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With the hype train slowly getting into gear ahead of the arrival of Codemasters’ action-packed FPS Bodycount early next year, Codemasters has said that the failure of its most recent FPS Turning Point has been forgotten.
Upon its release in March 2008, Spark Unlimited’s shooter debuted at no.17 in the ELSPA GfK Chart-Track All Formats Top 40, only to drop to 35th the next week and then exit the listings altogether the next.
Its current score on reviews aggregation site Metacritic is 43 per cent.
However, new shooter Bodycount enjoys a far richer pedigree, with development being headed up by Stuart Black – the man behind Criterion Games’ popular last-gen shooter Black.
If you go back to Turning Point, and Rise of the Argonauts, these weren’t Codemasters games,” UK general manager Jeremy Wigmore told MCV.
They came from external sources. We have the quality in our own studios to deliver great games. There are only so many genres out there. If these guys feel that they can create a quality FPS, then let’s let them make one.
It is about fostering our own talent and also keeping things in-house so we can have more control over the game and deliver the right messages about them.”
Brand director Hayley Holland went on to add, however, that the likes of Turning Point and Argonauts have not put Codemasters off third party studios.
That doesn’t mean we are going to reject external development, but we will cherry pick the right games,” she added. What we do now is benchmark the quality of the external products against what we are doing internally.”
To read MCV’s full interview with Jeremy Wigmore and Hayley Holland, click here.
