The studio that developed the Dirt franchise, Codemasters, announced the Chesire division is merging with Criterion for the future Need for Speed titles. It will form one studio with two locations. The integration should come as no surprise as the studios have built a partnership over the past few months.
We can confirm Criterion Games and the development team at Codemasters Cheshire are officially coming together to create the future of @NeedforSpeed, forming one Criterion studio with two location hubs. [1/3]
— Codemasters (@Codemasters) May 12, 2022
Codemasters Cheshire and Criterion Merge
In a further statement on Twitter, a Codemasters’ representative stated, “Sharing common values and similar cultures, we strongly believe unifying the huge wealth of expertise across both teams will help us to deliver the best racing experiences we can for our players.”
Criterion will now encompass both the original team in Guildford and the developers in Cheshire. Codemasters will still utilize its multiple studios and is said to still be working on releases such as F1 22.
A year ago, Electronic Arts acquired by Codemasters in a deal worth $1.2 billion. Codemasters Cheshire encompasses remnants of MotorStorm developer, Evolution Studios. The team joined Codemasters in 2016 after Sony shut the studio down.
In 2020, the Cheshire released Dirt 5, which many critics said felt like a modern version of MotorStorm, and cited as one of the best games to show off the then-new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X hardware.
At SGO, we rated it a 7.5. We praised it for the arcade style which can be enjoyed by everyone. We also praised it for its stellar visuals.
The last mainline entry for the franchise was NFS Heat in 2019. However, we have seen footage of a mobile game being worked on.
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