Exactly how soon the announcement will come and how long after that the game will be ready to launch remains to be seen, but based on the leaker’s wording, it seems that both those things will be happening in the relatively near future.

We’ll be keeping an eye out for any and all updates, of course, so stay tuned for more details.

EXCLUSIVE
WRC 2023's title from EA/Codemasters is ready to launch

Expect an announcement very soon

As a bonus, here is a preview of achievements that you can unlock in the game

Note: Game logo was made by me for illustration purpose only#WRC #WRC2023 #EA #Codemasters pic.twitter.com/SvsbgNWMsH

— billbil-kun (@billbil_kun) March 21, 2023

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.

As per a report published by known insider Tom Henderson on Exputer, the ambitious AAA game that Codemasters was referring to is the next FIA World Rally Championship game. Though WRC games are currently developed by Kylotonn and published by Nacon, in June 2020, it was announced that Codemasters would acquire the license from 2023 until at least 2027.

According to Henderson, while DiRT Rally 3 was indeed in development, the project was scrapped in late 2021. It now seems like the DiRT franchise has been iced by Codemasters, with the developer focusing for now on F1, WRC, and GRID.

It seems, however, that the game’s development seems to be going through a rough patch. The report claims that Codemasters leadership and EA’s poor management – entailing contract renewal issues, team members’ concerns being ignored in meetings, and more – has resulted in a significant reduction of the QA staff, when has gone from numbering around 200 individuals to around 120.

There’s no word yet on when exactly the game will release, but it’s supposedly due out sometime next year.

Earlier this year, it was also reported that Codemasters’ Cheshire studio would be acting as a support team on the next Need for Speed game- read more on that through here.

Codemasters have announced that they have signed a five year deal with the FIA World Rally Championship, securing exclusive licenses for the world’s largest rally racing event. The deal will come into effect with the 2023 season, and will last at least until 2027 (unless it gets renewed, of course).

What about Bigben Interactive and developers Kylotonn, who have been working on WRC games these past few years? Until 2023, they will continue to hold the rights to the WRC license- which is good news, since the WRC games have really started coming into their own under their guidance of late. They’re also releasing WRC 9 this September.

Of course, Codemasters have a lot else going on to keep them busy until 2023 (and beyond). They already hold what is probably the biggest license of a racing event with Formula One, and F1 2020 is due out next month. DiRT 5 is also coming this October (and will be available on PS5 and Xbox Series X at launch). Meanwhile, the DiRT Rally team is also currently working on a new unannounced game.

Milestone and PQube have together announced the release date for WRC 4, the next world rallying championship game that will also, incidentally, be the official tie in game of this season. The game will launch on PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Windows based PCs in October 2013.

The newest game features a spate of improvements over previous titles in the franchise, including new lighting and weather effects, an all new Career mode, and new enhancements to the visuals and UI for added realism and immersion.

“We’re really happy to be part of this exciting WRC 4 announcement and to announce so many new features in the 2013 version of the game,” affirms Milestone’s Luisa Bixio.

“This brand new chapter, different from the previous reboot of the series, will include many of the improvements requested by the community. A lot of the features that we’ve seen on the official Facebook page or received by mail have been incorporated. We’re convinced that WRC 4 represents a step forward for the series and will be appreciated by players,” concludes Bixio.

Dave Pain, Managing Director of PQube added:- “Milestone are creating fantastic games and we are delighted to continue our partnership with them to bring their games to the UK market.  WRC3 surpassed all expectations in the UK and WRC has once again become an established franchise here.  With a massive marketing campaign including TV support, and the significant new additions in WRC4 this will be a must stock item for UK retail.”

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage.

WRC 4, the upcoming game based on the actual World Rallying Championships, will include actual events from the calendar of the upcoming season, just got its latest trailer. It’s pretty standard fare, although fair warning, actual game footage doesn’t come in until midway through the trailer.

The game looks good, but again, it looks like exactly what you would expect from a game based on the WRC license. In fact, some details looks positively disappointing- the car models look exquisite, but the environments seem to lack some details, particularly the trees. Oh well. Not like you’d be looking at the trees much in a racing game anyway.

Published by Bigben Interactive and developed by Milestone Studio, WRC 4, the tie in for the 2013 season, will be releasing next year on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PC. No versions for either the Wii U or the Nintendo 3DS have been announced yet.

