Codemasters to release free online F1 game in 2012

2011 F1 season

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Codemasters will launch a new, free online F1 game in the first quarter of next year.

F1 Online: The Game will allow players to both manage a team and drive the cars in a season of F1.

The full 2011 season including all the drivers, teams and cars will be recreated. They will be able to create their own team, design its livery, and manage the commercial, research, production and race crew side of the team.

The game will use Codemasters’ Unity game engine and be available for PC and Mac formats.

David Solari, the vice-president of Codemasters Online, said: “Formula 1 is a proven major games brand that resonates with players on a global level and is recognised as one the biggest sports licenses in videogames.

“As the worldwide gaming market evolves, 2012 is the perfect time to extend this series to the free-to-play market.

“Building on the commercial and critical success of our high-definition Formula 1 games, this is an exciting opportunity to bring our passion for the sport and our expertise in racing to a new audience.

“With a bespoke design for accessible browser play, F1 Online: The Game is a perfect complimentary experience to the HD series and will appeal to a broad spectrum of Formula 1’s millions of fans worldwide.”

F1 Online: The Game images

Codemasters will release F1 2011 on September 23rd for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Buy / pre-order F1 2011 for Sony PlayStation 3
Buy / pre-order F1 2011 for Microsoft Xbox 360

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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82 comments on “Codemasters to release free online F1 game in 2012”

  1. That is exciting!

    1. Having tested iGP Manager I’m more excited about that, personally. It’s also played in a browser and comes out this year.

      1. http://igpmanager.com
        Sorry for double post

    2. Beats watching F1 on Sky!

  2. Very interesting, something like a F2P online racing community? Where you can buy things to keep going? Or free with the hope of getting more ppl to buy the F1 game.

    Looking forward to see what this will amount to.

    1. It depends on quality. F1 2010 was already very arcade by sim racers standards. I suspect the online mode will be even more dumbed down.

      1. I just bought F1 2010 and it is AWESOME. Monte Carlo is insanely difficult to do a good lap on. Spent a whole hour’s practice session, still couldn’t get it quite right, way off. I love the game just for that, coupled with the Top Gear laps where they were scared as hell in hot hatches it makes you realize the sheer craziness of what they do, which often becomes trivialized on TV. Plus I have not played another racing game where beating AI is so exciting and a momentous occasion.

    2. These promotional images show cars in low definition, and the features missing here in comparison to F1 2011 seem to be a lot, obviously with the extra feature of team management. I think this will allow people to play an F1 management game but also help people to buy F1 2011, like if it was a free trial version.

      1. But it’s supposed to have different features, it’s a different game. If it had the same features it would just be F1 2011.

        1. Yeah, I know, I meant this will not substitute F1 2011 but rather give a taste of what it is.

          1. But it’s due out several months after F1 2011 is. I don’t believe it’s a taster at all. It’s a completely different game, probably for a slightly different market.

          2. But not everyone buys a game immediately. With time, prices tend to lower, and every time I access the F1 2010 multiplayer standings the number of players has increased. It seems strange that someone can buy F1 2010 one month before F1 2011 is out, but between the release of F1 2011 and F1 Online there isn’t much time and a few people may want to wait to see if it is worth buying the HD game.

          3. Fixy… You could say it is to bolster Codemasters market for F1…. But that would be obvious… However linking it F1 2011 directly is a stretch… For starters, it’d top down racing.

  3. I’m more interested in Codemasters’ comments about including historic DLC in F1 2011, to be honest. Especially if those photos of the cars in action are actual gameplay images; they remind me of an old top-town racing game that my brother used to have on his GameBoy. I think it was called Micro Machines and it was very difficult. But Codemasters were talking about “historic driving missions” as add-ons for F1 2011, where players re-enact famous moments from Formula 1 history, like Senna and Mansell drag-racing down the front straight at Estoril. I gather that succeeding in the missions would make the cars available in the full game or some such.

    1. From reading the Q&A in today’s round-up the prospects of getting historic content in F1 2011 don’t look very encouraging. They want it “desperately” but very hard to get the licenses:

      https://www.racefans.net/2011/08/12/128/

      1. I think rFactor 2 has the license.

        1. For historic F1 cars? I doubt it. Are you sure you aren’t just seeing content created by modders?

          Just read the F1 Q&A. Love the comment about never implementing a number of safety cars! Ha! :D

          With all the comments from them about the safety car. I’m quite sure now that it’s in.

    2. I think it was called Micro Machines

      Any who had the Micro Machines video game licence in the 90’s?

      Yup… Codemasters

      1. Well, I don’t rememer it very well. All I can recall is that it was from a top-down perspective and it was really difficult, because the controls were oriented to the start line, but the circuit remained static. So if your car was coming down from the top of the screen and the circuit turned left, it was actually a right-hand bend.

