THE BUZZ: In a tour of their Leamington development studio, Codemasters director of communications Rich Eddy makes a very interesting statement.

EGM’s TAKE: So, here’s the set up. Eddy is doing a video tour of the studio, and while showing off some of the various programming offices, he reaches a door that he says they can’t enter. His comment on the door is as follows:

“There’s a door that, today, we really can’t go in. This is ‘Inception’. This is our ideas factory, and in there we have a whole team of people looking at ideas for technology, game design, all kinds of stuff that will take us through the next five to ten years.”

Now, obviously that isn’t a direct mention of any sort of next-gen platforms—but the “five to ten years” comment is definitely interesting. Would in-house tech alone be so secretive that they couldn’t even show anything of the studio? Or could the room not be entered because some level technology exists in there that would show off the planned specs of one (or more) of the upcoming consoles? (Which, of course, would be what Codemasters would be focusing on for the next five ~ ten years of technology needs.) Even if full development kits aren’t ready yet for the next Xbox or PlayStation 4, developers are often told the level of specs they should be aiming for in order to get early work done on projects for those new systems.

And make no mistake—with the next batch of consoles coming at some point in the next few years, games are already underway for them.

There’s one other interesting bit to this story: Tim Browne, current lead game designer on Assassin’s Creed multiplayer—and ex-principal game designer for Codemasters—had this to say on twitter in response to the video:

So @Codemasters have mentioned the secret ‘Inception’ team now that I was lucky enough to be part of before I left.

Source: gamerzines.com