No, it’s not April Fools day, Codemasters has just announced that their much anticipated official Formula One 2009 game will be released this year - But only for the Playstation Partable and the Nintendo Wii. Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC owners will have to wait for Formula One 2010 as a full-blown version has been postponed until next year.
There have been plenty of rumors about the delay of the 2009 version and they turned out to be true. Apparently, Codemasters is focusing on working on the 2010 version while another studio, Sumo Digital, is responsible for the PSP & Wii versions.
“The scale of development that was required for the next-gen projects, especially with something like Formula 1, to do it on such a massive high-def scale requires a lot more development time than less powerful platforms like the PSP and Wii,” brand manager Paul Walters commented.
“We definitely looked at whether it would be possible to get a game of high enough quality on next-gen in 2009. It will be a wait, but one that’s worth it,” adds Codemasters’ Adrian Lawton.
Due to the fact that both systems are not quite as powerful as a modern pc or a next-gen gaming console, F1 2009 will probably not be able to tell us in which direction the 2010 version will be heading. Yes, it will contain all cars, drivers and tracks of the current season, expect everything else (including graphics, physics and sounds) to be heavily watered down to suit the system’s hardware and audience though.
Below are some shots of F1 2009 courtesy of IGN, it’s no surprise that these are less than impressive. F1 2009 will be released in fall, F1 2010 for the PC, the Xbox 360 & the Playstation 3 is scheduled for mid-2010 - More than a year to wait until we get to see what Codemasters is really able to do with the precious F1 license.
A quanto pare la versione 2009 uscirà solo per Wii e PSP mentre xbox e pc dovranno attendere giugno 2010 per il gioco sulla F1. Visti i rumors di uno slittamento, non è per niente una sorpresa: più che altro avevo dubbi sul valore di 'sto gioco... vabbè, torno a Gp4 e al mio mod 2009