As F1 25 leaves Xbox One and PS4, Codemasters Is Having Internal Conversations About Switch 2

Codemasters seems to be readying to shift to new console generations, just as the studio itself is going through some serious changes.

As we reported at the start of the month, Codemasters revealed that they would be ending active development on EA Sports WRC, seemingly the last WRC game the studio will make since 2020. A few days later, EA confirmed that some Codemasters staff were laid off, and some others were moved to other studios.

That gives F1 25’s upcoming release this May 30, 2025 to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Steam, Epic Game Store, and EA/EA Play, a bittersweet aftertaste. Nonetheless, it’s clear that F1 and Codemasters are still very much in business. In a new interview with Traxion, start talking about the future.

F1 25 is finally passing on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, a decade since the franchise debuted on both platforms with F1 2025. Senior Creative Director Lee Mather explained their choice in an interview last month. Mather said:

It’s really to set us up for the future. It releases resources that would have previously been serving the previous generation of consoles.

When you consider the scale of our game as well, it’s a huge QV resource we need to test across all those platforms. It opens up the ability for us to focus on other areas of the game, but also for the long term. This year, you will definitely see an improvement in the graphical fidelity.

Today, Creative Director Gavin Cooper answered Traxion about the possibility of bringing games to the Switch 2. Cooper said:

We need some smart people to look at it and see what the console can actually do and whether it’s actually a good fit for the kind of experience that F1 is. We’ll certainly be having those conversations internally, but there’s nothing we can talk about at this point.

The last full F1 games that came to Nintendo platforms were F1 2009 on the Wii and F1 2011 on the 3DS. For a little over a decade, Codemasters mainly focused on making a big racing sim for the more powerful consoles and PCs. This is one of those game genres where Nintendo’s philosophy of Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology, inherited from Gunpei Yokoi, limited what games they could have on their platform.

For their part, of course, Nintendo made their own games in different genres, with their own spin. But even if Mario Kart absolutely trounces the F1 franchise in terms of sales, revenue, and popularity, one can’t say that it wouldn’t be nice, or even great, if Nintendo got all the games that Xbox and PlayStation also got.

So, the Switch 2 does open up new opportunities, and that’s why Codemasters is talking about having new conversations. The ‘QV resources’ they used to dedicate for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One can definitely be used to polish Switch 2 versions of their games. Given the huge hype for this highly anticipated console, Codemasters and EA definitely see the financial upside too.

But there are still some things that could hamper the chances of F1 and other racing games coming to Nintendo’s platforms. As Nintendo’s hardware developers revealed all the way back in April, some ‘very fussy developers’ convinced them not to add analog support to the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons and Pro Controller. But given that Nintendo is introducing GameCube games to Switch Online, and a GameCube controller for them, there may be a window for compatibility. The Wii U and the Switch themselves could use original GameCube controllers, with support for analog inputs, thanks to an adapter.

When Traxion asked Cooper about this, he said that:

It’s those kinds of considerations that impact the decisions.

If you’re a racing sim gamer, you will definitely want to see Nintendo’s Switch 2 become a viable new platform for racing games. While the genre is mostly a whale enthusiast market now, getting Mario Kart fans interested in F1, or perhaps even the likes of Assetto Corsa and iRacing, could be genuinely huge for those games and their communities. We have to imagine other racing game studios, and even the racing wheel companies, are at least curious if they can do business with Nintendo. For a studio that just dealt with some serious setbacks, those kinds of prospects would be genuinely welcome.