RC 3 FIA World Rally Championship is a rally game that relies too much on its mechanics rather than an all around decent package. The game is also unforgiving for new players because it lacks a proper tutorial mode and expects that you have played the previous games in the series. Inconsistencies in the presentation throughout the entire game do not help it either. I will talk about each of the game’s component in detail starting with the presentation first then the gameplay mechanics and overall verdict.

Presentation:

WRC 3 FIA World Rally Championship is among the first game that has the most horrible inconsistent production value all around I have ever seen in any video game. The visuals of the game look like came out in the mid-late 90s; the sound design is horrendous. The port graphically suffers because of lower-resolution textures and the game is not even running at 60 FPS, instead it tries to run at 30 and still has slowdowns despite the graphical compromises.

The engine of the cars sounds bad and all you will ever hear throughout the racing stages of this game is an announcer who comments on upcoming turns almost every single second. The announcer’s voice sounds like it was recorded on an old voice recorder. It gets annoying and instead of focusing on racing, the players will be tortured by an atrocious male voice all throughout the race that never shuts up.

The music in the game is actually good; however, it does not fit the game style at all in my opinion and makes the player feel like they’re playing a game that belongs to a different genre. The production values almost feels like the developers worked on the same game with no communication in between throughout the entirety of the development process. This ended up creating an inconsistent overall style that does not fit the genre and feel of the game.

One thing WRC 3 FIA World Rally Championship does get right is the cars and the feel of a rally game itself. Cars are licensed and the tracks range from snowy mountains to green flat plains. Each rally has a star rating that resembles the difficulty of the stages before you play it. Overall the presentation in WRC 3 FIA World Rally Championship is a giant lackluster, has a unfitting soundtrack, bad sound of the car engines, annoying announcer voice and the graphics of a late 90s games creates an ugly presentation throughout the entire package despite the licensed cars and cool tracks.

Gameplay and Content:

There are two categories in the game that you can play, WRC Experience and Multiplayer. WRC Experience has three different single-player modes: Single Stage, Rally and Championship. In Single Stage you pick one stage and a car to race in and that’s it. In Rally mode, you can play an entire Rally with all the stages included rather than just one Stage. Championship Mode lets the players play all the playable Rallies and pick stages in whichever order they want. All the modes are nice and give you plenty of options depending on your mood on how you want to play the game.

However, the main career mode has been stripped away that used to be included in the console version of the game. Why did the developer decide to do this? I have no idea and I think it is rather strange to strip away main gameplay features that provided content in the previous versions.

The port of the game includes only 6 rallies as opposed to 13 on the console version, the main career mode is gone, which is more than half of racing content. In the multiplayer you can play a  custom match and of course check the leaderboards. The online only supports up to six players instead of 16 on the console version. I do not understand some of the design/content choices that were made for this port by the developers.

There are different classes of cars to choose from, every single car is licensed, which gives the game a true rally experience feel to it. The handling of the cars is decent, driving feels right for the most part and the game does feel proper for a rally genre racer. Your cars can also break certain parts throughout the races if you crash a lot. The game does feature a damage model, bumpers will start dragging and parts will fly off if you drive recklessly.

Once you have finished a stage you have 60 seconds to fix particular car parts using sliders before the time runs out. If you are not sure what needs the most fixing for your next race then you can have an A.I. do an automatic fix by pressing the Triangle button. This is a nice feature; it adds somewhat of a strategy and makes the gameplay a bit more interesting.

The fact that the game was missing a simple introduction tutorial on the gameplay mechanics and style of racing bewildered me. This is a rally racing simulator game, any simulator game should include some sort of a basic tutorial, and however, in this case the game did not. 

Overall:

Overall WRC 3 FIA World Rally Championship is a disappointing rally game that could of been really good. Starting with inconsistent production values to tremendous amount of content cutting, I don’t understand some of the design/content choices that were made for this port by the developers.

Considering the game costs $40 on PlayStation 3 and the Vita version cuts so much racing content that the game ends up not even being worth of a purchase. There is no Cross-Save, Cross-Buy or even Cross-Play features either, this is a watered down port that does not justify the $40 price tag at all. Stay away from this port and just play the console version instead.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation Vita.

The game is published by Black Bean and is expected to be released by this October. on PC,PS3 and X360.

The game will feature 15 different locations, 25 different terrain/ weather conditions and 9 car categories.Cars will range from the 1960s to the WRC models of the current Championship and the game contains new Game Modes, a 16-player online mode, and a completely revamped Career Mode.

For more on WRC 2 please click here

Black Bean Games and Milestone have released in-game footage for World Rally Championship.

The game is slated to release on the PlayStation 3, Xbox360 and PC and is due for release in October.