Codemasters buys Project Cars dev Slightly Mad Studios

Codemasters, the large British game publisher who is mostly known for their racing games, has announced the acquisition of Slightly Mad Studios. SMS is a game studio located in the UK and likewise is best known for its excellent racing games.

Slightly Mad Studios will likely ring a bell for fans of the racing genre. The London-based developer created Need for Speed: Shift and Shift 2: Unleashed for Electronic Arts on last-gen consoles before going independent and creating two hardcore racing-sims under the Project Cars series. The studio is currently working hard on a third Project Cars and with the dev now going under the large umbrella of Codemasters, it could very well become a formidable adversary to Gran Turismo and Forza.

“We are delighted to bring such an incredible racing game developer to the Codemasters family, and this unequivocally establishes us as a global powerhouse in the development of racing titles,” said Frank Sagnier, Chief Executive Officer at Codemasters. “We share the same passion and vision and our new partnership will accelerate our growth. With more streaming services coming to market and the next generation of games consoles due in 2020, this is the perfect time for Codemasters to take its next step.”

Codemasters, on the other hand, has long established itself as a powerhouse company for all kinds of racing games. Throughout its three decades of existence, they have either developed or published hallmark genre franchises like Micro Machines, TOCA, Colin McRae Rally, GRID, Dirt, and many more. In the past decade, they established themselves as the Formula 1 developer. Slightly Mad Studios looks to have found a very fitting home. But with the acquisition now official, we expect the studio’s rather weird previous ambitions of their own game console being dead for good. It’s probably for the best after all.