It was announced this week, and it’s being released in two months’ time. Codemasters aren’t pissing about with GRID Autosport.

If fans of the series – which began in the late ’90s with the TOCA games – thought they got the cold shoulder from Codemasters with GRID 2 (words like ‘accessible’, ‘narrative’, ‘no in-car view’ – that is a word), then this is Codemasters nuzzling back up to them, whispering a quiet racing apology in their ear. Rather than target an assumed mainstream audience, this time Codemasters have consulted their community, racing drivers, and – as the title suggests – Autosport magazine.

Chief games design James Nicholls describes it as “a really focussed racing game”:

“We’ve jettisoned anything that doesn’t support the on-track competition and we’ve chosen a selection of cars and tracks that will give players a range of different racing experiences. That variety is crucial. There are five very distinct ways to race – this isn’t a game where basically every race is the same and the cars and tracks change. You need to adjust your tactics and learn different techniques to succeed in each racing discipline and each car has its own character too.”

Those disciplines will be touring cars, open-wheel, endurance, tuner events and street racing. It looks like there will be a lack of officially licensed series, alas, so there’s no BTCC to take part in – confirmed by Eurogamer. There’s certainly BTCC involvement though: Matt Neal and Andrew Jordan were two of the drivers consulted, and a tweet from Airwaves Racing gives a glimmer of hope that there could be the odd familiar livery, if not full championships.

Licenses aren’t everything though. It’s something that Simon Strang of Autosport – whose staff “got stuck in to help” – said that’s given me most reason to be optimistic:

“The other thing is that while you want the cars to feel authentic, you don’t necessarily want to spend hours mastering it – that’s what real racing is for. You want that experience of racing.”

Quite right. Games aren’t supposed to be hard work, they’re supposed to be fun. I’m still very much enjoying Gran Turismo 6, but it looks like that might only have another couple of months inside my PS3.

GRID Autosport will be released for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC in the UK on 27th June.