Codies suspend development of Club Football

Codemasters has suspended development of its next Club Football game and made 18 people redundant as part of a review of its football portfolio, the British developer recently confirmed, but promised that its LMA series of footy management titles would continue and that most of the development team would be moved on to other projects.

Club Football, a unique idea to release multiple versions of the same football game with club-specific branding, began life promisingly by charting respectably in its first year, but the largely negative critical reaction seemed to catch up with it this year as the second round of titles failed to spark gamers' interest.

And, to be fair, it was always a tall order to expect an upstart to compete with genre heavyweights FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer, both of which have firmly established fanbases and have enjoyed much chart success over recent years.

Unsurprisingly, Codies dev director Gary Dunn pointed to this in his assessment of the situation. "We are taking time out to reassess our strategy in the football action genre. It is an extremely competitive market sector and we will take what we have learnt and build on that for future development."

Not necessarily the end of the line then, but Club Football has certainly been relegated somewhat for the time being.