Less than three weeks after Sony kicked Evolution Studios to the curb like so much roadkill, publisher Codemasters has announced that it will pick up the popular racing developer and add it to its ever-growing stable of in-house teams.

“The success of F1 2015 and DiRT Rally over the last 12 months has re-positioned the company for growth," Codies CEO Frank Sagnier said in a statement on the company's official blog. "The addition of the Evolution team to our studio group will allow us to scale our business and strengthen our leadership as the world’s premier racing game developer.  I’m thrilled to have Mick Hocking join Codemasters as VP of Product Development. His experience in building AAA IP and leading great teams made him a natural choice to head the development of all of our products. I am equally thrilled to welcome his talented team to the Codemasters family and I look forward to the great games and brand new IP we will develop together.”

Hocking said he was equally excited. “We have a shared passion for racing, a desire to innovate and a determination to create the best racing games and build the biggest racing community in the market. I’m very much looking forward to working with so many of the world’s greatest racing developers, on new IP as well as exciting franchises including DiRT, GRID, Micro Machines and the FORMULA ONE games.”

No hint as to what the new IP is yet, but I'm sure we will find out soon enough.

The move becomes official on April 25, and will add the team that created such games as DiRT, GRID, DriveClub and MotorStorm. The studio was founded in 1999, and created World Rally Championship for PS2, the MotorStorm franchise for PS3 and DriveClub for PS4. DriveClub, despite some early problems, had major plans for VR, but it is unclear if Codemasters will continue to pursue it with Evolutuon.

 It is never good when a studio is forced to shut down, so it is nice to see Codemasters take the developer under its wing, given the common interest in racing games.