        1. Yeah, it was thoroughly brilliant. Required a hell of a lot of skill at speed, especially when navigating the toilet seat or the edge of a snooker table.

          1. I don’t remember the toilet seat. I do remmeber the breakfast table, the garden, the school desks, the bathtub, the beach and the pool table, though.

  4. That’s good, considering I’ve just bought a new computer which wil probably run all the new F1 games :)

  5. I’m expecting this to be about 90% management game, 10% crappy driving game… which is awesome, making my planned f1 (based) management game would have taken way too much work and been way too exclusive due to complexity :)

    1. It sounds like a licenced version of BATracer.

      1. Not that complex is it?

  6. That is fantastic news. I will be getting a new computer for this for sure!

    1. Please don’t rush for it, Free 2 Play is not a model of release that will be investing a new system for.

      1. Especially if it’s free to play, but then filled with microtransactions from there-on-in.

        Plus this is a browser-based game. It’s not going to need massive amounts of computing power to run.

        1. Will the game be first person or above the car like the pictures?

          1. Its a management game first and foremost, I should think any ‘driving’ in the game will be in the form of you being a race engineer, and giving a driver instructions, rather than directly controlling the car yourself (Unless you’re Rob Smedley, in which case you will control the number 2 Ferrari yourself via remote control from the pits, just like real life).

            So I expect the game to be viewed just like thay have shown in the screenshots, from overhead.

            They already have a first person driving game in the works. It’s called F1 2011.

      2. Free 2 Play is not a model of release that will be investing a new system for.

        It’s especially obvious looking at the screenshots.

  7. I think that with the possibility to create ones own team / livery it might be very nice for a wider audience and for long time fun.

    1. @BasCB – Great idea. There are many more examples of creating you’re own teams in other gaming formats (Football is the most obvious). It would be great to create a team with it’s livery etc at a baseline level and then manage it to try and climb up the F1 ladder!!

      Eddy Jordan eat your heart out!

    2. I think it will be a race to see who has the most pink car!

    3. If they can allow you to draw a livery for your car on this low-res game, why not to draw helmets in F1 2011? I’m sure these things can be done, quite easily as well. They could make you at least choose from different designs and then different colour combinations.

  8. This is awesome – especially as I’ll be able to run it on a Mac too

    1. Hopefully it will run in Chrome as well. I dislike IE.

      1. I would hope it will run in Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari (and IE)!

  9. I hope my Mac is powerful enough to run it, its a few years old now. Livery design! That’s the best news.

    Hopefully this means they can get it in the xbox 360 game. PLEASE DO!

  10. Codemasters, free, two words that don’t usually go together. I would assume you will have to pay to get past the first race, if not i suspect this is a tie up with sky in order to promote the 2012 season.

    1. I think it’s far more likely to follow the many other free to play games out there now. Which will allow you to play quite nicely and enjoy it. But if you play… Then it all becomes a bit easier.

      1. Much like real F1: to really get somewhere you need to invest time, effort, but also have the money to pay for those and for great facilities, maybe drivers? The management aspect of this fits in with it well.

    2. i suspect this is a tie up with sky in order to promote the 2012 season

      … Seriously?

    3. Maybe they’ve decided that, with all these non-licensed F1 games around the web, it was better for them to make an official online free game to discourage users from playing other games, and now that F1 2011 covers driving and F1 online covers management, I think they’ll have a lot more users.

  11. Will I finally be able to stop playing Grand Prix Manager 2? Will this be better than it? It has been 14 years, after all. You’d think there would have been more F1 manager games in that time.

    1. now that would be really exiting, if they can manage it. True enough Codemasters should be able to get the management part right, shouldn’t they?

  12. it’s got live races.. F1Online 1, BATracer 0

  13. I wonder what Codemasters view on the BBC saga is? I know they are an international company etc but if f1 loses fans then they lose fans. Not great for them considering they fought for the rights to it. I don’t want another five years without an f1 game!

    1. I doubt a downturn in viewing figures will affect Codemasters’ sales. Assuming there is a downturn at all.

  14. Great. Now I wonder I should buy F1 2011 or wait for F1 Online…F1 2011 should have better graphic and physics engine but F1 Online is free and there will be much more players.

    1. Well one is a driving game and the other is a management sim with a little bit of driving, so they’re both entirely different games

  15. This are excellent news! I can’t wait for the game to be released!

  16. Anyone else played the Renault F1 game before? They haven’t updated it for a few years, but it used to be my favourite online game! Good times :)
    http://games.ing-renaultf1.com/

  17. This is browser based isn’t it? Cool. I’ve always fancied myself as a management type (even after getting sacked in a football manager game), and this is looking really promising!

  18. I’m pretty sure this is a top down style management game and you won’t actually control the cars like you would in a usual driving game. Just controlling the drivers, I’m getting wiffs of B-spec gran turismo.

