News Report: Codemasters hasn’t “completely ruled out” making a new TOCA game

Codemasters’ beloved TOCA racing game series may now have morphed into the GRID franchise, but a new report has suggested the studio is still open to returning to its touring car roots.

Speaking to Express Sport, the factory Honda BTCC driver Dan Cammish claimed he got in touch with Codemasters; asking if the growing popularity of the British tin-top racing series would convince the developers to make a new TOCA title.

According to Cammish, Codemasters responded by saying it hadn’t “completely ruled out” making a new TOCA title, though said it’s “not in our immediate future” to make a game focused on touring car racing.

Responding to these comments, the BTCC and TOCA director Alan Gow told Express Sport a racing game based on the touring car series won’t be coming anytime soon. While the BTCC chief said the series organisers are “always in contact with Codemasters and with other game producers too about one day producing a game“, such a project is off the cards for now as “at the moment there is no business case for a game because producing a game nowadays is much more expensive than it ever has been“.

Express Sport further alleges its the time, money and resources needed to make a licensed BTCC game, rather than any licensing hurdles, that have put game makers off. If a racing game developer agreed to produce a new TOCA title based on the 2019 BTCC season, it would have to create 13 different car models, each with their own liveries to ensure all 19 teams and 30 drivers on the grid were represented.

The workload would only increase further if, as Express Sport suggests, content for the various TOCA support series was needed for the game.  As well as staging the main touring car races, the BTCC events also host rounds of the British Formula Ford Championship, the Renault UK Clio Cup, the Porsche Carrera Cup GB, the Ginetta GT Supercup and the Ginetta Junior Championship.

Before the series rebranding as “Race Driver” and later “GRID”, the Codemasters-developed TOCA franchise consisted of six games released between 1997 and 2006. However, despite the use of the TOCA name, only the first four titles contained any licensed BTCC content.

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