OpFlash, GRID 2 and DiRT 3 mapped out

The next Operation Flashpoint game, Red River, will be released at some point between 1st April and the end of June 2011, Eurogamer can exclusively reveal.

"I don't think it does any good to publish in a congested period when everyone's putting out their shooters," Codemasters CEO Rod Cousens told Eurogamer.

"A number of leading companies have their fiscal year ends around that time, and so they'll be firing heavyweights in terms of their product releases to give as much boost to their fiscal year end as they possibly can.

"That's not a window I want to go out in. It will be between 1st April and the end of June."

Rally game DiRT 3 will be released in the same window, Cousens revealed.

"What we're not going to do is do more of the same with each rendition of the game," Cousens promised. "There is a lot more to it.

"Let's put it into context. It's from probably the finest racing studio in the world. It's between us and the Need for Speed guys, and I would argue we're better."

The next game in the Race Driver: GRID series will be released in 2012.

"We're not difficult to predict," Cousens said. "If DiRT comes out next year, GRID will come out the following year, and then DiRT will be out the year after that. So you can map us out.

"Sitting alongside that will be F1 every year. Flashpoint we'll do every other year. The idea is to come up with a new IP that sits in opposite years to each other, but we're in the racing segment and the action segment.

"So you can pretty much lay out my business plan for the next five years."

Codemasters' new IP for 2011 is Codemasters Guildford's Bodycount, due out early summer.

Codemasters has already teased a "massive" title that utilises version 2.0 of the EGO engine. Will it be 2012's new IP?

"Could well be," Cousens replied.

"There's still a lot being planned. It's something big and something is happening, but your thought process is right."