    1. grammer fail

      1. Spelling fail!

        1. Sorry Jenkins, I didn’t realise you were commenting on your own post! I thought you were picking on someone else’s typo… d’oh!

  19. This sounds really good. Hell, even if it’s rubbish I can’t complain, it’s free!

  20. This is brilliant news… I have vague memories of playing this game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One_(1985_video_game)for Spectrum 48k back in the mid 80s. I imagine this will be ever so slightly better!

  21. I’m waiting for iGP Manager (linked on my name) which comes out this year. It looks like it will be the motorsport equivalent of football manager and it’s also online multiplayer.

    The F1 online game will probably be all about the licensed content and graphics, with gameplay given a back-seat. I am still excited to see it but I don’t have my hopes high.

  22. RedBaronRacing
    12th August 2011, 13:45

    Amazing! I’ve been hoping for a decent F1 Management game for ages. Could this be the promising start I’ve hoped for?

    Team management, I believe, is ripe for exploitation as a game design concept. Just look at the popularity of the Championship Manager franchise.

  23. Like John, I’m also looking forward to iGP Manager.
    I was a beta tester and thoroughly enjoyed playing it.

  24. Free sounds good.

    But if its like other freemium games out there, you will have a choice of grinding your way threw it to level up/make progress, or pay a few quid and get it unlocked automatically, a bit like farmville, but with cars, and no cows, potentially groundhogs in canada though!

    1. Or it like Quakelive ofcourse.

  25. Sounds fantastic! I wonder how detailed and realistic the racing part will be.

  26. releasing a game based on the 2011 season in 2012? rubbish idea.

  27. it looks great!
    Why cant they get the video games out before october?
    They need to concentrate.then move onto another project.
    Release the video game with the beginning of the season.
    period.

    1. Release the video game with the beginning of the season.

      With zero data on car performance? That would make for a completely unrealistic game.

      I think they should wait until the season’s finished before releasing the game so they have as much data as possible.

      1. Alternatively, make a game that covers several years of Formula 1 and then release download packs for each new season.

  28. This is one way to isolate and irritate loyal fans like myself that have bought f12010 and already pre purchased f12011 for ps3! Also people on xbox! Personally I feel gutted as we should also get some payback/reward for our loyalty!

    Yes, I do have a computer but I only use it for work as it is a laptop and 6 years old!

    1. Looks like this might be just about right to run it on that age old laptop pc to play a bit of team management in F1 atmosphere then.

    2. Ugh… read the blummin’ article, have a look at the screenshots. I fail to see what your argument is.

      This is a free online F1 mostly-management game. This isn’t a free copy of F12011 for PC owners. The games are completely different. We should be incredibly thankful to Codemasters for putting out free content, let alone an entire game.

      It’s also browser based, and by looking at the graphics, it should be able to run on a PC a few yars old, so long as it has a semi-decent graphics card in it.

      And if you have an old PC that you only ever use for work, then this game probably isn’t aimed at you anyway.

  29. in my experience, free-to-play games aren’t worth it until you pay for the “premium service” which is actually the full game as intended. additional microtransactions quickly drive the price through the roof. i’m also appalled by the way “patches” and “maps” are now called downloadable content and cost as much or more as the game.

  30. I tested GPRM/F1CM about year and half ago. That was/is fantastic had so much potential but when will they ever finish it??

    If they managed to get it done then it would be amazing

  31. mike.vonmoltke (@)
    13th August 2011, 14:51

    I tried the 2010 F1 game when it game out and was hugely dissapointed, I was excited when i heard it was codemasters making the new game and not EA Sports. But the problem I have with this game is that its just too arcadey. The this is that when you cater to a huge audience, the main priority is to make sales. And its going to be very hard marketing something that is too sim-like.

    A kid or someone younger would really love this game because of the new cars and tracks that are represented. But for someone who really loves F1 and understands more technical details – this is just too arcadey. Hopefully they will get better with time. It if for this reason i love LFS, sure its not the most expensive or most graphic intensive game but it gives me what i want from a racing game, real physics and feel.

    I guess the best solution would be too have two modes, arcade and sim mode – one for the kids, and one for serious rating. But it usually takes a while to get the right modelling right, and i can imagine that their main focus is on the updates for the next racing calender.

    Im not bashing CM or anyone – just my 2 cents.

    1. You can adjust the difficulty setting and car set-up.

      I sometimes suspect people don’t realize that is possible.

      1. mike.vonmoltke
        13th August 2011, 21:20

        I agree, but its more like turn this setting on or off , high / low – just a bunch of relative settings. Can you adjust say toe,camber,tyre pressure, differential setup, gear ratios, front/rear wing angle? doubt it, its too complicated for arcade users.

  32. Senna will revive in 2012 : )

  33. seems like pitstopboss.com with a 3d graphics engine

  34. i try to enter my details and it does not work some about not having a valid password

    plz help

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