EA buying Codemasters is, for me, not a really good news. EA has had the same problem with their racing games than Ubisoft with Assassin’s Creed : a new one each year, either too much like the previous one, either different enough but half baked.
I think Codemasters did wrong when they tried to “EA” themselves with games like DiRT Showdown, GRID 2 and now PCars 3 : take a working licence, take out what make it good (the handling, the “seriousness”, the simulation side) and add things people never asked for (Destruction Derby and Turbo, yay ! NFS Underground like career, yay ! What if PCars 3 was in fact GRID 2020 ?).
I forgot GRID 2019 existed, it’s like a “PCars 3 : Prologue”.
EA might let them continue on this path, which is wrong in my mind.
Like you wrote, F1 series already have micro-transaction (which is a real shame – micro-transactions, like DLCs, are often presented like “spend a little to help use keep the game alive”. But we have to buy the new F1 game every year to be up to date … ), so EA’s ownership might not even be felt.
Codemasters knows how to make arcade, simcade and sim games. I just hope EA doesn’t come with a stupid yearly business plan on licence that don’t need them (F1 and newly acquired WRC licence excepted)
On a side note, I’m happy 2 companies that knows how to choose soundtrack for their racing games are now under the same flag.
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