Mark SPOnG has been down in Brighton hob-knobbing with figures not only close to the industry but actually neck-deep in it. One of the people he spoke to today was Codemasters' board member, former Sony Europe titan and general all-round UK video game sage, Chris Deering.

During the interview, Chris spoke about how the change from PS2 to PS3 has enabled Codies to look at expanding the current fashion for sandbox gaming.

Deering told Mark SPOnG, "The shift from PS2 to PS3 basically made it possible to have a sandbox design become really compelling. But the free-roaming aspect is now sort of, 'what else is new?'. Everybody's got elements of that with fewer and fewer games on rails.

"But what we haven't had is the fullness of, let's say, a cinematic open world experience, I know of some games coming up from Codemasters like Fuel..."

At which point... well, the interview was lead in another direction. So, a free-roaming, cinematic game by the name (or codename) of Fuel from the company that brought us Racedriver Grid using its own Neon engine. That is the engine, you may recall that was described by Codies VP of Studios, Gavin Cheshire in Develop magazine as, "...a driving/action engine" with "focus on massively detailed terrain and eye-catching effects and environments".

To be honest, a cinematic, free-roaming game from Codies that could possibly use Neon appeals to us greatly. It's all Fuel to the creative fires.